Rahul Jain

About Rahul Jain

VP-level Engineering Leader with 19+ years of experience architecting hyperscale distributed systems (200K+ RPS, 99.99% uptime) across consumer internet and fintech platforms.Designed multi-tenant video streaming architectures, high-availability booking engines, event-driven financial settlement systems (1.5M+ daily transactions), and production-grade GenAI assistants using RAG and vector search.Strong focus on first-principles system design, infra cost governance, reliability engineering, and platform scalability under peak 100M+ traffic events. Experienced in scaling engineering organizations (100+ engineers) while remaining hands-on in architecture reviews, system design, algorithmic decision-making, and distributed system trade-offs.Core Expertise- Event-driven microservices ecosystems (Kafka, async consumers, idempotent processors)- High-throughput transactional systems (200K+ RPS)- Multi-region reliability and failover strategies- Distributed video ingestion & ABR streaming pipelines- Vector search infrastructure (Milvus, ANN/HNSW indexing)- RAG-based GenAI systems with retrieval optimization- Latency-sensitive service migration (Java → Golang)- SLO-based reliability engineering & DORA governance- Infra cost optimization & COGS managementMentored and developed senior engineers and engineering leaders across the organization, enabling career progression: Engineering Lead → Architect and Senior Engineering Manager → Associate Director / Director, through structured architecture reviews, technical coaching, and leadership development.Speaker at 25+ technology conferences, including presentations on large-scale search system architecture at the Lucene/Solr Revolution in San Diego and Washington, DC. Founder of the Big Data Hyderabad community (4,500+ members) and a SlideShare contributor with nearly 1M views on distributed systems and data infrastructure topics.References & Links- Tech Talk @ San Diego: http://bit.ly/36BMIky- Tech Talk @ Washington DC: http://bit.ly/2N81cAN* Opinions expressed are my own in a personal capacity and don’t represent the views of my current or previous employers or their subsidiaries or affiliates.

Experience

1. Head of Engineering - Category Experiences & New Channels

   Flipkart

   Jul 2024 — Present

   I lead multiple high-impact engineering charters that drive product-led growth and technology innovation across Flipkart’s core and emerging businesses. My focus lies in building scalable platforms, high-performing teams, and engineering systems that redefine commerce for Bharat. Video Commerce & Creator-Led ShoppingSpearheading the development of video-first buying experiences, including short-form content, live shopping, and a dedicated Play Content Destination. Scaled adoption from <1% to X% of Flipkart units, building a sustainable flywheel between creators, sellers, and shoppers to drive social and engaging commerce. Recommerce & Circular EconomyDriving innovation in Flipkart’s product exchange ecosystem, reverse logistics, and value recovery operations. Led engineering for Flipkart Reset (B2B recommerce app), building a scalable and sustainable recommerce platform that powers customer affordability and environmental responsibility. New Business Incubation & Growth EnginesIncubating and scaling emerging lines of business such as:2-Wheelers/Automotive category with full-stack product and partner-led solutions.Flipkart for Business, a tailored B2B experience for SMEs, designed to unlock a new revenue stream and deepen market penetration. Category Experience InnovationElevated end-to-end shopping journeys for key retail verticals such as Fashion (including Spoyl – Flipkart’s fast fashion arm), and Beauty, driving personalization, discovery, and speed at scale. GenAI-Powered Commerce ExperiencesBuilding next-gen experiences to assist and influence shopping behavior- Flippi, Flipkart’s GenAI-powered shopping assistant- Video Call Shopping Assist, and vernacular enhancements for regional users.

Education

• Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

  Business Administration and Management, General

  2020 — 2021

• University of Rajasthan

  BE(Hons), Electronics & Communication Engg

  2002 — 2006

Skills

• Big Data
• Hadoop
• Apache Spark
• Elasticsearch
• Solr
• Apache Kafka
• Machine Learning
• Web Crawling
• Java Enterprise Edition
• Jdbc
• Hibernate
• Core Java
• Servlets
• Ant
• Eclipse
• Oracle
• Jms
• Pl/Sql
• Multithreading
• Mysql
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Junit
• Design Patterns
• Java
• Tomcat
• Oop
• Data Structures
• Mongodb
• Hbase
• Sql
• Distributed Systems
• Restful Webservices
• Logstash
• Lucene
• Team Management
• Linux