Kari Kauppi, Senior Director, Head of Automotive

Kari has traveled a long way with Symbio and was actually one of the founding members of Symbio’s predecessors. This year, Kari achieved 20 years in the service of the company! Many things have changed along the way, but there are also many similarities from different eras.

Kari’s first tasks were related to mobile software development and the development of embedded systems.

“We started with a team of four to develop the first gaming phone in a customer project. The project was vital as the entire company had only ten employees. In the project, I got a really good grasp of how the architecture of mobile devices is built, all the way from hardware to the user interface.” Kari’s duties quickly progressed to leading teams and projects, and currently he is responsible for Symbio’s automotive products and business.

Over the years, both Symbio and the entire IT industry have developed enormously. But the lessons learned over the years are still useful today.

“Along the way, I’ve learned how important software optimization is. Resource efficiency and efficiency optimization of software are strongly in Symbio’s DNA. In the past, the computing power of processors was often a challenge, so the solution was to develop software that used as few computing resources as possible. Of course, the processing power has developed tremendously, but on the other hand, the end-user functionalities required today are on a completely different level than before. Likewise, especially in the automotive industry, cost minimization leads to the need to get by with the cheapest possible hardware and develop software that works on it. For example, Symbio Connected Car is strongly based on this idea.”

Twenty years is a long time in a working career. What things have made Kari to stay with the same employer all this time?

“A good team and coworkers have been a really important factor. We have a good spirit and drive to work together, and through that we have also achieved successes. The content of the work has also always been motivating: the product developments have been like startups within the company and it has been really interesting to run them. I have also been able to develop and learn new things myself all the time, for example in the area of ​​technical sales work. At the moment, my time is largely spent on client work.”

And if we look ahead, what could the next 20 years bring?

“Twenty years is such a long time that after that I will hopefully enjoy my retirement days. But there is plenty to do before that. The automotive industry market is going through a revolution, where traditional component manufacturers have to change to software companies. This opens up new opportunities for the market and we must be able to react quickly to changing situations. At the same time, I want to constantly share my own knowledge, skills and experience with younger Symbioneers. For my part, I am enabling their future development and success, which is reflected more widely at the company level as well.”

Congratulations to Kari on the milestone of 20 years at Symbio!