Ashish Kumar

Director of Engineering

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India18 yrs 5 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchAI ML Practitioner

Key Highlights

Led development of next-gen containerized control planes.
Expert in leveraging Generative AI for product development.
Delivered scalable cloud-native solutions for cybersecurity.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Cybersecurity expert specializing in cloud-native solutions and Generative AI integration.

Contact

ashishgarg.bitspilani@gmail.com LinkedIn

Skills

Core Skills

Generative AiCloud SecurityDevopsInfrastructure OrchestrationProduct ManagementSoftware Development

Other Skills

API AutomationAWSAWS LambdaAgileAgile MethodologiesAgile Software DevelopmentAlgorithmsAmazon Web Services (AWS)Analytical SkillsApache AirflowArtificial Intelligence (AI)Artificial Intelligence for BusinessAstuteBusiness OwnershipC

About

As Director of Software Engineering at Sophos, I lead the development of next-generation containerized control planes for Sophos Firewall, integrating uniform REST API support across on-premise and cloud-managed firewalls. My work focuses on harnessing Generative AI to streamline platform onboarding and accelerate feature development using in-house SDKs, prompt engineering, RAG, and AI agents. With over one year in this role and prior experience as Senior Engineering Manager, I have contributed to cloud-native solutions such as SASE, secure DNS protection, and advanced DevOps pipelines. My expertise lies in leveraging Generative AI, cloud security, and infrastructure orchestration to deliver scalable, innovative solutions aligned with organizational goals.

Experience

18 yrs 5 mos

Total Experience

3 yrs 8 mos

Average Tenure

5 yrs 7 mos

Current Experience

Sophos

3 roles

Director of Software Engineering

Promoted

Sep 2024 – Present · 1 yr 9 mos

Responsible for building NextGen containerised control plane(Dev, QA & DevOps) for Sophos Firewall with uniform REST API support both for on-prem and cloud managed firewalls.
Responsible for Inducing GenAI to automate the platform onboarding and product features development using in-house SDK through prompt engineering, MCP(data driven context), RAG and software AI agents.

Generative AIREST APIContainerizationCloud ManagementCloud Security

Senior Engineering Manager- Cloud Security

Jun 2023 – Sep 2024 · 1 yr 3 mos

Responsible for delivering Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) capabilities for Sophos networking group which includes SWG (Secure Web Gateway), FWaaS (Firewall As-a-Service) and ZTNAaS (Zero touch networking access as a service) in a single cloud native solution.
Delivered data pipeline for Sophos DNS protection which helps in threat alerts based on automated dashboards and response using automated API driven configurations.
Delivered a brand-new DevOps pipelines which uses Terraform to setup cloud resources, Github actions for CI and ArgoCD for CD deployments into AWS environment.
Delivered SDKs for “Golang”, “C” and “Java” microservices which brings in out-of- the-box support for infrastructure, platform and cloud integration along with CI/CD pipeline.
Designed and delivered a brand-new Kubernetes based platform (supports both on-prem and cloud apps) which accelerates developer productivity and acts as a launch vehicle to deliver cloud native microservices with shift left quality in agile way.
Delivered Robot(python) based component test automation framework which allows services to test itself in isolation.

SASEDevOpsTerraformKubernetesPythonCloud Security

Senior Software Engineering Manager

Nov 2020 – Jun 2023 · 2 yrs 7 mos

Senior Engineering Manager responsible for building NextGen cloud native platform which can run containerized applications load and horizontally scale beyond thousands of containers with ease. The platform provides service orchestration (Kubernetes), messaging (Kafka/NATS), workflow orchestration using Apache Airflow (can run data pipeline processing as well), distributed storage management(both cloud & on-prem), ORM framework for flexibility in database selection, high availability both at service & platform level, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, state management using Redis, Authentication/authorization, Identity management, Certificate management, open telemetry support with tracing, distributed alerting, logging, visualization dashboards, and service development kits.

