Nikhil Kotian

Engineering Manager

London, England, United Kingdom15 yrs 11 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Led teams in developing AI-native systems at scale.
Expert in real-time media quality intelligence.
Strong background in embedded systems and signal processing.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a highly skilled engineering leader in AI and embedded systems across media and energy sectors.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Machine LearningSoftware DevelopmentEmbedded SoftwareDigital Signal ProcessingEmbedded SystemsSoftware Engineering

Other Skills

Software DesignRedisArtificial Intelligence (AI)Software Project ManagementAWS SageMakerAWS LambdaAmazon DynamodbAmazon EC2Amazon Web Services (AWS)Container OrchestrationPyTorchCloud ComputingAWS ServicesReal-Time Operating Systems (RTOS)Microcontrollers

About

Engineering leader building AI-native systems and organisations at scale. I currently lead teams at Amazon Prime Video, owning the product and technical roadmap for real-time media quality intelligence across thousands of 24x7 streams, while operating large global inference systems under tight cost and reliability constraints. My background spans embedded systems, signal processing, distributed platforms, and low-latency ML, and I remain close to architecture and design. Today, my focus is on leverage: developing people, shaping product direction, aligning cross-functional stakeholders, and turning ambiguous problems into durable, intelligence-driven systems—while continuously learning, writing, and exploring agentic AI and modern AI product architectures.

Experience

15 yrs 11 mos

Total Experience

2 yrs 10 mos

Average Tenure

5 yrs 10 mos

Current Experience

Prime video & amazon mgm studios

2 roles

Engineering Manager

Promoted

Mar 2025 – Present · 1 yr 2 mos

Senior Software Development Engineer

Jul 2020 – Present · 5 yrs 10 mos

Led the Video Quality Analysis engineering team within Prime Video, to develop a low latency, highly available machine learning algorithms at scale. I work with MLEs and Applied scientists to develop computer vision offerings using AWS services like EC2, Lambda, Dynamodb, Redis and others. I have worked on various engineering and operational challenges which required architectural innovation, tradeoff and compute optimisations that has helped scale our machine learning products scale by 1000x.

Software DesignRedisSoftware DevelopmentArtificial Intelligence (AI)Software Project ManagementAWS SageMaker+8

Ga drilling

Software Architect Contract

Aug 2019 – Jun 2020 · 10 mos

I led the development of elements that helped an early stage Plasma drilling platform gather real time data from field tests. I planned and architected the communication, data acquisition and linear signal processing algorithms required to measure success of these field tests. I led a team of 3 software engineers and worked with them provide firmware elements using novel technolgies like pub-sub in CAN bus using Google protobuf. I worked with electrical engineers to define the technical specifications of the electrical boards before the boards reached production.

Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS)Embedded SoftwareSoftware DevelopmentSoftware EngineeringDigital Signal ProcessingMicrocontrollers+5

Ge oil & gas

Senior Software Engineer Contract

Oct 2018 – Aug 2019 · 10 mos · London, United Kingdom

Designed, simulated and implemented a QAM modem system. Solved interesting problems like receiver synchronisation and filtering statistically stationary noise.
Developed a lightweight bespoke broker based communication middleware to actuate drilling systems.

Zealtech ltd

Director/Founder

Mar 2018 – Jun 2020 · 2 yrs 3 mos · United Kingdom

I accept freelance projects mainly in C/C++ in various domains.
Guide software engineers at an IoT startup in Test Driven Development.
December 2019 - December 2020
Production line test system for aviation black boxes.
Jul 2018 – Nov 2018
Smart home system (AWS, Alexa and ESP8266 proof of concept)
May 2018 – Jul 2018
NFC based payment system for Smart watches
Feb 2018 – May 2018

C (Programming Language)Embedded SystemsC++Python (Programming Language)Software Development

L3 mapps uk

Senior Software Engineer Contract

Mar 2018 – Sep 2018 · 6 mos · Bristol, United Kingdom

Software product development and management for HMS QEC & Prince of Wales aircraft carriers.

Zf group

Principal System Architect

Jul 2017 – Mar 2018 · 8 mos

Define the system architecture of an Imaging RADAR subsystem taking into account the system, cyber-security, application and signal processing requirements. (Level - 4 Automation)
Benchmark and evaluate various platforms for implementation of the functions defined.
Strategize product development lifecycle and plan end of line engineering support.
Interact with Automotive OEMs to coordinate research, development and manufacturing to ensure a scalable product at the right price point.
Involved in the process implementation and guidelines of the software V cycle as mentioned in ISO-26262.

Schlumberger

Software Product Lead (New Product Development)

May 2010 – Jul 2017 · 7 yrs 2 mos · Gloucester, United Kingdom · On-site

(Joined as Graduate | Progressed to Product Lead)
Recruited as a graduate engineer, I managed a team of 5 software engineers delivering signal processing products for next generation downhole drilling & sensor acquisition systems.
Technical Leadership & Delivery
Led end to end delivery of software for electromechanical systems while championing software development practices like TDD, Extreme Programming & Lean Project management.
Digital Signal Processing
Developed various linear signal processing algorithms for wireless communication systems, sensor processing and motor control systems.
Software Engineering
Implemented signal processing algorithms on a constrained FLOP platform like fixed point DSP and microprocessors.