Building with heart: Bhavya Kashyap, Chime® Engineering Manager, on engineering, empathy, and evolving your career
Bhavya Kashyap started coding before she even realized what she was doing. As a kid growing up in the late ’90s and early 2000s, she’d disappear into the family computer room and spend hours building fan websites for her favorite anime series. “I’d go online, see cool sites other people made, and want to learn how to do that,” she says. “So I picked up HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.”
What looked like just a hobby to her parents—something creative and artistic—was actually the foundation of a career in engineering. When Bhavya chose to study computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, her family was surprised. “They didn’t realize I’d been programming in my free time for years,” she laughs.
That early exposure gave her a deep technical foundation, but it wasn’t the only path she explored. Bhavya also has a creative streak: she’s an artist, a writer, and a musician. That creativity still shows up in how she solves problems and builds systems today.
Finding her way back to engineering
Since her earliest days coding in the family computer room, Bhavya’s career has spanned both engineering and product management, each role teaching her something new. Early on, she was encouraged to pursue product management thanks to her communication skills and knack for organization. She gave it a real shot and spent four years as a PM, but something about the role didn’t click. “Even though I was doing well, I didn’t feel fulfilled,” she says. “I felt farther away from the problems that we were solving.”
Eventually, she made her way back to engineering, first by switching from a technical program manager (TPM) role to a software engineer at Amazon. “I was working two jobs for a while: my official TPM work during the day, and engineering projects after hours so I could make the case for switching roles,” she says. The effort paid off. “When I got back into engineering full time, I knew immediately it was the right move. It felt like coming home.”
As an engineering manager today, she’s found a sweet spot. She might not be coding every day, but she’s still solving hard problems and shipping products, just at a different level. “There’s something magical about building at scale,” she says. “That feeling of awe I had early on hasn’t gone away.
Drawn to Chime’s mission—and people
Bhavya joined Chime after a friend from college referred her. At the time, she’d recently moved to the Bay Area and was looking for something different from the big tech circuit, and Chime stood out to her during interviews because of it’s heart: “Everyone I met was so mission-driven and empathetic,” she recalls. “It was clear they really cared—not just about what they were building, but about the members they were building it for.”
That authenticity has been consistent throughout her time at Chime. “I’ve worked at big companies like Amazon and Microsoft, where you can feel really far away from the customer,” she says. “At Chime, you can feel your impact more directly. And the people here? They have more heart than anywhere else I’ve worked.”
Building the backbone of Chime
Since joining, Bhavya has worked on several foundational teams. She started on the Financial Platform, where she helped build a critical piece of infrastructure for securely handling sensitive member data. The project required collaboration across multiple teams and reflected what she loves about engineering: solving complex problems at scale, with care.
She then moved to Engineering Services, where her “customers” became Chime’s internal engineering teams. Her team owned Chime’s internal event processing pipeline. “At one point, we were processing 13 billion events a day,” she says. “We built a wizard so engineers didn’t have to think about setup—they could just start sending events. That kind of enablement work is fun because it helps other teams move faster on delivering for our members.”
Today, Bhavya is back in the product world, leading engineering for the Deals & Offers team. “We launched the new Deals tab as part of Chime+,” she says. “It’s been fun to work on something member-facing again. I can go on Reddit and see members talking about the work we’re doing. Whether they’re hyped or annoyed, it’s all feedback we learn from.”
Learning from others and making space
Chime is the first mid-sized company Bhavya has worked at, and the experience has been eye-opening. “At larger companies, people tend to stay in their lane a bit more,” she says. “Here, I’ve seen so much creativity and ownership. I’ve met people from all kinds of backgrounds, not just CS degrees or traditional tech paths. Many of my coworkers have been part of our target member group, and that brings a real sense of empathy and perspective.”
She’s also been impressed by the cultural emphasis on making things happen. “Several of our features started as hackathon projects,” she says. “There’s room here to try things and have a real impact.”
Career lessons and community
When it comes to navigating your career, Bhavya has two big pieces of advice. First, trust your gut. “If something feels like the right move, don’t talk yourself out of it,” she says. “I’ve held myself back before, thinking I wasn’t ready or didn’t deserve it. But every step I’ve taken—even the scary ones—has brought me further.”
Second, be generous. “Help others when you can, without expecting something in return,” she says. “When you behave selflessly in an environment where everyone’s working toward the same goal, it eventually comes back around in really good ways.”
