Senthil Velu Sundaram

Co-Founder

Dubai, United Arab Emirates19 yrs 8 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchAI ML Practitioner

Key Highlights

Proven track record in scaling engineering teams.
Expertise in building AI/ML infrastructures.
Strong leadership in startup environments.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and FinTech expert with a focus on scalable architecture and team leadership.

Contact

senthil@rippling.com +919840814864 LinkedIn

Skills

Core Skills

Start-up LeadershipBusiness OwnershipMachine LearningSoftware Infrastructure

Other Skills

AJAXAgileAgile MethodologiesAgile Project ManagementAmazon Web Services (AWS)AntArchitectural DesignArtificial Intelligence (AI)CSS JavascriptContinuous IntegrationCouchDBDatabricks ProductsDesign PatternsDistributed SystemsEarly Stage Ventures

About

Hands-on technical leader. Loves building and running teams that work in a lean way to make a disproportionate impact. Well-rounded experience of software stck: System design, Backend, Infra/DevOps, Frontend, AI/ML pipelines and LLMs. Product centric. Built systems for startups multiple times . Loves to build from scratch. Passionate to drive mission driven teams. Knows to scale and evolve architecture, processes and teams. Not interested in large enterprises. Been through startup journeys wearing multiple hats. Loves 0-1 and 1-10 journeys. Great journeys at Simpl & Rippling. Problem domain, Team & Culture matters. Looking to execute innovative business ideas.

Experience

19 yrs 8 mos

Total Experience

4 yrs

Average Tenure

6 yrs 2 mos

Current Experience

Cincotree technologies

Founder

Oct 2023 – Present · 2 yrs 8 mos · Dubai, United Arab Emirates · Hybrid

Software consulting
Rapid prototyping for startups
AI training for backend engineers

Start-up LeadershipEarly Stage VenturesBusiness Ownership

Rippling

2 roles

Director of Engineering | Senior Staff Software Engineer

Promoted

Jan 2023 – Present · 3 yrs 5 mos

Rearchitected Ads platform and query engine
Built event platform being used by all the Rippling applications
Designed and implemented the ML Infra for Ads platform
Designed and implemented the ML Infra for Ads platform
Worked on AI/ML and MLOps setup in Applied ML team initiatives. (Model data pipelines, model building, Databricks set up, IaC, etc.)

Databricks ProductsMachine LearningArtificial Intelligence (AI)Large Language Models (LLM)Amazon Web Services (AWS)Terraform+1

Engineering Lead, Shared Services

Mar 2020 – Dec 2022 · 2 yrs 9 mos

Managed shared services group (platform, UI, mobile teams) and scaled to ~90-member org.
Continuously innovated and scaled core platform to ensure Rippling engineering can build product at breakneck speed.
Evolved architecture, tooling, process as Ripping engineering grew 10x from ~60 engineers and valuation rose from ~$250M to $11B
Built and scaled the infra team from scratch
Handled core application platform architecture, containers, CI/CD, Data infrastructure and Developer experience

Simpl

VP Engineering

Jan 2017 – Mar 2020 · 3 yrs 2 mos · Bengaluru Area, India

Architected and scaled up the platform to handle 100x scale
Moved to a polyglot microservices architecture to handle synchronous and asynchronous workloads
Event-sourcing architecture with Kafka
Worked on the data pipelines
Coached team follow XP principles (TDD/BDD, CD)
Conceived, built devops tool, cloudlift Given talks at meet-ups and conferences
Scaled up the engineering team from 4 to 30 while ensuring excellent engineering culture. Attracted excellent technologists.
Created functional pods that align with architecture (Conway's' law)

Pipemonk

Technical Co-Founder

Dec 2013 – Apr 2014 · 4 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

Started working on cloud data integration space
Built the post-alpha platform from ground up
Managed and grew the engineering team
Seen thru growing the company to ~50 paying customers in Shopify & BigCommerce app store from a couple of pilot customers
Due to personal financial reasons could not continue longer.

Thoughtworks

Application Developer

Apr 2009 – Jan 2017 · 7 yrs 9 mos

Worked on projects of different scale, domain, and tech-stack
To name a few,
Virtualization platform (similar to AWS EC2) with Citrix Xen as the underlying layer. Built with ruby for a client in the US
Multi-tenant railway booking application that handles > 90% of traffic in UK. Built a workflow system for a publishing services company
Single page application that disburses a personal loan in a day for a leading bank in Europe.
One of India's famous online movie ticket booking platform. Built with GoLang microservices

Satyam computers

Software Engineer

Sep 2006 – Apr 2009 · 2 yrs 7 mos

For a leading automobile manufacturer, developed a module in a supply chain management solution.
Designed to be flexible and deployed in multiple countries
Ran webinars internally to upskill