Awadh Shukla — Director of Engineering

• A seasoned engineering leader with extensive experience driving innovation, building high-performing teams, and delivering scalable solution. With a strong foundation in technical expertise and strategic leadership, I excel in empowering teams and aligning organisational goals to achieve impactful results. • Currently leading the CASB group, responsible for "SaaS Application Discovery" and "Deep Packet Inspection" to provide customers with more granular visibility and control. • Our team leverages state-of-the-art machine learning engines to enhance detection and monitoring capabilities, setting a benchmark for innovation in the field. Current Role Highlights: • Spearheading a 55+ member team comprising Development, QA, Research professionals and Engineering managers. • Driving innovation to enhance team efficiency, improve scalability, and deliver advanced solutions for SaaS Application discovery through streamlined processes and strategic leadership. Achievements: • Transitioned the team from 0% to 100% automation, significantly improving accuracy, scalability, and operational efficiency. • Implemented proactive monitoring systems to identify and resolve issues before they impact customers, enhancing user satisfaction and reliability. • Delivered multiple cutting-edge features, including a GenAI-powered copilot, providing advanced functionality and elevating the customer experience. Leadership Highlights: • Built the team from scratch, fostering growth and expertise. • Restructured teams for enhanced collaboration and improved outcomes. • Identified individual potentials and aligned them with organisational goals to drive motivation and performance. • Skilled in prioritisation, scoping, decision-making, and time management. • Adept at balancing technical depth with stakeholder expectations for seamless project execution. Personal Philosophy: • Believing in simplicity and clarity, I approach challenges with the mindset that complex problems often require a re-evaluation to uncover elegant solutions. • A quick learner and problem solver at heart, I thrive on creating workflows that optimize efficiency through automation. Beyond Work: • An advanced regular badminton player, yoga practitioner, and enthusiastic reader, passionate about staying active and continually learning.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS Engineering Leader with expertise in AI/ML and automation.

Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Experience: 19 yrs 3 mos

Skills

Leadership
Engineering Management
Ai/ml Implementation
Research Automation
Software Development
Automation
Test Automation
Database Management
Network Topology
Network Simulation

Career Highlights

Led a 55+ member engineering team driving innovation.
Achieved 100% automation, enhancing operational efficiency.
Delivered advanced features elevating customer experience.

Work Experience

Netskope

Director of Engineering (2 yrs 2 mos)

Senior Engineering Manager (3 yrs 4 mos)

Engineering Manager (2 yrs 1 mo)

Juniper Networks

Software Engineering Manager (7 mos)

Software Engineer Staff (1 yr 2 mos)

Software Engineer 4 (3 yrs 1 mo)

Software Engineer 3 (1 yr 4 mos)

Software Engineer 2 (1 yr 6 mos)

Motorola

Software Engineer (2 yrs 9 mos)

Wipro Technologies

Software Engineer (1 yr 3 mos)

Education

B at Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (NIT/REC)

Awadh Shukla

Director of Engineering

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India19 yrs 3 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Led a 55+ member engineering team driving innovation.
Achieved 100% automation, enhancing operational efficiency.
Delivered advanced features elevating customer experience.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS Engineering Leader with expertise in AI/ML and automation.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

LeadershipEngineering ManagementAi/ml ImplementationResearch AutomationSoftware DevelopmentAutomationTest AutomationDatabase ManagementNetwork TopologyNetwork Simulation

Other Skills

AI/MLAgile MethodologiesAnomaly Detection FrameworkApache KafkaApache SparkAutomation Test FrameworkBig DataBig Data AnalyticsCC++ClearCaseCloud Confidence IndexCoachingCollaborationContinuous Delivery

About

Experience

19 yrs 3 mos

Total Experience

4 yrs 9 mos

Average Tenure

7 yrs 7 mos

Current Experience

Netskope

3 roles

Director of Engineering

Promoted

Apr 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 2 mos

Leading the CASB Inline Team as part of our broader SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) initiative. This team is dedicated to developing robust CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) solutions that empower organisations to secure their SaaS environments with comprehensive visibility and control.
Managing a dynamic group of 55+ members fostering collaboration and driving innovation.
Building advanced CASB solutions to provide seamless integration under the SASE framework,
ensuring security and scalability for cloud-based environments.
Defining the team’s roadmap to align with organisational goals while focusing on innovation, efficiency,
and proactive problem-solving.
Driving initiatives to enhance team efficiency, scale solutions, and implement proactive monitoring to
preemptively address customer challenges.
Identifying technical debts and system gaps, prioritising improvements, and driving efforts to address
them for a more robust and efficient architecture.
Driving innovation by developing and launching advanced features to deliver value and enhance the customer experience.

