Rakesh Kumar

Director of Engineering

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India12 yrs 5 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchAI Enabled

Key Highlights

Led multiple successful AI-driven projects.
Awarded Hackathon Hero for innovative solutions.
Managed large engineering teams effectively.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS Engineering Leader with a strong focus on AI and team management.

Contact

rakeshkumar.iiita@gmail.com LinkedIn

Skills

Core Skills

Software DevelopmentTechnical LeadershipProject ManagementMachine LearningAgile MethodologiesUser Experience DesignTeam Leadership

Other Skills

Agile Project ManagementAlgorithmsAmazon CloudWatchAmazon EC2Amazon RDSAmazon S3Amazon Web Services (AWS)Apache KafkaArtificial Intelligence (AI)Back-End Web DevelopmentCC++C/C++ STLCore JavaCreativity and Innovation

About

Experienced Engineering Leader with over 11+ years of hands-on experience, including 5+ years in managerial roles overseeing teams(3 to 4) of 30+ engineers(FE, BE, QA) including Tech Archs etc. Experienced in delivering innovative solutions(including AI ML solutions) that drive business success and optimize cost/time efficiency. Winner in all attended hackathon in Housing and Amazon(3 times). Owner of Innovation and Organizer of all Hackathons @Freshworks at CRMBU Org. Been awarded hackathon hero for 2 consecutive years. Been the Hiring Manager for Backend/Engineering Managers/Tech Arch for all levels since 5+ years(took 1000+ interviews and onboarded them with company). Adept at hiring, mentoring and training colleagues in industry best practices. Technical proficiencies include microservices and cloud technologies, Ruby on Rails, Core Java/J2EE, the Spring Framework, NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Dynamo DB), relational databases (MySQL, Oracle, SDB), RESTful APIs, AWS(EC2, ALB, S3, Lamda), Kubernetes, container technologies, Redis, Kafka, Rabbitmq and CI/CD pipelines.

Experience

12 yrs 5 mos

Total Experience

4 yrs 1 mo

Average Tenure

5 yrs 4 mos

Current Experience

Freshworks

2 roles

Senior Engineering Manager

Promoted

Apr 2023 – Present · 3 yrs 2 mos · Hybrid

I was part of CRM BU org with 270+ members of PDT team.
Managing ~ 30+ member team of ( Engineering Managers, Architects, and Tech Leads ) that spans across 3+ squads - Cohesive Squad(Owns all cross org projects), HOD( Owns and executes top product projects) , Modal Master( Owns AL/ML projects of Org)
Projects :
Interstellar ~ GTM Transformation(Go To Market) -
First project developed for Freshworks being a customer.
We developed Role Based Access Control(RBAC) on all key elements like contacts, deals and accounts over all actions. Its a cross org project estimated to be delivered in a year but we did it in 2 quarter with 1 team.
Won the award for Inspiring Leader for this Project.
Ecommerce Product Sync ~ Led the team's hackathon idea from Idea to Production, Design with the Team Architect and Product Managers from ideating to productionizing the complete pricing, inventory and product management of ecommerce products.
BattleCards
Developed an innovative AI solution for our GTM sales agents to which interprets the conversation and suggests battlecards which leads to 10x client acquisition.
Account / Contact Summary
We developed one stop AI solution for the sales representatives to know all about the contact / account he is interacting in one small summary(containing all keys details from chat/emails/call transcripts and notes) to help him convert that potential customer to a client.
Tech Project :
Led the Team to designed a Framework solution for Enterprise Release Management which leads to 5x faster projects GA launch.
Won Hackthon Hero award for 2 times in a row for organizing Hackathon on CRM BU.
Grooming and Hiring :
Grooming TLs to become Tech Arch(FE and BE) and several devs to TLs. Hired amazing talented developers(all function), TLs and Tech Arch to form great teams to execute amazing project across all functions.

