Karthik Giritharan

Director of Engineering

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India22 yrs 8 mos experience

AI EnabledAI ML Practitioner

Key Highlights

Over two decades of experience in scalable systems.
Led cross-org initiatives at Microsoft Bing.
Passionate mentor for early-stage startups.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and Cloud Computing expert with a focus on AI and distributed systems.

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Skills

Core Skills

Cloud SystemsTechnical LeadershipArtificial Intelligence (ai)Google Cloud Platform (gcp)Search Engine TechnologyDistributed SystemsSystems Design

Other Skills

Data IntegrationsGovernance ProductsCore Platform DevelopmentIntegrations PlatformLow Code Agent BuilderKnowledge GraphsQuery UnderstandingRankingML Data MiningCrowdsourcingFeedback PlatformsProject LeadershipDigital Public InfrastructureOpen NetworksONDC

About

• Experienced technology visionary with over two decades of expertise in building highly-scalable systems, serving millions of users worldwide. • Definition of product roadmaps & technology investments for multi-billion-dollar business. • Manage performance & career development for large teams. As ‘career advisor’, coached & mentored several next-level leaders & employees across the globe. • Technical depth in a wide range of platforms – architecture, design and development of AI/ ML systems, Mobile, Web-based applications & Enterprise systems, with solid understanding of OOAD, design patterns and Data Structures & Algorithms. • Shipped highly scalable bigdata systems & platforms, with domain experience in Cloud, Big Data Platforms, Search Technology, Distributed Systems, and Information Retrieval. • Drove cross-org initiatives, such as Engineering Excellence for Microsoft Bing. • Passionate about mentoring & coaching early stage startups.

Experience

Twilio

Director of Engineering

Jul 2025 – Present · 8 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Engineering Director for Data Integrations & governance products @ Twilio: Leading a large organization - 6 EMs/ Senior EMs, 6 Principal Engineers and multiple developers across 7 different product teams, responsible for delivering core "v-next/ data bridges" platform for the company’s next-gen "Communications + Data + AI" strategy, while continuing to improve existing Segment platform.

Data IntegrationsGovernance ProductsCore Platform DevelopmentCloud SystemsTechnical Leadership

Google

Engineering Leader- Cloud AI

Dec 2021 – Jun 2025 · 3 yrs 6 mos · Bangalore

Handled multiple responsibilities and teams:
Engineering leader for integrations platform in Google Cloud AI - Agent Development Kit (ADK) - Connectors/ Integrations APIs, Low code Agent builder and Enterprises Knowledge graphs for LLMs. Launched 'Application Integrations', a new Integration-Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) offering in Google Cloud.
Passionate about contributing to India stack & start-up ecosystem. Engineering leader for Beckn ONIX implementation in GCP and multi-agent network. Collaborating with multiple stakeholders & partner teams including ONDC, FIDE, Ekstep, etc.,
Led a cross-org team to drive AI adoption within the org, by leveraging AI/ LLMs to simplify user journey/ adoption and dev productivity.
Org level initiatives: Led the first org level hackathon & set-up a repeatable process.
Acted as site lead for app integration team (BLR) till 2022.

Integrations PlatformLow Code Agent BuilderKnowledge GraphsArtificial Intelligence (AI)Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Microsoft

Principal Software Eng Manager - Bing Search & AI

Nov 2012 – Dec 2021 · 9 yrs 1 mo · Hyderabad

Multiple internal roles: Principal Engineering Manager, Senior Engineering Manager, Senior Engineer.
Led high-performance teams for building world-class travel experiences for Microsoft and Bing.
Shipped multiple exciting features for Bing Local and Travel, leading dev teams responsible for handling query understanding/ ranking, ML based data mining/ curation and big-data platforms.
Dev leader for Bing travel destinations (bing.com/travel) and launched it in a quick time.
Engineering leader for Bing places (bingplaces.com), crowdsourcing (UGC) and feedback platforms for Bing.
Drove high bar on ‘product quality’ & ‘customer obsession’ - Dev owner of the highest rated Microsoft App in Android & iOS (4.8 out of 5 in Android play store as on 2020).
One among the few trained 'Career advisors' for WW Microsoft employees and new leaders.
As the 'Engineering Excellence champion' for Bing Org at Microsoft, driving org wide initiatives to maximize developer agility and productivity.

Query UnderstandingRankingML Data MiningSearch Engine TechnologyDistributed Systems

Honeywell

Dev Leader

Jul 2003 – Nov 2012 · 9 yrs 4 mos · Bangalore

Multiple internal roles: Project leader, Tech lead, Senior Engineer, Software Engineer
Drove a product idea into a funded project (of multi-million USD). Built a mission-critical distributed system for turbines from scratch.
Led large, multi-sited, cross-cultural teams spread across Hyderabad, Bangalore, Fort Washington (US) and Sydney.

Distributed SystemsProject LeadershipSystems Design