Machine LearningSaaS Application DiscoveryDeep Packet InspectionTeam ManagementInnovationLeadership+1

Senior Engineering Manager

Promoted

Nov 2020 – Mar 2024 · 3 yrs 4 mos

Leading a 25+ member team including Dev, QA, and researchers responsible for identifying SaaS Apps, providing ratings based on their security posture and activity signatures.
Experience in managing first-line managers and teams across Geo.
Exponentially increased the SaaS App repository using AI/ML and automation.
Currently focused on building an anomaly detection framework for SaaS Apps activity detection to reduce maintenance costs.
Experience in identifying and working with third-party vendors to scale the operation and reduce maintenance costs.

AI/MLSaaS Application RepositoryAnomaly Detection FrameworkTeam ManagementEngineering ManagementAI/ML Implementation

Engineering Manager

Sep 2018 – Oct 2020 · 2 yrs 1 mo

Leading 20+ member Cloud Confidence Index (CCI) team responsible for identifying SaaS Apps and rating them based on their security posture. This rating helps our customers to allow or block an App.
I am responsible for people manager and technical product lead contributing to design and architecture of product.
Doubled the research velocity year over year.
Started the research automation project using AI/ML and deployed 10+ models in production. This has helped us improve research velocity by 25%.
30% improvement in research accuracy by building an automated peer review system and feeding all the feedback back to researchers for their better understanding.
Identified repetitive manual work and automated it end to end to make it one click task. This saved a lot of time which helped in increasing teams productivity.

AI/MLResearch AutomationCloud Confidence IndexTeam ManagementEngineering Management

Juniper networks

5 roles

Software Engineering Manager

Promoted

Feb 2018 – Sep 2018 · 7 mos

Key Accomplishments:
Designed and developed Python/Robot based automation test framework used by the entire Juniper test community.
Coordinated with different teams to encourage and help them to adopt a new framework.
Designed and developed super efficient, scalable and stable virtual testbed/topology builder covering 90% plus test case execution.
Lab resource manager for documenting all lab equipment across Geo. This has inbuilt features of usage tracking and reservation to enable sharing for optimal lab usage.

PythonAutomation Test FrameworkVirtual TestbedCollaborationSoftware DevelopmentAutomation

Software Engineer Staff

Nov 2016 – Jan 2018 · 1 yr 2 mos

Python based Test Framework. (Python 3.0)
Topology Finder/Builder. (Perl, Lisp and Ruby)
Execution Harness to schedule/run S2C, CI and Regression Jobs.
PROJECT-
Title : Topo Builder (PARAMS)
Software Used : C,Perl, Unix.
Description:
Params is a system that stores devices, interfaces and their connectivity information in a database and provide utilities/API to resolve a logical topology specification specified in a .params file with actual device and interface names.
This tool used to resolve the TOPOLOGY dynamically requested by user. This deals with the routers and interfaces configured on it.
PROJECT-
Title : Regression Manager
Software Used : Perl, Unix.
Description:
Regression Manager (RM) schedules and executes Junos regression events and sends results to Unified Portal. RM has it's own GUI interface for submission of regression events and viewing of results, used mostly by expert users.
PROJECT-
Title : Code Coverage
Software Used : Perl, Gcov, Unix.
Description:
This provides code coverage collector tooling information for JUNOS developers and feature testers by generating code coverage report using standard GNU GCC compiler GCOV to illustrate how tests cover in changed code.
PROJECT-
Title : Virtualization
Software Used : Perl, Ruby, Unix.
Description:
This project is to enable regression or functional test engineers to build their topology using virtual devices without waiting for a physical topology to run their test.