Software ManagementSoftware Product ManagementTechnological InnovationSoftware Project ManagementSoftware DevelopmentSoftware as a Service (SaaS)+20

Engineering Manager

Jan 2021 – Mar 2023 · 2 yrs 2 mos · Hybrid

I was part of CRM - BU Org at Freshworks with a Org size of 270 member PDT Team. I was the EM for two teams of total members 24+ developers(FE, BE and QA) including TLs.
Formed a new Tech Team of size 12+ developers to lead the Tech initiatives across CRM BU Org.
Automated the entire process of introducing/supporting new/existing pages with languages in CRM website to with the help of crowdin making it efficient(1 month to instant) and reduced the dev and QA effort of each squad by 1 month per year(16 squads in CRM).
Rails Upgrade from 3.4 to 4.2 and then 5.0
It was a very big project given the size of monolith repo for CRM with 16 Team working on it with 30 projects simultaneously . We achieve it with zero downtime with dual boot of both rails version with zero production issues. We got award for best execution tech project.
Product Projects : Owned all Cross Org Projects for CRM
Led the development of major Cross Org project of Freshwork's Shopify And Woocommerce Marketplace with launch of Fresh App. First initiative for Direct to Customer Project. Ambitious and challenging project launched in 2 months among 5 Orgs. The project saw 100x registration in pre-beta phase only.
Got two award : One for leading and executing of this D2C Strategic Project and other Best Teamwork award.
Redesigned the LeftNavBar in the Freshworks(CRM/CX cross org) product to configure and customizable by end users resulting in 10x performance at 1/100 of maintenance of user data.
Lunched 1 click Freshdesk in CRM and 1 click FreshCaller/Chat in CRM. It made the user experience 10x efficient than earlier resulting 10x more cross sell.

Agile MethodologiesCross-functional Team LeadershipSoftware Development Life Cycle (SDLC)Cross-team CollaborationSoftware Architectural DesignTechnological Innovation+6

Housing.com

4 roles

Engineering Manager

Promoted

Oct 2019 – Jan 2021 · 1 yr 3 mos

I worked as an EM of Demand Team(14 - 5 BE, 5 FE, 4 QA) which makes sure the adequate supply of listing are present on site and more relevant(demand) listing are shown to the users.
Services(owned) :
SUPPLY - This service takes request from owner/broker and then schedule a visit by DC which checks distance of the DC to the seller listing via coordinates(road distance) and assign free DC for collection.
FLATS - This service takes care of the listings(flats) for both rent and resale. This services takes flats from seller and processes information regarding that listing and supplies to Elastic search via cache for the buyer side to search and view.
CLIENTS - This services takes care of all client(Buyer/Seller) login and information regarding the clients.
IMAGES - It takes care of management of all images regarding listings, clients and projects. It saves images from seller side which goes through review process and then supplies to buyer side for view.
ACCOUNTS : It takes care of information of housing employees. It save and provide information regarding employee(Department, details).
ACL : It takes care of access control for all the employees for any operation on housing panels.
OTP : It takes care of sending/receiving and verifying otp for all use cases(leads/ login).
URL : This service takes care of shortening the url(housing) to be used for all mails/sms to seller and buyer for different use cases.
CHATBOT : This service provides all possible question that housing can answer and their possible answer based on user journey using Decision Tree based architecture . Usecase : WhatsApp
Gems :
ACL : This gem is responsible to integrate in a service and populate all resources(method/controllers) to ACL service such that granular control over access of each method can be controlled.
VELOCITY : This gem is responsible for allowing certain no. of call from a particular IP to our API or from particular user to certain API or service.
Misc Gem

Software ManagementSoftware Architectural DesignSoftware Development Life Cycle (SDLC)Software DevelopmentTeam LeadershipTeam Mentoring+7

