Surya Srinivas

About Surya Srinivas

I am a technology and organisational leader with 18+ years of experience building and scaling high-performing engineering organizations for global SaaS platforms. My background spans multi-region product development, cloud and platform modernisation, DevSecOps adoption, and leadership development across distributed teams.I currently lead a 100+ member engineering organization at a full-suite HRMS SaaS company serving over 3.25 million users across India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. I am responsible for engineering strategy, delivery excellence, reliability, cost efficiency, and talent outcomes across development, QA, DevOps, and architecture.I partner closely with product, design, finance, customer operations, and executive leadership to translate business strategy into predictable engineering outcomes. This includes improving delivery velocity and system reliability, maintaining consistently low attrition, embedding strong governance and operating rhythms, and aligning engineering investments with P&L and growth objectives.My leadership journey spans both a global MNC/ GCC operating across 42 countries and a 600-person high-growth SaaS scale-up. This has given me a balanced perspective on operating discipline, agility, culture building, cross-functional alignment, and long-term talent strategy.I have a strong interest in building and growing capability centers into strategic global hubs. My experience includes organization design, AI Transformation, leadership layering, capacity planning, and establishing execution and governance models that enable global collaboration rather than siloed delivery. I have also contributed to investor-facing discussions and M&A initiatives, helping shape long-term product and platform strategy.I am passionate about designing organizations that balance innovation with operational excellence, and about creating environments where strong engineering practices and people-centric culture reinforce each other. I enjoy conversations around engineering leadership, SaaS scale-up journeys, capability center strategy, and driving measurable business outcomes through technology.

Experience

1. VP of Engineering

   greytHR

   Feb 2022 — Present · IN

   I lead a 120+ member technology organization covering product development, QA, DevOps, and architecture, delivering a full-suite HRMS SaaS platform for over 3 million users across India, the Middle East, and SEA.I defined and executed the engineering strategy, modernizing a multi-tenant SaaS platform across AWS, GCP, and private cloud with built-in security and compliance. This improved reliability by 40%, cut deployment cycles by 60%, and strengthened our AI-driven automation workflows.I align technology with business outcomes through P&L-linked budgeting, achieving 35% cost savings and supporting 2.5x revenue growth. I have built and scaled high-performing teams, maintained attrition under 4% for 3 successive years, and created a culture of innovation, accountability, and transparency.I also represent greytHR at major industry forums such as ET-HR, SHRM, and PeopleMatters, sharing insights on SaaS transformation, AI adoption, and engineering leadership. My focus remains on driving growth through architecture innovation, platform reliability, and people-first leadership.

Education

• Sree Vidyanikethan Engineering College

  Engineer’s Degree, Computer science and information technology

  2004 — 2008