Naresh Gopalani

VP of Engineering

San Francisco, California, United States28 yrs 7 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Led a global team of 75+ engineers at Walmart.
Achieved 13% operational efficiency gains through AI automation.
Designed scalable data platforms for enterprise applications.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Cloud Computing and Data Platforms expert with a focus on scalable solutions.

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Skills

Core Skills

Data PlatformsCloud ComputingDistributed SystemsSoftware Development

Other Skills

MessagingStreaming platformsCloud budget managementOperational automationKafkaAMQNiFiSparkFlinkKafka ConnectStreaming Data InfrastructureApache SparkKubernetesData Lake architectureSelf-service ingestion platform

About

Engineering leader with an entrepreneurial mindset and a passion for building, leading, and mentoring high-performance teams. Proven track record of delivering innovative technologies that create meaningful business impact. Experience spans end-to-end product development and the design of highly scalable agentic AI platforms, data platforms, and internet-scale distributed systems. Brings deep technical expertise in data analytics, platform architecture, and large-scale systems, combined with a strong focus on execution, reliability, and long-term scalability. Thrives at the intersection of technology, product, and people—translating complex problems into practical solutions while growing teams and future leaders.

Experience

28 yrs 7 mos

Total Experience

3 yrs 6 mos

Average Tenure

4 yrs 5 mos

Current Experience

Walmart global tech

2 roles

Senior Director Of Engineering - Data Platforms

Promoted

May 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 1 mo · San Francisco Bay Area

Own Walmart’s Real-Time Data Infrastructure organization spanning Messaging and Streaming platforms, leading a global organization of 75+ engineers, managers, directors with responsibility for a $40M+ annual cloud budget. Standardized and scaled open-source platforms as managed services, delivering 8% YoY infrastructure cost efficiency at enterprise scale. Envisioned, built, and drove adoption of Agentic AI-powered operational automation across Kafka, AMQ, NiFi, Spark, Flink, and Kafka Connect, achieving 13% YoY operational efficiency gains, improving platform reliability, and accelerating incident resolution through reduced manual intervention.

MessagingStreaming platformsCloud budget managementOperational automationKafkaAMQ+6

Director of Engineering - Data Platform

Dec 2021 – Apr 2024 · 2 yrs 4 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

Led Walmart’s enterprise Streaming Data Infrastructure organization, defining platform strategy for real-time data systems supporting 20K+ streaming applications. Built and operated fully managed Apache Spark, Flink, and Kafka Connect services on Kubernetes, delivering scalable, highly available data platforms. Defined the Data Lake architecture and data movement strategy, and built a self-service ingestion platform that reduced pipeline creation time to under 10 minutes using SQL-based definitions, significantly accelerating developer productivity. The platform leveraged Apache Hudi, Calcite, and Spark to standardize ingestion and support streaming workloads at scale.

Streaming Data InfrastructureApache SparkFlinkKafka ConnectKubernetesData Lake architecture+3

Amazon web services (aws)

Engineering Leader

Feb 2019 – Nov 2021 · 2 yrs 9 mos

Led global multi-disciplinary teams of distributed system engineers and applied scientists. Responsible for data orchestration platform, ML model development, and developer experience for data engineers and data scientists. Grew the team 5X in 2.5 years. Launched business-critical data analytics products like Glue Workflows, Glue Custom Blueprints, Interactive Sessions. In addition, responsible for engineering, support, and product development for AWS Data Pipeline.

Data orchestrationML model developmentDeveloper experienceData analytics productsData PlatformsCloud Computing

Netflix

4 roles

Engineering Manager

Aug 2015 – Jan 2019 · 3 yrs 5 mos

Led Subscriber Infrastructure Team that is responsible for all aspects of user data, which is core to the business; having huge revenue, public image, partners, shareholder relations, and regulatory impact.

User data managementSubscriber InfrastructureRevenue impactData Platforms

Architect / Engineer : Cloud Platform

Jan 2011 – Jan 2015 · 4 yrs

Conceptualized, designed and evangelized Failure Injecting Framework (FIT)
Involved in design of Netflix's docker container framework / distributed scheduler
Spearheaded Active-Active deployment and standing up of Netflix Control Plane in EU region
Laid the foundations and did ground work of migrating Netflix to Cloud (AWS).
Architected various resiliency and scalability measures to improve uptime to 99.99%
Partnered with various engineering teams to aid in architecting their systems for highly scalable cloud deployment and implement best practices.
Analyze existing cloud computing technology: public, private, and hybrid.

Failure Injecting FrameworkDocker container frameworkActive-Active deploymentCloud migrationCloud Computing

Senior Software Engineer – Systems Engg

Jan 2006 – Jan 2011 · 5 yrs

As a founding member of the Systems Engg. Team designed and developed resource pool, messaging, libraries. Was responsible for analyzing application performance bottlenecks, tuning
Architected, designed and implemented scalability of the two big data systems (Queue and Rental History) at Netflix by employing reverse indexing strategies and algorithms to reduce data fragmentation, avoiding to migrate to an expensive Oracle RAC system

Resource pool designMessaging librariesApplication performance tuningData Platforms

Senior Software Engineer – Customer Platform

Jan 2002 – Jan 2005 · 3 yrs

Designed and developed Netflix Queue, A/B Testing platform, FAQ search engine, JAVA Servlets for various website features, Object caches, Sale order system and RSS feeds. Collaborated with product team to create technologies to improve the business. Migrate from ASP.Net to JAVA enabling to scale the customer base from hundreds of thousands to millions. Internationalized software and architected systems for scale

Queue designA/B Testing platformJava ServletsSoftware Development

International software group

Senior Programmer

Jan 2000 – Jan 2001 · 1 yr

Implemented Mesa vista a web enabled project management portal that interacts with Rational Rose using Rose API through JNI and render it to Vista in XML format in the client browser.
Was instrumental in introducing Apache Web Server to front the JRun server.
Created a cache module which improved application performance by 60% since JDK 1.2.2 did not have robust garbage collection policies

Web project managementRational Rose APIApplication performance improvement

Kpit

Software Engineer

Jan 1999 – Jan 2000 · 1 yr

Conducted architectural analysis, design, development, testing and commissioning of various device drives and HMI for ASTRA a SCADA product used extensively for industrial automation at various industrial power houses.

Architectural analysisDevice driversHMI development

Avicon

Software Engineer

Jan 1998 – Jan 1999 · 1 yr

As a consultant was responsible for creating device automation software for India’s industrial giants like Telco, Tisco, Bajaj Auto, HPCL and BARC. Developed data storage and collection framework from PLC modules using C++, VC++ and ODBC for statistical analysis. Designed interpreters, device drivers and various GUI modules.

Device automation softwareData storage frameworkStatistical analysis

Datapro information technologies

Trainee Software Engineer

Jan 1997 – Jan 1998 · 1 yr

Developed Xee 98 UA Front End For XeeMail one of the first corporate email systems in India.
Xee UA was one of the 3 distributed components of a message handling system and is the front-end tool for the entire messaging system written in Visual C++. The administration module includes all document management features like mail search, import/export, folder management and address books.

Email system developmentDistributed components

Nitsuko-enkay telecommunications

Engineer

Jan 1995 – Jan 1997 · 2 yrs

Provided technical support to various clients for installation and operation of state of the art EPBAX system.
Implemented customer management system to provide quick customer problem detection and resolution resulting in a saving of $100,000 per annum
Trained marketing personnel regarding technical details of products and helped close competitive deals

Technical supportCustomer management system