Dilpreet Bindra: tinkerer, problem solver, innovator at Broadcom

Innovation is at the core of Broadcom Engineering. In this series, you can hear directly from Broadcom engineers about their journeys, what has inspired them, and how they have overcome technical challenges to deliver innovation for our customers.

Some are just wired from the start to figure out how things work.

For Dilpreet Bindra, a senior director of engineering at Broadcom and VMware veteran, that wiring was evident early — maybe too early if you asked his family, who watched Dilpreet as a young boy “explore” by tinkering and breaking things around the house.

Born in India, Bindra emigrated with his family to Queens in New York City, where he grew up. While other 6-year-olds were playing with toy dinosaurs or superhero figures, Dilpreet was sketching cars and figuring out how engines worked. Somewhere in the family archives, there’s even a childhood recording of him declaring his future as an engineer.

An Early Lesson in Hard Work

Bindra’s journey to becoming an accomplished engineer began with lessons learned growing up in an immigrant family, with parents who recognized the importance of a solid education. His father drove a cab and worked several other jobs before starting his own wholesale electronics business. His mother got a job as an administrator in a doctor’s office and eventually became the office manager.

“Typical of many such stories of immigrant families, working hard and going through a lot of ups and downs gave both me and my sister our work ethic,” Bindra said. “Also typical is that we didn’t have the option of frivolous pursuits for our careers; they had to amount to something that would be material.”

Fortunately for the siblings, they both chose professions they were passionate about: While he became an engineer, his sister became a doctor.

That family work ethic followed Bindra to Stony Brook University in New York, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, and straight into a career that has had a serious impact on modern IT.

The Journey from Tinkerer to Trailblazer

Following graduation, Bindra had offers from two tech powerhouses: Intel and HP. He picked HP — the California sunshine and the fact that relatives lived there made it too good to pass up — and he dove into hardware design. Life threw a curveball when his father died unexpectedly, bringing him back to New York and pivoting his career toward software. Not a huge leap, considering he started coding in BASIC on a Commodore 64 when he was 10.

From there, it was a whirlwind: helping port HP-UX to Itanium, back to California where he joined Sun Microsystems to work on Solaris' Fault Management Architecture, and eventually being recruited by a little-known company called VMware.

“I joined VMware because of the innovation that was driving so much value to customers,” he recalled. “It was not just innovation for the sake of some patent or IP, but it was truly work that changed the world. It was just awesome to be part of it.”

At VMware, Bindra earned a reputation for taking on tough problems. When a catastrophic ACPI bug threatened to stall development, he didn’t just log a ticket. He volunteered to take on 40+ bugs and drive them to a fix, rallying QE teams, testing across server types, and ultimately stabilizing the platform. That relentless problem-solving spirit earned him a shout-out at an all-hands meeting — back when VMware’s "all hands" could fit in a break room.

Changing the Game (Literally)

Bindra’s fingerprints are all over some of VMware’s biggest innovations: vMotion; Storage vMotion; those re-architectures that made live migration predictable and dependable. He led them all. vCenter’s evolution into a stable, scalable control plane? He was there, steering the ship.

One of his proudest achievements isn’t even a product — it was a massive overhaul of VMware’s development processes, a behind-the-scenes innovation that improved how teams delivered value to customers for years to come.

Fast forward to today: Dilpreet leads the VCF Workloads team at Broadcom, building the foundation for how workloads run and are consumed in a private cloud. He's focused on making the cloud not just powerful, but intuitive — empowering developers, DevOps teams, and admins alike.

Broadcom: A Return to First Principles

After nearly two decades at VMware, Dilpreet has found life after the Broadcom acquisition rejuvenating. He appreciates the value that President and CEO Hock Tan places in investing in and retaining the best engineers.

“Broadcom has a similar focus and energy that was originally in VMware so many years ago,” he said. “It has helped us get back to focusing on that core value prop and extend it in alignment with the core business. Hock's recognition of the value in VMware and the focus and attention to getting back to the basics is impressive.”

That focus, he said, removes distractions and fuels a type of innovation that's incredibly rewarding. Broadcom’s investment in engineering, its relentless pursuit of simplicity, and its sharp alignment with customer needs have re-energized teams like Bindra’s to do some of their best work yet. "Innovation at Broadcom is alive and well," he said.

Not All Work and No Play

Outside of work, Bindra is a dedicated basketball dad, shuttling his children to tournaments and sneaking in a game or two himself. Pickleball, hiking, video games, movies — if it’s active or fun, he’s in.

Bindra's story is proof that innovation comes from curiosity, grit, and a stubborn refusal to walk away from hard problems. Whether he’s stabilizing critical infrastructure, reimagining private cloud experiences, or just breaking things to figure out how they work, he brings the same energy to every challenge.

At Broadcom, that kind of mindset isn’t just encouraged. It’s the foundation of everything we build.