Sreechandh Devireddy

Sreechandh Devireddy says he chose Arizona State University because it offered “both the benefits of a major research university and the camaraderie of a smaller scholastic environment,” including Barrett, The Honors College, “where people actually know your name.”

He chose computer science because of the feeling he had the first time he built a working chess app and watched two people play it.

“I realized code was the closest thing I had found to making something out of nothing,” he says. “That feeling never really left, and computer science became the place I kept chasing it.”

At ASU, Devireddy learned that the field is about more than writing code.

“Many people assume the most difficult part of computer science is writing code. It is not,” he says. “The hardest part is figuring out what problem you are actually trying to solve before you write a single line of code.”

He first realized he was on the best career path for himself when he participated in the HackMIT challenge, an annual student-run hackathon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I spent an entire night building something from scratch with people I had just met and watched it turn into a working product by morning,” he says. “Most people would call that pressure, but I remember thinking it was the most alive I had felt in a long time. That was the moment I knew I was on the right path.”

That experience stretched beyond the classroom and hacking competitions. As a software development engineer intern at Amazon Web Services, Devireddy worked on a problem most users never see: how a single bad configuration deployed at Amazon’s scale can quietly affect services people rely on, even when no code has changed.

“I built a framework that automatically validates configurations before they go live, helping catch mistakes before they turn into real incidents,” he says.

Devireddy says his contribution to Amazon’s efforts during his internship is among the accomplishments he feels most proud to have achieved, not because of the company’s high stature, but because of what the job demanded from him. He remembers working late into the night on data structures and algorithms and preparing for job interviews that left no room for bluffing.

“When the job offer came through, it felt less like luck and more like proof that the work had been real,” he says. “Showing up and actually delivering once I got there mattered even more, because it meant everything I had prepared for had translated into something that mattered.”

After graduation, Devireddy will join Amazon Web Services as a software development engineer in Arlington, Virginia. Long term, he hopes to help make complex software systems more reliable.

Among the memories he will take with him from ASU is meeting Ira A. Fulton three days into his first semester.

“When he walked in, the entire room erupted,” Devireddy says. “Students who had never met him were clapping and chanting his name like he was a rockstar. I stood in line for a selfie, and he told me to work hard. I still have that photo.

“I did not fully understand then what his investment had built,” he says, “but I understood that this place meant something to the people in it.”

Favorites

Hobby: Playing tennis and biking
TV show: Breaking Bad
Movie: Scarface
Sport: Cricket
Podcast: The Joe Rogan Experience

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ spring 2026 class.

Written by Joe Kullman