Rahul Kumar

CTO

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India6 yrs 6 mos experience

Highly StableAI Enabled

Key Highlights

Led the development of AI-driven routing systems.
Achieved significant cost reductions in infrastructure.
Spearheaded high-volume API management for Ola Maps.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS expert specializing in routing and AI-driven systems.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

RoutingAi-driven InnovationSystem ArchitectureAi FrameworksCost OptimizationSearch IntegrationData IntegrationRouting AlgorithmsRouting Service DeploymentService DeploymentRouting Engine DesignReal-time RoutingApi DevelopmentLocation Services

Other Skills

PlacesSystem scalabilityCross-functional deliveryAPI managementAPI integrationInfrastructure managementETA systemsMachine LearningAccuracy metricsGeospatial architectureCross-team collaborationCost reduction strategiesReal-time ETA pipelinePerformance benchmarkingReal-time processing

About

Engineering Leader at Krutrim (Ola Maps) driving innovations in routing, search, and AI systems powering Ola’s ecosystem. From architecting low-latency routing and places search platforms (15 B+ monthly calls) to building AI-driven frameworks like MapGPT, I focus on scalable design, precision, and reliability. Passionate about blending AI, maps, and systems engineering to build platforms that move people and products efficiently — with measurable impact and elegant design.

Experience

Krutrim

2 roles

Senior Software Engineering Manager

Promoted

Mar 2025 – Present · 1 yr · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

Own and lead Routing and Places — the two foundational pillars of Ola Maps powering Mobility, EV, and Platform products. Drive engineering strategy, system scalability, AI-driven innovation, and cross-functional delivery across Krutrim’s maps stack.
Map Platform Ownership: Spearhead end-to-end roadmap and engineering execution for Routing & Places — enabling ~15B monthly API calls with p99 latency ≤ 25 ms.
MapGPT Framework: Designed and built MapGPT, an agentic AI framework to interpret intents (navigation, nearby search, etc.) and autonomously trigger Maps APIs.
MAPS MCP: Played a key role in developing Maps MCP, a Model Context Protocol framework that powers customers to swiftly integrate Ola Maps in their services.
AI-Driven ETA & Search Models: Integrated ML-based ETA, DeepParse, and spaCy address models, improving accuracy and reducing failures.
Infra & Cost Optimization: Achieved 45% infra cost reduction (~$12K/month) through compute tuning, sharding, and load balancing.
Scalability & Reliability: Architected geospatially sharded routing infra scaling from 180K → 900K RPM while maintaining SLA reliability.
Cross-Platform Collaboration: Partnered with SDK & EV teams to enable MoveOS 5 navigation, real-time traffic visualization, and multi-route UX.
Leadership & Culture: Manage multi-team setup across Routing & Places; foster a research-driven, ownership-based engineering culture emphasizing delivery excellence and mentorship.

RoutingPlacesAI-driven innovationSystem scalabilityCross-functional delivery

Software Engineering Manager

Nov 2024 – Mar 2025 · 4 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

Led the evolution of Ola Maps from a routing-focused platform to a multi-service maps ecosystem, integrating Search (Places), Routing, and ETA systems under one architecture.
System Consolidation: Unified routing, search, and ETA pipelines into a shared data & infra layer, improving reuse and consistency.
Routing Accuracy: Delivered 80% route accuracy within 10% distance deviation versus Google Maps.
ML ETA Evolution: Improved ETA precision through feature-driven ML enhancements and Spark-based near-real-time computation.
Traffic & UX Enhancements: Delivered multi-route options, color-coded polylines, and bearing-aware navigation improving user experience.
Infra Optimization: Reduced latency by 30% and monthly infra cost by 20% through architecture simplification and caching.
Stakeholder Collaboration: Worked with Mobility, EV, and SDK teams to align roadmap priorities with business metrics.

RoutingSearch integrationETA systemsMachine LearningSystem architecture

Ola

4 roles

Engineering Manager

Promoted

May 2024 – Oct 2024 · 5 mos

Set the foundation for in-house Routing at Ola — transforming prototype services into production-grade systems that scaled across the company’s mobility ecosystem.
Routing Service Rollout: Led the successful deployment of Ola Maps Routing across all Mobility and Pricing services, reducing external API dependency and cutting costs from ₹1.8 crore → ₹1.6 lakh/month.
Core Infra Design: Architected Ola’s first geospatially sharded routing backend supporting 900K RPM with minimal latency.
ETA Reliability: Enhanced Spark-based ETA models achieving parity with Google-level accuracy.
Cross-Team Enablement: Collaborated with SDK, Pricing, and EV teams for integrated rollout and UX consistency.
Team Formation: Established the Routing team, defined charters, set up sprint cadences, and introduced observability standards.

Routing service deploymentGeospatial architectureCross-team collaboration

SDE 3 (Team Lead)

Promoted

Mar 2023 – Apr 2024 · 1 yr 1 mo

Led the first major iteration of Ola’s in-house routing and ETA platform, transitioning the company off third-party APIs.
Designed and developed the routing engine and real-time ETA pipeline using Spark, Go, and Scala.
Built benchmarking and A/B rollout systems to measure performance vs third party vendors.
Introduced observability dashboards for latency and path accuracy.
Mentored new engineers and transitioned the team toward ownership-driven product engineering.

Routing engine designReal-time ETA pipelinePerformance benchmarking

SDE 2

Promoted

Apr 2021 – Mar 2023 · 1 yr 11 mos

Founding engineer in Ola’s Maps initiative. Focused on building the real-time routing and search foundation for the platform.
Developed Autocomplete API using Elasticsearch and Vert.x, powering customer app search.
Implemented real-time ETA prediction improving booking conversion and reducing wait times.
Built streaming jobs for driver hotspots (Flink + Redis), improving trip density.
Delivered early routing prototypes that evolved into Ola Maps Routing.

Real-time routingSearch foundationStreaming jobs

SDE 1

Jul 2019 – Apr 2021 · 1 yr 9 mos

Worked on Location Service Platform to enhance customer experience by providing services to other teams.
Utilized Java, Scala, Vertx, Play Framework, Redis, Cassandra, ScyllaDB, Kafka, and Event-Driven/Async Architectures.
Worked on realtime streaming jobs to analyze demand and supply, optimizing prices for increased revenue.
Leveraged Flink, Scala, Kafka, and S3 for efficient realtime data processing.

Location servicesReal-time streamingData processing