Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Continuous Learning Projects
Timeline
Generic

Balaji G

BANGALORE

Summary

Hands-on Solution Architect with 19+ years of experience designing, building, and scaling high-throughput, low-latency systems and cloud-native platforms. Recognized for leading the end-to-end architecture of retail eCommerce platforms. Proven success in legacy modernization, event-driven systems, and polyglot persistence across SQL, NoSQL, and streaming platforms. Known for enabling platform thinking, high-scale engineering practices, and tight alignment with product and business objectives. Committed to continuous learning, with active exploration in ML systems, RAG, and agentic architectures.

Overview

20
20
years of professional experience

Work History

Principal Architect

Thoughtworks
05.2024 - Current
    • Led the modernization of a critical B2B Order Management System (OMS) for American manufacturing company, one of its highest revenue-generating platforms, used by over 10,000 dealers globally.
    • Oversaw 5 engineering pods with a distributed team of 30+ engineers, driving architectural decisions, coaching leads, and enabling cross-functional delivery.
    • Spearheaded performance optimization efforts across APIs, data flows, and integration boundaries, reducing latency and improving throughput.
    • Built operational efficiency and observability into the system by integrating Datadog dashboards, setting SLOs, and improving MTTR.

Principal Architect

Thoughtworks
08.2022 - 02.2024
    • Architected a cloud-native marketplace logistics platform for a leading LATAM retailer, enabling transition from monolithic eCommerce to a scalable multi-vendor marketplace.
    • Scaled to 450K+ orders/day at 240ms latency during Cyber Sale with 99.95% uptime.
    • Led architecture reviews, technology roadmap, and performance baselines across 4 cross-functional teams.
    • Designed systems for order tracking, seller fulfillment, and inventory visibility with polyglot persistence (PostgreSQL, Redis, Google Pub/sub).

Lead Architect

Thoughtworks
09.2019 - 07.2022
    • Built an omnichannel headless API platform from scratch for a South American retail brand, covering cart, order, user, inventory domains.
    • Migrated 10M+ historical orders from legacy system while maintaining uptime and order consistency.
    • Platform processed 1.5M+ orders during peak Cyber Sale, improving order success by 30% over legacy.
    • Defined event models and contract-first APIs enabling seamless coordination across web, mobile, and in-store kiosks.

Lead Developer

Thoughtworks
01.2018 - 08.2019
  • Led modernization efforts for food delivery application within the super app.
  • Rebuilt core modules using Golang, improving throughput by 2.5× and reducing latency by 40%.

Senior Consultant & Developer

Thoughtworks
08.2010 - 12.2017
  • Delivered backend solutions across global clients including TripAdvisor, MovieBuff, BCG, Amplify, and OpenMRS.

Java Developer

TCS
01.2006 - 12.2010
    • Developed backend systems for Flight Booking, Timetables, Trip Planner, and Promotions serving 7 regions.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science

Rajalakshmi Engineering College
Chennai
01.2005

Skills

  • Backend Engineering : Java Python PostgreSQL Redis Kafka MongoDB
  • AI Engineering (Upskilling): Statistical ML Vector DBs LangChain RAG Agentic RAG
  • Leadership & Delivery: Tech Roadmapping Cross-Functional Collaboration Mentorship
  • Cloud & DevOps: AWS GCP Kubernetes Docker CI/CD
  • Performance Engineering: High Throughput Low Latency Design Database tuning and optimization
  • System Architecture: Microservices DDD Event-Driven Systems Multi-Tenant Platforms
  • Dev Practices: TDD, Clean Code, CI/CD, Trunk-Based Development

Continuous Learning Projects

  • Machine Learning Zoomcamp, 2023, TensorFlow, CNN, pandas, NumPy, model training pipelines
  • RAG & Agentic AI Exploration, 2025, Prototyped LangChain + Qdrant-based agent with fallback prompting & document chunking

Timeline

Principal Architect

Thoughtworks
05.2024 - Current

Principal Architect

Thoughtworks
08.2022 - 02.2024

Lead Architect

Thoughtworks
09.2019 - 07.2022

Lead Developer

Thoughtworks
01.2018 - 08.2019

Senior Consultant & Developer

Thoughtworks
08.2010 - 12.2017

Java Developer

TCS
01.2006 - 12.2010

Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science

Rajalakshmi Engineering College
Balaji G