Ashish Ambastha

Director of Engineering

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India9 yrs 8 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Led a team of 25+ engineers at CheQ.
Successfully launched multiple fintech products.
Achieved PCI DSS compliance and security certifications.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Fintech Backend Architect with extensive experience in scalable payment solutions.

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Skills

Core Skills

Team ManagementMicroservicesBackend ApisBackend DevelopmentData ManagementPayments ProcessingCompliance

Other Skills

AngularJSApache DruidApache KafkaAzkabanBatch ProcessingCC++CDCCapacity ManagementCommunicationData PipeliningDatastreamDebeziumDevOpsDistributed Systems

About

As a seasoned engineering leader with a background in Information Technology, I bring over 9+ years of experience in software development, system architecture, and team management. Currently serving as the Director of Engineering at CheQ, I lead a dynamic team of 25+ engineers, driving innovation and delivering scalable backend solutions for a range of products including Utility, Lending, Rewards, and Wallet platforms. My expertise lies in building microservices using Java and Node.JS, managing clusters on VMs and Kubernetes, and developing backend APIs for both user-facing and internal systems. I have a proven track record of improving system performance through stress testing, capacity management, and implementing best practices for clean code and scalable infrastructure. Throughout my career, I have successfully launched multiple products and built platforms. I am also experienced in compliance and security, having worked closely with Infosec teams to achieve certifications like PCI DSS and implement RBI guidelines for tokenization. I am passionate about fostering a collaborative team environment, mentoring engineers, and continuously exploring new technologies to drive business success.

Experience

9 yrs 8 mos

Total Experience

3 yrs 2 mos

Average Tenure

3 yrs 6 mos

Current Experience

Cheq

2 roles

Director of Engineering

Promoted

Apr 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 2 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Leading, mentoring, hiring and managing a team of 25+ Backend and DevOps engineers including SSE, TL and EM.
Leadership and stakeholder management.
Onboarded BBPS and UPMS for CCBP and Utility payments for payments, discovery, bills and consent management.
Built new tabs in app for Utility and Lending products.
Transaction extraction using OCR and PDF extraction tools and categorisation using ML models.
Built new credit dashboard, catalogue for recommended credit cards, revamp post transaction experience on app.
Frameworks for pushing events and central library management.
Documentation, code reviews, stress testing, bandwidth and expectation management of team and stakeholders.

JavaNode.JSKubernetesBackend APIsMicroservicesTeam Management+4

Technical Architect

Nov 2022 – Mar 2024 · 1 yr 4 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Leading, mentoring and managing a team of 20+ Backend and DevOps engineers.
Built products like CCBP, Utility, Lending, Bill discovery, Rewards, Insurance, Wallet, Offers, Vouchers etc.
Built in house platforms like early warning system, ability to schedule and trigger any event at any point in time upto a minute's precision and personalisation.
Backend driven UI and widgetisation to power dynamic content.
Coding frameworks for clean code.
Data size estimation, pipelining, archival and partitioning.
Performed stress testing, capacity management and scaling.
Infra cost analysis and management.
Worked closely with Infosec. Took part in audits and obtained certifications like PCI DSS and CICRA.

Backend DevelopmentData PipeliningStress TestingCapacity ManagementComplianceSecurity+1

Flipkart

3 roles

Software Development Engineer III

Mar 2021 – Oct 2022 · 1 yr 7 mos

Worked E2E on Payments discovery, transaction and batch-processing.
Async processing using Kafka and Storm.
Launched Cardless EMIs.
Launched Instant cashback on UPI.
Launched Corporate Netbanking as an option.
Worked on improving fraud detection for International Card transactions.
Built Console for accessing data to be used for debugging, config changes and escalations.
Owns business alerting system to track Success rate and taking appropriate action for payment gateways, instruments and merchants.
Owned scaling payments and related systems for handling BBD scale.
Designed and solved Tokenisation use-case for Saved cards in accordance with RBI guidelines for Flipkart.
Working with Appsec and Infosec to protect applications.
Dockerisation and Kubernetes.
Agile methodology.
Mentoring Interns and FTEs and managing a small team.

Payments ProcessingKafkaStormFraud DetectionDockerKubernetes+1

Software Development Engineer II

Promoted

Apr 2019 – Mar 2021 · 1 yr 11 mos

Worked on adding Proof of Address and Identity for KYC in BNPL flow.
Scaled discovery service to handle Homepage, product page and payment page traffics.
PCI DSS compliance audit for Flipkart.
Solved for Securing PII for entire Payments systems in Flipkart for live flows, current and archived data.
Built a Batchprocessing system based on Spring batch.
Launched Wallet as a payment option.
Stress testing of Payment Gateways and Internal Payments systems for Big Billion Day readiness.
Worked on report management service for handling MIS, claim and refund files.
Rule and success rate based routing of transactions.
Maintained and scaled HBase, Mysql, Mongo and Redis.

KYCPCI DSS ComplianceBatch ProcessingRedisMongoDBCompliance+1

Software Development Engineer

Dec 2016 – Mar 2019 · 2 yrs 3 mos

Worked on launching industry first product EMIs on Debit cards.
Built an internal Payment Gateway for loan booking on debit cards for Banks.
Wrote script to detect leakages in loan booking and whitelisting.
Launched SMS based check eligibility campaign for customers for Debit Card EMI for all eligible banks.
Integrated with External payment gateways for Payment processing.
Contributed, refactored and optimised a microservice to power user specific discovery of payment options for Debit Card EMIs and BNPL.
Maintained MySQL and Redis.
Optimised data storage in Redis.

Payment Gateway IntegrationMicroservicesRedisMySQLPayments ProcessingBackend Development

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SDE intern

Jul 2016 – Dec 2016 · 5 mos · bangalore

Established Druid database with Kafka message queuing system and NodeJS server to capture data . • • Added features like SMS and Email for IVR services in system backend.
Built a dashboard for Security team using AngularJS.

DruidKafkaNodeJSAngularJS