Cloud-Native ApplicationsService OrchestrationDistributed Storage ManagementCloud SecurityInfrastructure Orchestration

Cisco

2 roles

Software Engineering Manager

Promoted

Dec 2016 – Nov 2020 · 3 yrs 11 mos · Bengaluru Area, India

Engineering, and Customer Success Manager with rich work experience across a variety of managerial, and technical roles in product development/management across variety of SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and full stack products. The work responsibilities include mentoring/managing the team which primarily works on software development for both physical and cloud edge devices along with handling customer relations .
Having the complete product ownership, the role requires involvement beginning from understanding customer requirement , architectural discussion of feasibility of solution, cloud deployments feasibility, software planning/design, prototyping the HW/cloud based software, SaaS management software for end customers, and delivering the product with focus on quality, timeline and customer centricity of the solution.
Key Responsibilties
Mentoring and coaching the team in order to have efficient execution, timely delivery of projects and constant professional growth of individuals.
Hardware and Software Design- Early involvement in Hardware and Software
design to evaluate the feasibility of the product.
Responsible for end-to-end delivery of routers which includes development across all layers of TCP/IP stack along with BIOS/platform bringup with features like DPI, IPinIP, GRE, IPSec, VxLAN, L2TP, L3VPN, L2VPN etc.
Development and deployment of cisco SDWAN software stack both on Cloud(AWS, Azure) and on premise.
Agile expert(SAFE) and experienced scrum master.
Customer Success Manager responsible for major enterprise customers.

Agile MethodologiesCustomer RelationsSoftware DevelopmentProduct Management

Software Engineer

Jul 2011 – Jun 2014 · 2 yrs 11 mos · Bengaluru Area, India

o Worked on bringing Up a new IOS-XE ASR1k platform, ASR1002-X and developed the complete platform code.
o Design and development of TCAM driver for handling various protocols(802.1Q, 802.1AD, 802.1W, 802.1D, 802.3AD, 802.1AH, EOAM, EoMPLS, PPPoE) on inbuilt Gigabit Ethernet ports on IOS-XE platform ASR1001-X with complete ownership.
o Worked on design and development of Network clocking, DS31408 driver for ASR1001-X
o Developed code for various hardware blocks and device drivers for Cisco ASIC( I/O as well as NPU for packet processing/forwarding along with handling of protocols such as L2F, EGP, IPSEC, OSPF, RIP , EIGRP, L3VPN, L2VPN, VPLS) ASIC.
o Led build management team for managing build and sanity.

Device DriversNetwork ProtocolsSoftware Development

Microchip technology inc.

Senior Member Of Technical Staff

Jun 2014 – Dec 2016 · 2 yrs 6 mos · Bengaluru Area, India

Team lead for Bangalore location which included managing customers(Cisco, Juniper, Arista), software releases and Software development/sustainment for Vitesse PHYs (L1 Devices with MACSEC and 1588-PTP which is ideal for cloud network applications including e-commerce, database, collaboration, smart grid, video, and enterprise or government communications) and switches.
Key Responsibilities:
o Handling all the Customers’(Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, ADVA, ZTE, Nokia etc) for PHY/Switch portfolios which included product design and solution.
o Software Release manager(Experience with Agile, Jira etc) for various switching and PHY products.
o Lead Engineer for Software development for various L1(SONET, OTN, ISDN,
Ethernet-1000BASE-T,1000BASE-FX,1000BASE-X,1000BASE-SX,1000BASE- TX), L2(VLAN, QINQ, L2TP, LLDP, PPP, RSTP, LACP, MPLS), 1588(IEEE 1588- 2008) and MACSEC(802.1AE) features.
o Developed simulator for various IEEE PTP profiles(G8265.1, G8275.1/2).
o Worked on bring up of a new switch H/W which involves 10G & 1G(SFP+,
XAUI/XFI) GBit interfaces.
o Managed development branches with version control(Mercurial & Git).