Vineet Vohra,
Vice-President, Software Engineering, Ciena India
Vineet Vohra serves as Vice President of Engineering at Ciena India, where he oversees day-to-day operations at Ciena’s Gurugram Center. He also leads the development and delivery of software-defined network capabilities for Ciena’s Navigator Network Control Suite. He is deeply focused on driving innovation, fostering global collaboration and aligning India operations with Ciena’s strategic objectives. Equally important to him is mentoring and developing engineering talent, that is, building leadership capabilities, strengthening technical depth, and empowering teams in India to take on larger roles in Ciena’s global initiatives while addressing the fast-evolving demands of the telecom and networking ecosystem.
He began his career in 1994 as a software engineer at ICL, later holding technical leadership roles at Hughes Software Systems, Riverrun Software Group, Aplion Network, and BayPacket Technologies. In 2005, he briefly worked at InterSolutions as director of product development and engineering before joining Ciena in 2006 as one of the first employees at Ciena India. He helped establish the centre at Gurugram, starting with the development of the optical transport and switching design team.
As technologies transition, Vohra sees artificial intelligence (AI) as an opportunity, believing it has the potential to be very disruptive to humans and engineers. He emphasises that the next generation of engineers must adapt to change and keep up with the latest developments. “I believe AI is actually going to open up more avenues and every engineer should be, instead of looking at it as a threat, see AI as a very smart friend,” he notes.
His management philosophy centres around driving meaningful innovation by balancing research, technology and business while building effective teams. He finds that small teams with a clear mandate and support work best. He prefers a flat structure over hierarchies and relies on defined processes. He says, “I might want to be very involved in areas that excite me. As a manager, I have to pull back and let the experts do their job without me doing the backseat driving.”
Vohra holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication from the Delhi College of Engineering, University of Delhi. Beyond work, he enjoys reading about technology trends, visiting historic sites and exploring astronomy. He grew up as the youngest of three siblings and has been married for over 25 years; his wife is a professor at Delhi University with a doctorate in microbiology. They have a son who works with a tech startup, and a daughter who is pursuing economics.
