Headline

Technology Executive & Strategic Advisor | Transforming Startups with Applied AI & Deep Tech | ex-Google, X-The Moonshot Factory, Nest

About

Technology executive and strategic advisor with 25+ years of experience productizing deep technology at Google Research, X-The Moonshot Factory, and Nest. I focus on scaling engineering organizations and converting complex research into real world impact. My expertise lies in bridging the gap between Data Science/Research and Production Engineering, delivering scalable solutions in Climate Tech, Energy, and Health. 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: • 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘈𝘐 & 𝘋𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩 𝘍𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺: 10+ years developing functional AI solutions, from modernizing the electric grid and network anomaly detection to personalized health applications and applied AI in multiple Google products. Helping organizations move beyond the hype and align technical strategy with business goals to deliver outcomes in complex sectors where software meets physics. • 𝘖𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱: Scaled high-performing engineering teams (up to 40+ engineers) within both early-stage startups (X-The Moonshot Factory, Nest) and global enterprises (Google). I build organizations that balance startup agility with enterprise-grade reliability. • 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘤 𝘙&𝘋 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: Specialized in taking products from "Lab to Market." I partner with Product and Sales to ensure technical execution supports market positioning, transforming emerging technologies into commercially viable business outcomes. Currently, I serve as an Executive Technology Advisor, helping founders and C-suites navigate the strategic application of AI to accelerate growth.

Location

San Francisco Bay Area

Work experience

Executive Technology Advisor at Independent, Nov 2024 - Present · 1 yr 8 mos, • Serving as a fractional CTO and strategic partner to early-stage and growth-stage startups in Climate Tech, Recruiting and Education. • Advising leadership teams on the architectural roadmap and integration of Generative AI/LLMs to create defensive moats and accelerate product velocity. • Mentoring engineering leaders on organizational design, scaling processes, and technical hiring.

Engineering Leadership Positions across Google Research, X-The Moonshot Factory, Nest and Tech Infra at Google, 2007 - Apr 2024 · 17 yrs 4 mos, Mountain View, CA, My Google tenure is marked by progressive leadership across Google’s most critical technical domains, spanning AI Research, X-The Moonshot Factory, Global Technical Infrastructure, and Consumer Hardware. This is a summarized section for my 17 years at Google. More details about each role is under specific sections below. X-The Moonshot Factory and Nest are separate entries as those were entities within Alphabet, outside Google. Most notable accomplishments include: • Google Research: Led a team in Google AI/Research to apply NLP techniques to products across Google such as Search, Ads, Cloud, YouTube, Play, News. • Text summarization for Google News • NLP techniques for content abuse detection • Text classification for Search, Ads, Cloud, YouTube, News • Applications of sentiment analysis for user reviews and messages across different products • Google Research - Health: As a Tech Strategy Lead for a 30+ cross-disciplinary research org, defined the technical vision and roadmap. Delivered Heart Rate Estimation and Human Activity Recognition models based on self-supervised multi-modal sensor rep learning. • Google Technical Infrastructure: Founded a team to solve fault management challenges for large scale networking infrastructure using ML/AI, anomaly detection, root-cause analysis and visualization • Intelligent Energy Services: built a team from scratch, successfully delivered residential energy Demand Response solution using Nest smart thermostats. Migrated the services from AWS to GCP and Google's internal infrastructure. • Large scale network management: led a team of 40+ engineers for the development of network management services such as configuration management, telemetry and monitoring for Google’s worldwide network. • Virtual/Digital Twin for Software Defined Networking: incubated a novel way to develop and test networking software using emulation techniques with virtual machines.

Technology Strategy Lead, Health and Societal Safety, Google Research at Google, 2022 - 2024 · 2 yrs, Mountain View, California, United States, Defined the technical vision and roadmap for a cross-functional organization of 30+ researchers and engineers. Directed the team’s focus toward developing next-generation health metrics using advanced machine learning. • Applied AI Strategy: Conceived and led the development strategy for novel self-supervised multi-modal sensor representation learning models (utilizing Time-series IMU, PPG, and Location data), driving advances in Heart Rate estimation and Human Activity Recognition (HAR). • Research-to-Production: Orchestrated the technical partnership between Research, Product Management, and the Pixel Watch Devices team to successfully integrate experimental models and methodology into production systems. •Innovation in Data Strategy: Sponsored a novel approach to solve data scarcity by generating synthetic sensor data from video (using pose estimation and kinematics); guided the engineering team to validate and implement this method. • Strategic Partnerships: Collaborated with academic researchers and internal stakeholders to validate clinical relevance and align technical execution with broader health product goals.

Senior Staff Tech Lead Manager, Language Research, Google AI at Google, 2017 - 2020 · 3 yrs, Mountain View, California, United States, Led a team of 20+ AI/NLP researchers and engineers responsible for the strategic application of advanced Natural Language Processing techniques to commercial Google products. Focused on transitioning cutting-edge research into high-impact features across key business lines. • Strategic Integration: Partnered closely with Product and Engineering leads across the Google ecosystem (Search, Ads, Cloud, YouTube, Play and News) to successfully integrate and scale the team's custom NLP models into production. • Content Integrity: Developed and implemented NLP techniques specifically for large-scale content abuse detection and moderation, enhancing platform integrity and user safety across multiple products. • Feature Enablement: Successfully launched user-facing NLP features, including Text Summarization for Google News and advanced text classification and sentiment analysis for user reviews and messages.

Head of Engineering and Technology, Project Tapestry (Energy Grid Moonshot) at X, the moonshot factory, 2020 - 2022 · 2 yrs, Mountain View, California, United States, Recruited as the project technical leader to lead the engineering and technology strategy for an ambitious project focused on decarbonizing and modernizing the electric grid. • Strategic Validation: In partnership with the Business Lead, achieved the internal milestone (the equivalent of a Series A investment) to establish the Moonshot as a formal, long-term venture (Project Tapestry). • Organizational Scale (0-to-1): Grew the multi-disciplinary team to 20+ engineers and specialists (Software, Machine Learning, Data Science, Power Systems). • Deep Tech Development: Directed the technical roadmap to develop proprietary grid models with computer vision models with geospatial imagery, grid asset management software, pioneering the integration of complex grid modeling and simulation technology that was used to model transmission and distribution grids across 3 countries.

Advisor at Aavenir, 2019 - 2022 · 3 yrs

Head of Software Engineering, Energy Services at Nest Labs, Google, 2015 - 2017 · 2 yrs, Palo Alto, CA, I was recruited to lead the 0-to-1 build-out of a new B2B2C Energy Services platform. • Organizational Build: Founded and grew the Energy Services software team from 0 to 10 engineers in less than one year, leading the technical direction for Nest's B2B Energy initiatives. • Architectural Transformation: Led the migration of monolithic legacy software to a modern, decoupled architecture, enabling the Rush Hour Rewards program to later scale to 1.3 million active customers across 100+ utility partners. • Operational Efficiency: Defined and executed a plan to isolate services, moving backend releases from long ad-hoc schedules to a consistent weekly cadence and improving monitoring/alerts to enhance operational stability. • Product Expansion: Launched new enterprise energy services, including Time of Use for Utility partners and Safety Rewards for Insurance partners, accelerating Nest's enterprise offerings.

Education

M.S., Computer Science, Texas A&M University

B.Engg., Chemical Engineering, Gujarat University