Kali Charan Gajula

About Kali Charan Gajula

AI‑driven Senior Engineering Manager with 19+ years of experience building and scaling high‑performing engineering organizations across firmware, audio engineering, and system software. At Microsoft, I build teams and execution engines from the ground up—scaling headcount, establishing lab infrastructure, and driving predictable, no‑miss delivery of Security Updates, IPU releases, and platform upgrades across the Surface portfolio.I bring deep technical credibility from Audio DSP and Android Audio HAL, having engineered and commercialized features such as DNN‑ECNS, Seamless Buffer, In‑Ear, UHQ Upscaler, Dolby/DTS, and OpenMAX IL across Microsoft, Samsung, Broadcom, and Nokia. I also hold three patents in audio technologies, reflecting sustained innovation and applied research in signal processing.What differentiates my leadership is an Agentic‑AI mindset. I actively re‑architect engineering workflows using Agentic AI—moving teams beyond manual, reactive execution to autonomous, goal‑driven systems. I drive AI adoption across release processes, validation, diagnostics, automation pipelines, telemetry, and engineering dashboards, where AI agents reason over data, surface insights, trigger actions, and continuously improve workflows without human micromanagement.Through these initiatives, I enable teams to detect issues earlier, reduce cognitive load, accelerate triage, and scale execution quality, fundamentally upgrading how Post‑Launch Engineering operates. The focus is not “AI as a tool,” but AI as an execution partner embedded into the engineering lifecycle.I excel at building high‑ownership teams, developing future SMEs, and leading cross‑functional programs that compound impact over time—raising the bar on device quality, performance, and customer experience through AI‑first, self‑improving engineering systems.

Experience

1. Senior Software Engineering Manager

   Microsoft

   Jul 2024 — Present · Hyderabad, IN

   I lead and scale the Surface PLE organization at Microsoft IDC, bringing up a team from groundsup. A team that includes engineers across Dev and DVE. I drive the development of lab infrastructure, automation frameworks, engineering dashboards, and ETL/telemetry pipelines, enabling full end‑to‑end execution within IDC.I own the predictable delivery of Security Updates across 8 Surface products, manage IPU releases for 22 devices, and lead Qualcomm BSP upgrades on 8 platforms to ensure stability, roadmap alignment, and long‑term supportability.In addition to core execution, I drive the team using AI‑based initiatives—bringing AI into validation, diagnostics, automation, and engineering workflows to improve issue detection, triage efficiency, and overall delivery quality.I continue to build SME depth, strengthen cross‑geo alignment with Redmond partners, and raise engineering excellence across the Surface product lifecycle.

Education

• Georgia Institute of Technology

  2nd Master's degree(Unfinished), Machine Learning

• kamala Institute of technology huzurabad

  B.Tech, Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering

  2001 — 2004

• Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati

  M.Tech, Signal Processing

  2004 — 2006