Kiran Shivalingaiah

About Kiran Shivalingaiah

Strategic Engineering Leader & Principal ArchitectWith 21+ years of experience in distributed systems and technical leadership, I operate at the intersection of Enterprise Strategy, P&L Protection, and Agentic AI. Currently serving as the Sole Principal Engineer and Primary Design Authority for a large-scale, distributed engineering organization, I govern the architectural vision for Target’s Marketplace. My focus is shifting from \"building software\" to \"architecting businesses\"—leveraging technology to unlock revenue, reduce risk, and accelerate decision-making.Core Value Drivers: Agentic Innovation: Pioneering \"Agentic Commerce\" by moving beyond chatbots to Multi-Agent Systems (Query/Summarizer/Decision) that reduced vendor vetting time by 75% and created \"Day-0 Readiness\" for catalog operations. Margin Protection: Architecting the Returns Modernization (Kotlin/Micronaut) to target a significant reduction in write-offs, protecting multi-million dollar value while modernizing legacy monoliths. Security as Revenue: Redefined the Enterprise Identity perimeter by enforcing OAuth 2.0 for untrusted external actors, purging 1,800 \"ghost accounts\" and unlocking millions in annual revenue. Capital Strategy: Partnered with Big 4 Consulting leadership to define the \"Buy vs. Build\" roadmap, ensuring long-term capital efficiency and architectural sovereignty.I am passionate about \"Scaffolding Excellence\"—building the cultural and technical guardrails that allow engineering teams to move fast with high rigour, ensuring that quality is a system property, not a heroic effort.

Experience

1. Principal Engineer

   Target

   Nov 2022 — Present · Bengaluru, IN

   Serving as the Sole Technical Design Authority for a large-scale, distributed engineering organization, responsible for the architectural standards, reliability, and strategic roadmap of the Marketplace platform. Pioneering Agentic AI & Smart Acquisition: Architected \"Smart Acquisition 2.0,\" a Multi-Agent System (using MCP) that transformed vendor vetting from a manual bottleneck into a high-velocity data engine. Reduced vetting time by 75% and established the \"Golden Record\" pattern to automate catalog creation. Margin Protection & Returns Modernization: Leading the strategic migration of the Returns platform to an Event-Driven Architecture (Kotlin/Micronaut). Engineered the system to target a massive reduction in write-offs (multi-million dollar impact) by enforcing strict Chain of Custody and Data Integrity. Enterprise Security & Revenue Strategy: Identified a critical \"Ghost Account\" vulnerability in external partner integrations. Forced the organizational adoption of OAuth 2.0 for untrusted actors, securing the perimeter and unlocking millions in stalled revenue by enabling secure Seller Switching and RMS integrations. Strategic Capital Allocation (Buy vs. Build): Served as the primary technical advisor in partnership with Tier-1 Consulting to evaluate the \"External SaaS vs. Internal Build\" strategy. Defined the long-term architectural roadmap to balance speed-to-market with Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Engineering Culture & Talent Density: Driving a culture of \"High-Agency Engineering.\" Established the \"InnerSource\" governance model and GenAI Charter to upskill the organization. Focused on scaffolding high-performance behaviors, creating architectural guardrails that allow junior engineers to ship production-grade code safely.

Education

• CMR Institute of Technology, Visveswaraiah Technological University

  Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science

  2000 — 2004

Skills

• Agile Methodologies
• Wcf
• Web Services
• .net Framework
• C#
• .net
• Windows Communication Foundation (Wcf)
• Design Patterns
• Sql
• Asp.net
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Tfs
• Xml
• Web Applications
• Software Development
• Scrum