Oct 2023 – Apr 2025 · 1 yr 6 mos · Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

• Established and expanded the Hardware Diagnostics and Telemetry Services Center of Excellence (HDTS CoE) from 80 to 150 FTEs + contractors across the U.S., India, and Taiwan. Led Engineering and TPM teams.
• Implemented Rhythm of Business framework to set up periodic reviews, thereby, streamlined operations, innovation, and new product launches.
• Built strong partnerships with Azure Core, HW Quality, Fleet operations, Data Center operations teams for better planning on cross-functional deliverables and minimize escalations.
• Defined metrics for Diagnostics. Improved GPU diagnostic precision by 20%, increasing hardware availability.
• Delivered Hardware Diagnostics and Telemetry for leading GPU SKUs including Nvidia H100, H200, GB200; AMD MI300X; and Microsoft Maia 100. Also supported general-purpose (GP) SKUs across Intel, AMD and ARM (Cobalt 100).
• Designed high-level architecture for Diagnostics Stack 2.0, supporting Windows and Linux migration to improve the operational leverage of the team.
• Architected Hardware Pitstop Maintenance to color code the Hardware in the fleet into RED, ORANGE, YELLOW and GREEN and run hardware screening with velocity controls while maintaining the customer capacity. The preventive maintenance improves the quality of hardware available to customers.
• Led development of an AI-powered predictive maintenance platform, achieving 90% accuracy in predicting hardware faults 7 days in advance.

Sep 2021 – Sep 2023 · 2 yrs · Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area

• Led Nitro Firmware organization, managing the boot operating system (Linux-based) for AWS Nitro cards.
• Contained high attrition by improving transparency, prioritizing workloads, and defining team charter.
• Developed CI/CD deployment for firmware, streamlining global updates for 4 million servers.
• Spearheaded firmware factory reset solution that saves AWS millions of dollars by improving hardware availability.
• Directed software architecture for Amazon Halo fitness devices, enabling firmware scalability across product lines.

Feb 2021 – Sep 2021 · 7 mos

• Led the architecture and roadmap of the vehicle infotainment systems for the company.
• Managed Qualcomm relationship, technical and business, on Cockpit Domain Controller (CDC). Introducing cost-splitting transparency across OEMs that saved 1.5 million per year.
• Led software quality improvements for Mahindra XUV 700 vehicle launch.

Nov 2007 – Feb 2021 · 13 yrs 3 mos · San Diego, CA

• Led a global 30-person team developing the Qualcomm DSP Operating System (QuRT), which is an integral part of Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC serving Mobile, IoT and Automotive businesses.
• Architected and commercialized RTOS on Qualcomm DSPs, ARM processors, and RISC-V.
• One of the founding members of the RTOS team. Designed and implemented foundational feature such as exception handling, power management, profiling features.
• Delivered training on the QuRT RTOS to teams worldwide at Qualcomm. These training videos were incorporated into the onboarding package for software developers working on the Hexagon DSP.
• Designed and implemented uImage framework that partitions Kernel to execute from CPU’s L2 cache and avoid DDR accesses to reduce power for always-on use cases on Mobile phones. The power reductions helped Qualcomm earning Sensor process business from Samsung.
• Led OS re-architecture efforts, securing uKernel and optimizing system latency.
• Redesigned Interrupt Handling in Kernel to provide deterministic max. interrupt latency for Modem FW interrupts. This feature was critical to meet 5G model latency requirements.

Feb 2001 – Nov 2007 · 6 yrs 9 mos · Dallas, TX

• Developed fault tolerance mechanisms for network management systems improving reliability.
• Implemented device drivers for I2C, SPI, RS232, PCIE, HDLC, Ethernet, etc.
• Designed virtual IP drivers for multi shelf for inter-shelf communication.

Jan 2000 – Jan 2001 · 1 yr · Chennai, India

• Worked as a contractor to GTECH Corporation, USA to support Front End Communication Processor
• Enhanced GSC protocol and device driver. Implemented number feature enhancements and bug fixes

Mar 1999 – Jan 2000 · 10 mos · Chennai, India

• Bala worked for projects sponsored by NEC, New Jersey.
• Part of the team that developed IPSOFACTO (IP Switching for Fast ATM Cell Transport) protocol software on Linux based Wireless ATM (WATM) Base station and Mobile terminal.
• Ported Linux based WATM Base station software to pSOS Base Station.

Aug 1996 – Feb 1999 · 2 yrs 6 mos · Bangalore, India

• Bala was part of the Engineering team that maintained the VSAT Hub station