Headline

Senior Engineering Manager | Head of Engineering | Cloud, Platform & AI Engineering Leader

About

Senior Engineering Manager and Head of Engineering with 15+ years building, scaling, and operating high-performing engineering organizations and cloud-native distributed systems. I report directly to the CEO, leading a ~20-person engineering organization across four cross-functional teams (Engineering, DevOps, QA, PMO) with full ownership of people management, delivery, architecture, and technology strategy for a B2B2C travel-technology SaaS platform. Proven record of hiring and developing engineers, instituting engineering excellence and delivery governance, and driving cloud transformation that cut infrastructure cost by ~40%. I combine executive stakeholder management with deep technical expertise in AWS, Kubernetes, microservices, and event-driven systems serving millions of users at Reliance Retail (Netmeds) and Foodhub. Passionate about engineering culture, mentoring engineering leaders, driving enterprise AI adoption (Claude AI, agentic / AI-assisted "vibe" coding), and translating business goals into reliable, high-scale outcomes. Executive Highlights: • Lead a ~20-person engineering org across four cross-functional teams (Engineering, DevOps, QA, PMO), reporting directly to the CEO. • Cut infrastructure cost ~40% via Graviton/ARM migration across ~78% of compute, with right-sizing and S3 lifecycle policies (FinOps). • Architected and operate a Kubernetes/EKS microservices platform powering booking, hotel-mapping, search, notification, and payment workloads. • Designed an event-driven backbone (Apache Kafka, Amazon SQS/SNS) and scaled the data tier for low-latency performance at high volume. • Direct multi-region production operations (us-east-1, ap-south-1) with centralized observability (Grafana Loki, Datadog). • Instituted DevOps, CI/CD, and release governance that improved deployment frequency, release quality, and system reliability. • Drove enterprise AI adoption with Claude AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) — AI pair-programming, agentic/"vibe" coding, and AI-driven code review across the SDLC. • Led 7+ engineers on India's leading online pharmacy platform (Reliance Retail / Netmeds) serving millions of customers. • Strengthened security & governance with AWS WAF, CloudTrail, SSO/identity, and an isolated PCI-aware payment path. • Built the UrlPing monitoring system tracking 2,500+ Unilever websites across four global regions. • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, with deep expertise in cloud architecture, scalability, and cost optimization.

Location

Chennai

AI stack

anthropic apis

antigravity

claude code

deepseek

gemini

openai

Work experience

Senior Technical Architect / Head of Engineering at ClarityTTS, Dec 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 9 mos, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, B2B2C travel-technology SaaS platform — hotel & airport search, booking, supplier mapping, loyalty/rewards, and payments. Report directly to the CEO with full ownership of engineering, leading ~20 engineers across four cross-functional teams. Leadership Impact: • Led and scaled a ~20-person engineering org across four teams (Engineering, DevOps, QA, PMO), owning hiring, mentoring, performance reviews, and career development. • Established engineering culture, delivery governance, and team structures that strengthened accountability and cross-functional collaboration. • Partnered directly with the CEO and business stakeholders on technical roadmaps, budgets, and organizational growth. Business & Delivery Impact: • Reduced infrastructure cost ~40% via a Graviton/ARM migration across ~78% of compute with RDS/ElastiCache right-sizing and S3 lifecycle policies (FinOps). • Instituted DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure automation, improving deployment frequency and reliability. • Built QA processes including test automation and release governance, improving release quality and predictability. Technology Impact: • Architected and operate a Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) microservices platform powering booking, hotel-mapping, search, notification, and payment workloads. • Designed an event-driven backbone (Apache Kafka, Amazon SQS/SNS) and scaled the data tier (PostgreSQL/MariaDB read replicas, ClickHouse, Typesense) for low-latency performance at high volume. • Directed multi-region operations (us-east-1, ap-south-1) with CloudFront edge delivery and a Grafana Loki + Datadog observability stack. • Strengthened security with AWS WAF, CloudTrail auditing, SSO/identity, and an isolated PCI-aware payment path. • Drove adoption of AI pair-programming, agentic / AI-assisted ("vibe") coding, and AI-driven code review using Claude AI and MCP across development and operations.

Engineering Technical Lead at Netmeds.com, Jul 2022 - Dec 2023 · 1 yr 6 mos, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, India's leading online pharmacy platform serving millions of customers across web, Android, iOS, and native applications. • Led a team of 7+ engineers delivering and operating a high-scale e-commerce pharmacy platform serving millions of customers. • Architected microservices on AWS (Lambda, ECS, ECR, CloudWatch, SQS, SNS, Aurora, ELB, S3), optimizing resource utilization to reduce infrastructure cost. • Established code review processes, deployment pipelines, and engineering best practices that improved release velocity and code quality. • Drove database optimization (indexing strategies, horizontal/vertical scaling), significantly improving query performance. • Facilitated Agile ceremonies — sprint planning, retrospectives, and daily standups — fostering continuous improvement and a reliable delivery cadence.

Engineering Technical Lead at Netmeds.com, Jul 2022 - Dec 2023 · 1 yr 6 mos, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Staff Engineer at Foodhub, Dec 2021 - Jul 2022 · 8 mos, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, Multi-platform food-ordering system (web, Android, iOS, native) handling high-volume transactions. • Designed high-level architecture for a high-volume, multi-platform food-ordering system. • Delivered complex features using Laravel/Lumen, MySQL, React.js, and AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudFront, EC2, Redis) in close collaboration with architecture and development teams. • Provided technical leadership and mentorship to junior engineers, conducting design reviews and establishing coding standards.

Senior Software Engineer II at Foodhub, Jul 2021 - Jan 2022 · 7 mos, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Lead Software Engineer at TNQ TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED, Apr 2017 - Jun 2021 · 4 yrs 3 mos, srp, • Led development of Proof Central, an online proofing platform enabling publishers to streamline manuscript-correction workflows. • Built the UrlPing monitoring system tracking 2,500+ Unilever websites across four global regions, with automated reporting via Pentaho and Saiku analytics. • Managed requirement analysis, technical documentation, and the full project lifecycle from design through deployment.

Senior Software Analyst at CSS Corp, Mar 2016 - Mar 2017 · 1 yr 1 mo, mpez, - Worked as a Senior System Analyst at CSS Corp, supporting enterprise-level IT systems and infrastructure. - Analyzed and resolved complex system and application issues, ensuring minimal downtime and high system availability. - Managed and optimized relational databases (MySQL, RDBMS) to improve query performance and data integrity. - Collaborated with development and operations teams using Git for version control and code management. - Documented system specifications, technical workflows, and resolution procedures to support knowledge sharing. - Participated in change management processes and coordinated with stakeholders to deliver system enhancements.

Education

BE, EEE, Sengunthar Engineering college

+2, Bio-Maths, Government higher secondary school - Tiruchengode