Sellakumaran Kanagarathnam

About Sellakumaran Kanagarathnam

Principal Software Engineer with a strong track record of delivering scalable, intelligent, and reliable enterprise systems. I currently work on the Federated Knowledge platform at Microsoft, where I lead engineering efforts to integrate structured and unstructured knowledge into Copilot experiences.As an individual contributor, I’ve driven measurable improvements in service quality—boosting reliability from 59% to 81% and answer rates from 45% to 71%—through innovations in telemetry, diagnostics, and GPT-based prompt engineering. I’ve also led QFE validation pipelines, unified SQL generation logic, and built dashboards that became team-wide standards for observability.Previously, I contributed to the Dynamics 365 platform, leading efforts in large transaction handling, session recovery, and virtual entity auto-refresh—enhancing performance, reliability, and developer productivity across Finance and Operations.I bring deep technical expertise in C#.NET, SQL, and cloud services, and I thrive in cross-functional environments where I can drive clarity, mentor peers, and deliver high-impact solutions.

Experience

1. Principal Software Engineer

   Microsoft

   Jun 2024 — Present · Redmond, WA, US

   Federated Knowledge PlatformQuality & Reliability: Led telemetry analysis and QFE delivery that improved service metrics dramatically—reliability rose from 59.16% to 80.62%, response rate from 47.19% to 73.82%, and answer rate from 45.05% to 71.31%—across four knowledge sources in under six months 1.Error Propagation & Diagnostics: Designed structured error propagation across design-time and runtime, integrating with MCS UX and DV Plugin. Authored public documentation and mentored peers on implementing new exceptions.Observability & Dashboards: Built and scaled dashboards for conversation analysis, schema errors, and answer quality. These tools became team-wide standards, enabling faster triage and improved leadership visibility.NL2SQL Enhancements: Unified SQL generation prompts across DV Q&A and Federated Knowledge. Delivered post-processing improvements that boosted answer rates by 4%+ for ServiceNow and improved EvalFx success.Unstructured Knowledge & Metadata: Delivered foundational unstructured data sync and improved metadata refresh reliability, reducing operational overhead and increasing confidence in data freshness.Cross-Team Leadership: Partnered across MCS, IAP, and PM teams to drive end-to-end validation, schema linking, and connector integration. Mentored peers and led inclusive daily triage meetings to drive shared ownership.

Education

• Government College of Engineering, Salem, University of Madras

  B. E, Electrical

  1989 — 1993

• University of Washington

  MS, Computer Science

  2002 — 2005

• College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University

  M. E, Electrical

  1993 — 1995

Skills

• Load Testing
• Distributed Systems
• Testing
• Nlb
• Performance Tuning
• .net Framework
• C#
• .net
• Software Design
• X++
• Windows Azure
• Sql
• Asp.net
• Object Oriented Design
• Software Development
• Scrum
• Test Planning
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Tfs
• Etw
• C++
• Performance Testing
• Ado.net
• Mds
• Debugging
• Scalability
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Software Engineering
• Visual Studio
• Network Load Balancing
• Agile Methodologies
• Test Automation
• Software Quality Assurance
• Microsoft Azure
• Web Applications
• Data Protection Manager
• Cloud Computing
• Javascript
• Software Project Management
• Axapta