Meet the Audible Engineers Presenting at the 2024 Grace Hopper Celebration

As we prepare to head to Philadelphia for this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), the world’s largest tech conference for women and nonbinary people, we’re catching up with two of our Software Development Engineers, Khushboo Kumari and Jianing (JJ) Wang, who will have the distinct honor of presenting to the conference in October. 

Since 2016, Audible has been a sponsor at the conference, which includes workshops, presentations and networking opportunities, as well as a career fair. Over the course of three days, attendees of all ages, from students to professionals to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders share cutting-edge tech innovations and opportunities with one another. “It’s such a great opportunity for women in tech,” says JJ. “It’s massive and overwhelming, in a good way. You get to meet so many awesome engineers.”  

Khushboo was completing a master’s degree in computer engineering at Stonybrook University in New York, when she was invited to interview at Audible, which “was always at the top” of her list of places to work. She joined Audible in 2019 to work as an SDE II on architecting localization solutions that keep Audible’s services running smoothly for customers, wherever they are in the world. 

Around that same time, JJ was graduating from University of Pennsylvania with degrees in economics and computer science. At first, she went to work in finance, but “I was more drawn to the tech side of things,” she says, “and wanted to create a product I was passionate about.” Since she loved books, Audible was a perfect fit. JJ joined as an SDE II in 2022 on one of our purchasing and pricing teams, working to ensure customers always get the best price, whether they’re buying a membership or a single listen. 

Both had attended the Grace Hopper Celebration before, and Khushboo had worked the Audible booth, along with several other members of our tech team. “I saw some of my friends speak at GHC,” she reports, “and it made me think: I would like to do this.”

She approached Ian Moraes, Audible’s Head of Consumer Domains, and asked if there was someone who could help her make this a reality. Encouraging and mentoring our employees to become confident presenters is important to Ian, who works with employees across our tech teams to improve these skills. He also created and sponsors Audible’s Allyship group, and lends his support to our employee-led Impact Groups such as Women in Tech (WiT). “I have stage fright,” says Khushboo, “so whenever there was an opportunity, Ian would be sure to put me forward.”

Ian suggested she partner up with JJ to submit a proposal to GHC, since JJ was often taking on speaking roles and leading presentations, and could help Khushboo feel more comfortable. Although the two were on different teams and had never worked together in person on a project, they set out to brainstorm examples of tech projects they could share, as well as their learnings and processes.

Khushboo says, “We came up with multiple topics and then worked with more senior engineers to narrow it down to those that would be best,” in terms of what the duo could share publicly.

They both decided to propose a presentation on building scalable distributed systems—specifically, how a market leader like Audible proactively handles huge spikes in traffic. “Like when Michelle Obama shared about her podcast on Audible,” explains Khushboo, “and people bombarded our application. If your application is not scaled enough to handle that kind of traffic, and you don’t have that level of infrastructure, it breaks the experience for visitors. 

JJ adds, “It’s something both of us have had hands-on experience with, learning from high-traffic events like Prime Days, Black Fridays and celebrity releases. And it’s a topic applicable to a lot of people in tech regardless of what sector their company is in.”

With help from their managers across tech, as well as Audible’s Communications team, Khushboo and JJ spent the next two and a half weeks perfecting their proposal, and submitted it to the conference just in time for the deadline. Then, exciting news: their presentation was chosen.

Now to deal with the nerves. “I don’t typically get nervous about speaking engagements,” says JJ, “but this will be first time I’ll be onstage before such a big audience.” Fortunately, our tech employees can take advantage of Confident Club workshops, two-day sessions that help them hone their public speaking skills and prepare for opportunities just like this. Khushboo has a session planned in advance of GHC in October. “I am looking forward to seeing how my fear can be overcome,” she says. Khushboo and JJ also have the opportunity to practice presenting to Audible employees and leadership in our Innovation Cathedral in Newark, NJ.

In addition to receiving an honorary plaque from GHC and establishing themselves as subject matter experts in front of their peers and industry leaders, for Khushboo and JJ, the opportunity to speak at GHC also means sharing the exciting innovations our tech teams get to work on every day at Audible. And hopefully, they can inspire someone at the conference who is just starting out in their career, as they were once inspired themselves.

What they’re listening to

Khushboo: Atomic Habits by James Clear

JJ: Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown

Learn More about GHC