Raghu Kakarala

About Raghu Kakarala

Technology executive with 17+ years of experience leading enterprise data platforms…

Experience

1. VP - Data and Ai Enterprise Data Platform and Engineering

   Cross River

   Jan 2023 — Present

   Lead the enterprise data engineering function, driving strategy and execution of a modern, scalable cloud-based data platform to support analytical, operational, and regulatory needs across the organization. Enabled business users with reliable data for real-time decision-making, compliance, and growth across lending, payments, and risk functions.• Defined and executed a cloud-first enterprise data strategy—consolidating siloed systems and reducing time-to-data access by 60% across business units.• Delivered a cloud-native data platform (AWS, Snowflake, DBT, Airflow) supporting timely data ingestion, transformation, and analytics, processing millions of transactions monthly.• Applied AI-powered solutions to enhance user access to financial data—resulting in faster insights, improved modeling accuracy, and over 30% time savings in reporting workflows.• Integrated enterprise data governance and lineage tools, improving regulatory readiness and enabling full traceability for internal audit and FDIC compliance audits.• Delivered reusable data assets and reporting frameworks supporting Credit Risk, Compliance, Audit, Finance, and Treasury—cutting report delivery time by 40% and improving reconciliation accuracy.• Launched an enterprise data lake architecture to manage both raw and curated data, improving historical access and flexibility for business intelligence.• Collaborated with product, engineering, and business leaders to ensure the platform aligned with strategic fintech growth initiatives, including faster time-to-market for lending models and payments products.