Technical Team Lead

Promoted

Oct 2016 – Sep 2019 · 2 yrs 11 mos

I worked as a Lead to Housing Supply Team(10 - 4 BE, 4 FE, 2 QA). Supply Team takes care of the supply of properties for Housing.com(Website, App, Panels, Seller App).
1. DataCollector App : Our employee(DataCollector) collects data from Clients(Broker/Owner) which supplies verified data to our main website.
2. Broker App : Our agents gets regular update, book visits for data collection or can self upload properties from this app.
3. Website/Mobile Web(Seller Dashboard) : Sellers can directly list their properties and verify them with images(docs) to show as verified properties. They can buy ad packages directly from there.
4. Panels : DQ team get data from various sources(calls, email, sheet etc) and uploads them to the service.
After data collection, the automated system(Backend) verifies data and is supplied to main website for customers via ES with consideration of monetization factor, listing quality, freshness etc.
Main Website provides as a advertisement platform for developers, brokers and builders. Revenue is generated by RentPay, Tenant Monetization and ad packages.
Tech Stack : Ruby, ROR, Postgres, Rabbitmq, Sidekiq, Sneakers, Skytools(table replication for analysis), Elastic Search, AWS EC2 hosts, Jenkins, Nginx, SQS, AWS Lamda, ML(Random forest algo).

Software ManagementSoftware Architectural DesignSoftware Development Life Cycle (SDLC)Software DevelopmentTeam LeadershipTeam Mentoring+7

Software Developer II

Sep 2015 – Sep 2016 · 1 yr

I was responsible for the Housing Supply Team(4 BE, 3 App).
Supply Team takes care of the supply of good quality and quantity of properties for Housing.com(App, Web). It takes care of on boarding of broker, collection of details of properties( via DC or by self- SelfUpload for Broker/Owner), verification of the details and on boarding of properties in Housing Website.
Automation of uploaded Listing to Website is main role in it(it reduces our operation cost from 40 ppl to just 2 for image verfication).
Listing Duplication Algo developed by me reduces our DQ(2 hour of daily) time drastically. Its takes in consideration, lat long, apartment_type, building name(Similarity based), flat no etc to find real time from DB. Pruning is done on locality level.

Software Developer I

Dec 2014 – Aug 2015 · 8 mos

I was part of Engagement Team(PG, brokers, listings, DQ panels).
Developed LYP(list your property) feature for website which helps sellers to schedule a Data Collector visit based on algo(distance and timing) without the help of Data Quality(Ops) which saved us almost 20 people of work per day.
Developed APIs to handle all scenarios for this feature to website which suggests time if no slot available.
DCM(Data collector Panel) manages DCs across one city via DCM panel. DC on boarding and functioning is taken care via this service.
Tech Stack : ROR, Ruby, Rabbitmq, Sidekiq, Rest APIs, coffee scripts, Ajax, css, Javascript

Amazon

2 roles

Software Development Engineer

Jul 2013 – Oct 2014 · 1 yr 3 mos · Hyderabad Area, India

I was part of Andon Cord Team in CS Tech. Andon Cord is a process of protecting the customers from buying a problematic item (product) via suspending the selling of defective items and notifying the same to owning team. In the Year 2013, 78 million US dollars were saved by our team of 4 member of which I am an equal contributor. Projects while I am at Amazon are listed in the project section.
Launched AutoPull Andon Cord based on Random Forest algo( for each product in different Marketplace like Europe, China, India and US). Automated Andon cord pulls based on consomer returns of product and predicts and pulls andon cord on the product(asin) 15 days prior manual(which will happen).
Target was 110 millions to be saved and we saved 330 million with this project.
Tech : Java, Spring, Oracle, SimpleDB, Dynamo DB, RDS, Data Warehouse, Cronjobs, Alerting system, cloud watch, Random Forest Algorithm, S3

Software Development Engineer Intern

Jan 2013 – Jun 2013 · 5 mos · Hyderabad Area, India

I was part of Andon Cord Team in CS Tech. Andon Cord is a process of protecting the customers from buying a problematic item (product) via suspending the selling of defective items and notifying the same to owning team.
Done 5 projects during my Intern Period :
1. Launching Andon Cord for Digital Market.
2. Automating Date calculation for an order.
3. Optimising Cron for ML training data generation from 16 hours to less than 1 hour.
4. One click auto Reinstatement of Product to desired amazon market.
5. Automating the ML values generation which are used to pull andon cord.
Tech Stack : Java, Mason(perl + javascript), Oracle, RDS, EC2.