Kiran Palaka

About Kiran Palaka

I am a Senior Engineering Manager with 15+ years of experience specializing in SaaS enterprise cloud transformations, distributed architectures, and end-to-end platform operations. Throughout my career, I’ve navigated the complex intersection of massive scale, platform reliability, and engineering velocity to deliver tangible business value.Currently at Pegasystems, I empower global engineering teams to execute mission-critical initiatives. I am proud to be part of a massive enterprise product ecosystem comprising over 44 microservices, where I help drive seamless development, deployment, and robust observability.My Leadership Philosophy:Alignment is Key: Perfectly syncing technical strategy with business OKRs.Solve the Right Problem: Creating measurable value through incremental, high-impact solutions.Extreme Execution: Fostering a relentless focus on accountability and \"getting things done.\"Career Highlights:Engineering Velocity: Spearheaded the architectural evolution from a monolithic platform by delivering its first microservice, drastically slashing release cycles from 3 months to just 2 weeks.Cloud & Scale: Directed large-scale customer cloud migrations, transitioning complex legacy environments to modern, scalable, cloud-native infrastructures.Data & System Architecture: Architected highly resilient, multi-terabyte Big Data analytics platforms leveraging Lambda architecture, Elasticsearch, Kafka, and Spark.AI-Driven Innovation: Certified in Generative & Agentic AI leadership, bringing a forward-looking approach to developer productivity and AI system design.Beyond architecture, my true passion is building psychologically safe, high-performing engineering cultures. I partner closely with Product Management to ensure we aren\'t just shipping code, but delivering customer trust.Core Specialties: Engineering Leadership | Microservices Ecosystems | Cloud Migrations | SRE & Observability | Big Data Analytics | CI/CD & DevSecOps | Generative AI Strategy | AWSLet\'s connect to discuss cloud-native architecture, engineering culture, or the future of AI in software development!

Experience

1. Senior Engineering Manager

   Pegasystems

   Apr 2022 — Present · Hyderabad, IN

   Microservices Ecosystem & Observability: Direct the end-to-end lifecycle—development, deployment, operations, and robust observability—of a massive enterprise product ecosystem comprising 44+ microservices, ensuring high availability, seamless integration, and platform resilience.Mission-Critical Delivery: Lead two high-performing engineering teams (12 members) to architect and deliver mission-critical security and compliance features for Launchpad.io, fortifying platform reliability and customer trust.Strategic Alignment & OKRs: Partner closely with Product Management to define strategic roadmaps and executable plans, aligning technical deliverables with overarching organizational goals to consistently accelerate feature release cycles.Organizational Transformation: Guided a major organizational restructuring focused on embedding quality and agile delivery methodologies, resulting in improved cross-functional alignment and engineering efficiency.Culture & Retention: Championed comprehensive employee recognition programs, boosting team engagement, psychological safety, and morale across the engineering organization.

Education

• Mvgr College of Engineering

  Bachelor of Technology (BTech), Information Technology

  2003 — 2007

Skills

• Oauth
• Spring Batch
• Spring
• Ajax
• Bookmarklet
• Angularjs
• Google Apps Integration
• Postgresql
• Json
• Oracle
• Coffescript
• Haml
• Java Enterprise Edition
• Atlassian Jira
• Jsonp
• Bower
• Confluenc
• Mongodb
• Tomcat
• Hudson
• Crowd
• Jsp
• Grunt
• Eclipse
• Javascript
• Mybatis
• Servlets
• Hibernate
• Browser Extensions
• Jquery
• Maven
• Spring Boot
• Html5
• Rest