Headline

Associate Director at Pickyourtrail

About

Engineering leader with 14+ years across e-commerce, enterprise consulting, and travel technology. Currently leads a 20-person full-stack engineering team at PickYourTrail. Specialises in internal platform engineering: building the tools and systems teams work around but nobody puts on a roadmap. Early AI adopter — self-hosted LLM inference, fine-tuned models, multi-agent systems, and live algorithmic trading. 10x Impact award 2022 and 2025. At PickYourTrail, built Plato — the CRM that runs how 400 people across sales, operations, finance, and support work. Also built the internal chat platform (3 billion+ messages), the lead allocation engine, an AI trip planning system with 17 MCP tool modules, and a full design system. Led a full architectural rewrite using CQRS where the database schema auto-generates GraphQL types, Zod schemas, ORM models, and documentation. Previously at Cognizant for 5.5 years as Lead on the Newell Brands account (Coleman, Rubbermaid, Sharpie) — engineering across 40+ brand sites, first leadership role, introduced SOLID, DRY, KISS and design patterns through code reviews. Before that at BORN Group building enterprise e-commerce for international brands including a migration script that moved 30 million production records. Outside work: a live F&O trading engine running 61 strategies across NIFTY, BANKNIFTY, and SENSEX; a macOS developer runtime manager that replaces Docker Desktop; an LLM fine-tuning pipeline; and a self-hosted multi-agent AI team. Stack: TypeScript, Python, PHP, Go, Rust | Laravel, Next.js, FastAPI, GraphQL | Kubernetes, Temporal, Redis | CrewAI, LangGraph, MCP, vLLM

Location

Chennai

AI stack

langchain

langgraph

mcp

openai

CrewAI

DSPy

Work experience

Associate Director at Pickyourtrail, Nov 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 10 mos, Chennai, Leads a 20-person full-stack engineering team across web, mobile, AI, and infrastructure. Grew from Engineering Manager to Associate Director. Responsible for architecture, delivery, hiring, and technical direction. Plato — Internal CRM running how 400 people work across sales, finance, operations, and support. Uptime 70%→98%, response time 30s→3s, 30+ features in one year, same output with 3 engineers down from 7. Full architectural rewrite using CQRS where database schema auto-generates GraphQL types, Zod schemas, ORM models, and documentation. Real-time Chat Platform — 400 concurrent chats, 3 billion+ messages, mobile SDK, WhatsApp integration via self-hosted gateway. AI Trip Planning System — Multi-agent system with 17 MCP tool modules covering the full booking lifecycle. Results stream in real time. Atom Design System — 11 packages, 650+ custom SVG icons, web and React Native. Lockerroom HRIS — appraisal cycles, OKRs, peer reviews, resignation workflows.

Engineering Manager at Pickyourtrail, May 2022 - Feb 2024 · 1 yr 10 mos, Chennai, Led the engineering team at PickYourTrail, managing delivery across web, mobile, and platform. First management role at the company — responsible for hiring, technical planning, and team growth. Built the initial version of Plato (internal CRM) and the real-time chat platform. Established engineering processes, code standards, and the architecture that the Associate Director phase later scaled.

Lead at Cognizant, Dec 2016 - Apr 2022 · 5 yrs 5 mos, Greater Chennai Area, Lead on a Fortune 500 engagement: Newell Brands (Coleman, Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Calphalon). Enterprise-scale web engineering across 40+ brand sites. First leadership role: led a team of five. Focused on finding each person's strengths, assigning the right work, and upskilling across the team. Introduced SOLID, DRY, KISS and design patterns (Builder, Adapter, Chain of Responsibility) through code reviews and hands-on sessions. Difference Maker Q4 2019 (customer-recognized). E-Perfectionist Q1 2019 (customer-recognized). Stack: Magento, SFCC, PHP, JavaScript

Software Engineer at BORN Group, Jan 2015 - Nov 2016 · 1 yr 11 mos, Greater Chennai Area, Enterprise e-commerce for international brands: Xcite.com (Alghanim Electronics, UAE), Dakine, Mapemall (MAP Retail, Indonesia), Mothercare Middle East. Built a migration script that moved 30 million production records to a new platform. Stack: Magento, PHP, MySQL

Application Developer at Contus, Jul 2012 - Dec 2014 · 2 yrs 6 mos, Greater Chennai Area, Magento extensions, iOS apps, hotel reservation systems, marketplace extensions, social networks. Deployed client sites to AWS the day they signed. Star Performer of the Year 2012. Best Techiee of the Year 2013. Stack: Magento, PHP, iOS, AWS

Education

Bachelor of Engineering (BE), Computer Science, Jawaharlal Institute of Technology

Computer Science, St Thomas Higher Secondary School