Headline

Head of Engineering | Scaling Mission-Critical Platforms & Global Teams | SLO-Driven Operational Excellence | AI-Native Engineering | Security-by-Design

About

Accomplished engineering leader with 26+ years building and scaling resilient, high-performing software organizations from zero-to-one startups to global engineering hubs. I specialize in translating business ambition into technical strategy through systems thinking and SLO driven operational excellence, ensuring every deliverable is secure, scalable, and resilient. 💪 Core Leadership Strengths: 🏗️ Systems Thinking & Architectural Excellence - Designed distributed systems handling billions of events; built zero-downtime infrastructure and cloud migrations - Championed error budget frameworks and reliability engineering that shift orgs from reactive defence to proactive investment - Built feedback loop to translate post-incident learnings into systematic prevention through GameDays, BCP (Business Continuity Planning) and DR (Disaster Recovery) simulations. ⚡ Operational Excellence & Reliability -Institutionalized SDLC best practices (CI/CD, SLO/SLA etc.) to empower multi-functional teams to focus on innovation, ship faster and more reliably with minimal COGS and operational toil. - Incident Management championing MTTx reduction. - Scaled reliability thinking across global teams without creating silos 🔒 Security & Compliance as Architecture - Designed security automation; built ThreatModel rigor into SDLC - Drove IAM, GDPR/HIPAA, FIPS 140-2, SOX, ISO/SOC2 initiatives, treating security and compliance as architectural concerns. 👥 Organizational Scale & Talent - 0->1, 1-> N Scale: Built and scaled global R&D hubs across India, the USA, and Europe, optimizing for top-tier talent availability and demonstrating sustained culture and People trust - Championed Early-In-Career initiatives and academic partnerships to build sustainable university talent and internship programs - Led with transparency, integrity, and servant leadership cultures. 🎯 Strategic Execution - Owned multi-billion-dollar platform delivery (UCCX, Webex CC, TaskRouter, Flex, Proxy) across global markets - Partnered with C-suite on business alignment; managed complex cross-functional dependencies and high-velocity delivery - Drove expansion into new territories (APAC, EMEA, US Federal) while maintaining quality and compliance. 🧭My Conviction: Great engineering organizations run on visible, measurable processes with clear SLOs, fast detection, minimal toil. Teams do their best work when they trust the systems and people around them. Leadership is about building that trust through transparency and genuine investment in people.

Location

Greater Bengaluru Area

AI stack

claude code

claude

gemini

github copilot

langchain

openai

Work experience

Director of Software Engineering at Twilio, Oct 2024 - Present · 1 yr 11 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · Hybrid, As a Director of Software Engineering at Twilio, I spearheaded initiatives to enhance engineering excellence and drive innovation. My leadership in integrating AI strategies transformed operational workflows, significantly boosting productivity across the organization. Key Deliverables: • Site Growth: Hired and scaled to 70+ high performance engineering organization within India site. • AI Strategy and adoption: Delivered integration of Generative AI and Co-Pilot features to significantly reduce contact center handle times and boost agent and supervisor productivity through real-time transcription, next-best response, automatic wrap-up notes and alert notifications with actionable insights for Supervisors. • Global Expansion: Led the regionalization of the Twilio TaskRouter and Flex platform for the European market, ensuring strict data sovereignty and regulatory containment within EU boundaries. • Team Rewards & Recognition: Championed and drove initiatives, Twilio Good Code award and Twilio Spotlight award, to recognize, reward and encourage great coding practices and innovation across Twilio India site. • SLA custodian: Single threaded owner and custodian for Twilio Flex SLA, compensated customers with credits during SLA breaches. • Security Champion: Single threaded security owner within the Twilio Flex Business Unit. Responsible and accountable for ThreatModel review/approvals, application and platform vulnerability management, Compliance assessments and audits including SOX, ISO and SOC2.

Senior Software Engineering Manager at Twilio, Dec 2021 - Sep 2024 · 2 yrs 10 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · Hybrid, • Single threaded owner of Twilio TaskRouter, a skills-based omnichannel routing system to intelligently distribute tasks (calls, SMS, chats, emails, WhatsApp/Facebook/Apple messages Etc.) to the most skilled agents. It is used by enterprises to power their contact centers, providing customer care and also workflow automation. • Co-owned Twilio Flex, an omnichannel AI powered contact center platform for enterprises to provide not just customer care but also engage their customers at their preferred time over preferred channels (voice, message, email Etc. • Scaled TaskRouter and Flex to support 5x higher concurrency and 6x agent capacity, enhancing customer interactions. • Single threaded owner of Twilio Proxy, a SaaS offering to enable secure, anonymized voice and digital communication with session-based controls, number masking, and participant management for privacy-focused customer interactions • Orchestrated a zero-downtime migration to AWS managed services, improving system resiliency and reducing overhead. • Collaborating with cross-functional teams, I ensured the delivery of a robust roadmap for our products. • Championed and drove practices and processes, including Service Readiness Framework, Definition of Done (DoD), Definition of Release (DoR), Architecture Review Board (ARB) ThreatModel, GameDays, weekly operational reviews, R&D release checklist, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Etc.

