Puttaraju K. S

About Puttaraju K. S

Engineering leader with 15+ years of experience driving multi-team organisations, product delivery and cloud-native platforms across distributed, multi-cloud environments. Over the past 4+ years in engineering leadership roles, I have built and scaled high-performing teams (0→15+ engineers) and led delivery of enterprise-grade platforms handling large-scale production workloads.Currently leading the Policy-as-Code portfolio at IBM (HashiCorp), driving two key product areas:• Development of a next-generation Policy-as-Code framework built from scratch.• Ownership and evolution of the HashiCorp Sentinel platform (~26% enterprise adoption)• Driving AI-led innovation through development of GenAI-powered agents for Policy-as-Code automation, leveraging LLMs and RAG to enhance compliance workflows & engineering productivity.I am responsible for product strategy, execution and platform reliability across multi-region deployments, with a strong focus on SLO/SLI-driven operations, compliance and scalable cloud governance.My experience spans distributed systems, multi-cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and infrastructure automation (Terraform, HCP Terraform), with deep expertise in building reliable, scalable and compliant platforms for enterprise use cases.My primary focus is on:• Scaling engineering teams and building strong ownership culture.• Driving product direction and execution in ambiguous, high-stakes environments.• Improving system reliability, operational maturity, and delivery velocity.• Aligning cross-functional stakeholders across engineering, product and architecture.• Leading AI initiatives at the Policy-as-code portfolio level, driving GenAI adoption and innovation.Known for combining technical depth with strategic leadership, I work closely with teams to simplify complex systems, improve developer experience and deliver high-impact outcomes at scale.

Experience

1. Engineering Manager

   Hashicorp

   Dec 2024 — Present · Bengaluru, IN

   Engineering Leader | IBM (HashiCorp – IBM Software Labs)Leading the Policy-as-Code portfolio for HCP Terraform, owning product strategy, roadmap execution, and operational excellence across a multi-cloud platform (AWS, Azure, GCP). Managing a cross-functional team of ~15 engineers across backend and frontend systems, driving enterprise-grade compliance & governance solutions.Product & Platform Ownership:• Leading development of a next-generation Policy-as-Code framework, built from scratch with custom DSL, CLI tooling, and deep integration into the Terraform ecosystem• Owning the HashiCorp Sentinel platform, driving reliability, scalability & enterprise adoption (~26% adoption across HCP Terraform/TFE deployments)Compliance & Platform Innovation:• Delivering compliance & governance workflows aligned with CIS, NIST, PCI-DSS & other enterprise standards.• Spearheaded development of a GenAI-powered agent for authoring Sentinel policies using LLMs and RAG (AWS Bedrock, FAISS), automating AWS compliance (CIS, NIST, PCI-DSS etc.) with an end-to-end workflow (control mapping->Terraform->GWT->Sentinel validation), achieving ~10x productivity gains and ~90% accuracy, while leading architecture and execution with a lean team of 2 engineers.Engineering Leadership & Execution:• Building and scaling high-performing engineering teams, establishing ownership models, on-call practices, and career development frameworks• Partnering with cross-functional stakeholders (Product, Architecture, Security, Design, global engineering teams) to drive roadmap alignment and execution• Leading customer-critical escalations (CCEs) and field-requested fixes (FRBs), ensuring high reliability and customer satisfactionPlatform reliability & operations:• Driving platform reliability for distributed policy execution systems through policy-driven governance, CV tests, supported by observability (Datadog, Snowflake, custom dashboards) for system health, cost visibility & capacity planning

Education

• M.V.Jayaraman College of Engineering

  Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.), Information Technology

  2006 — 2010

Skills

• Silk Test
• Test Management
• Test Planning
• Manual Testing
• Hp Quality Center
• Core Java
• Testing
• Visual Studio
• Unix
• Java
• Selenium Webdriver
• Silktest
• Requirements Analysis
• Software Development Life Cycle (Sdlc)
• Hp Qtp
• Agile Methodologies
• Jira
• Jenkins
• Cucumber Framework
• Test Automation
• Sql
• Sql Db Queries
• Linux
• Silk Central
• Eclipse Ide
• Atdd
• Scrum