Software Engineering Technical Leader at Cisco, Jul 2015 - Dec 2021 · 6 yrs 6 mos, Greater Bengaluru Area, • Portfolio Management: Single-threaded owner for the UCCX (On-Prem) and Webex CC (Cloud) portfolios, delivering highly-scalable and resilient CCaaS solutions across global markets. • Engineering excellence: Defined and drove engineering practices (Definition of Done, Definition of Release, Threat Modeling, coding standards, CI/CD, security testing, SLO/SLA driven observability Etc.) • Strategic Cost Optimization: Realized $0.5M in annual savings by migrating core infrastructure to Open-Source platforms without compromising system integrity. • Security Leadership: Security architect and evangelist within the Cisco Contact Center Business Unit (CCBU), actively partnering with the central security and compliance teams. Secured the US Federal market through FIPS 140-2 certification and acted as the primary liaison for global compliance assessments and security incidents. Built automation framework for security validation of UCCX. Delivered multiple talks on the security posture of our UCCX solution to our customers & partners across the business regions (USA, APAC, ANZ & EMEA). • Operational Maturity: Partnered with the Engineering, Support and SRE teams to drive capacity planning and platform resilience, supporting aggressive business expansion into newer international territories.

Director Of Engineering at EiQ Networks, Jan 2009 - Apr 2015 · 6 yrs 4 mos, Greater Hyderabad Area, • Led the software engineering unit at EiQ Networks, overseeing the entire product lifecycle for SIEM, GRC, and Configuration Auditing products. • Built a high-performance R&D engineering organization, achieving a 70% retention rate of staff with over five years of tenure. • Collaborated closely with partners to integrate mission-critical security solutions, enhancing product value. • Established streamlined processes for the software life cycle, significantly improving operational efficiency. • Developed and delivered a next-generation cloud platform for SOC services, enhancing security operations. • Closely collaborated with our FIPS 140-2 validation partner to translate certification requirements into product backlog, subsequent engineering implementation and rigorous process for FIPS 140-2 certification. This ensured secure US Federal market eligibility and unlocked new high-value revenue streams. • Worked directly with McAfee Security Innovation Alliance team for ePO certification of our product so as to become a SIA partner. In the process, we surfaced bugs and issues with ePO SDK and suggested the fixes to the SIA team. • Partnered with the US executive team to translate market needs into quick POCs for new leads, prospects and/or partners. Successful POCs are then ploughed back systematically into the regular release cycles without disturbing the eco-system. Managed integration solutions with partner products. • Collaborated with a large MSSP in the US to optimize their SOC solution stack using EiQ technology. • Analyzed and recommended solution design changes to host more than 100 customers for security monitoring on a single stack.

Senior Manager at EiQ Networks, Jan 2007 - Dec 2008 · 2 yrs, Greater Hyderabad Area, Transitioned the team and the product into security and threat management space. Helped build engineering operational efficiency through structured and process orientations to the product and the organization.

Engineering Manager at EiQ Networks, Jul 2004 - Dec 2006 · 2 yrs 6 mos, Greater Hyderabad Area, Instrumental in expanding the log monitoring products. Hired and trained top talent to build and deliver the product releases

Senior Software Engineer at NetContinuum Pvt. Ltd, Oct 2001 - Jul 2004 · 2 yrs 10 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, • Key member of the team responsible for the GUI facilitating management and administration of our web security gateways and web application firewalls. Implemented and managed XML structures for the GUI system. • Co-developed the GUI’s provisioning system including a single user interface facilitating multiple administrators managing multiple web security gateways -- each with customized views and multiple functions for multiple customers. All views and functions are updated in real-time. • Developed the GUI’s multi-user session interface to the above web security server. • Implemented the real-time graphical monitoring component of the GUI. • Automated the installer building process for the GUI installation CD. • Mentored new hires.

Software Engineer at Tessera Systems (India) Private Limited, Oct 2000 - Oct 2001 · 1 yr 1 mo, Hyderabad Area, India, I contributed significantly to the development of mobile commerce solutions at Tessera, focusing on enhancing customer experience. • Developed a workflow orchestration engine that facilitated seamless order placements over the phone. • Engaged in end-to-end field trials and technical demos with major telecom providers, ensuring service validation. • Collaborated closely with leadership to drive product innovation in a dynamic startup environment.

Education

B.Tech, Computer Science & Engineering, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University

High School, HAL