Any skill is possible to put to work with AI as thinking partner and assistant
Kavita Bhanwadia
Senior Technology Leader (Aspiring CIO/CTO)
Hyderabad,TS
Work Preference
Summary
Visionary technology leader with a proven record of transforming large, legacy organizations into agile, high‑performing enterprises. Over two decades of progressive leadership in BFSI and Fin-tech, driving efficiency, innovation, and cultural change. Known for building high‑performing teams, mentoring and advancing women leaders into future executive roles, and instilling accountability through process and systems leadership. Proven ability to navigate complex organizations with strategic influence.
Overview
7
7
Certificates
23
23
years of professional experience
Work History
Head of Platform Engineering
Broadridge Financial Services
Hyderabad, India
02.2025 - Current
- Platform Quality Engineering: Transforming enterprise quality engineering by embedding AI‑driven test automation for 1.6M test cases and evolving the workforce from 1000+ QA to SDET and engineering roles.
- AI in SDLC: Pioneering agentic AI solutions across the software lifecycle, driving automation and boosting development efficiency.
- Advanced Tech Adoption: Championed cutting‑edge tools and methodologies, accelerating automated testing and elevating quality standards.
- Cross‑Functional Alignment: Partnering with CTOs across enterprise to drive key engineering initiatives in Platform quality engineering and AI in SDLC
- People Leader enablement: Driving the leadership pillar to empower people leaders as catalysts to unlock associates’ full potential, fostering trust and compassion.
- Cultural shift: Driving engineering mindset and agile transformation through data‑driven insights and workforce upskilling.
Director-Global Head of Platforms – Life Moments (Mortgages, Savings and Insurance Platforms)
Barclay Technology Centre
Pune
03.2011 - 02.2025
- Leading development and technical delivery teams for Life Moments applications, including Sales and Originations, Servicing platform, APIs, digital platforms and other ancillary applications supporting business.
- Developing new green field product to replace legacy Mortgage Sales application on AWS platform with serverless architecture.
- Establishing high-level engineering direction, driving implementation of development best practices, and fostering a culture of innovation and fast execution.
- Bringing in platform thinking by aligning platform roadmaps to business strategy through TCO evaluation, tech debt, cyber vulnerabilities and business alignment.
- Facilitating execution excellence to support Mortgages CIO to meet Mortgages Delivery target.
- Managing a large team (350+) consisting of delivery managers, designers, engineering leads, developers, test leads, and testers and managing platform release life cycle.
- Developing talent, recruiting and retaining employees, and responsible for capacity planning to ensure supply and demand needs are met in a timely manner.
- Actively involved in organization level forums such as Barclay’s induction programme, Women in technology forums, investigating DCG issues (disciplinary, control, grievances), BX-India and BUK Hackathons.
- Championing New Ways of Working (WoW) within Barclays UK to adopt Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC).
- Adept at Stakeholder management, influencing senior management and translating organizational direction into specific job requirements while managing team, setting objectives, conducting appraisals effectively & supporting continuous improvement of team performance.
Project/Engagement/Account Manager
Syntel
Pune
10.2007 - 02.2011
- Handled GE Healthcare account's portfolio of projects/programs as an account manager, delivering client-focused solutions based on customer needs.
- Build & cemented trusted advisor relationships with key customer stakeholders and executive sponsors, ensuring timely and successful delivery of solutions according to customer needs and objectives.
- Served as the lead point of contact for any and all matters specific to the customer, forecasting and tracking key account metrics, identifying and growing opportunities within territory, and collaborating with sales teams to ensure growth attainment.
- Spearheaded multiple projects at a time with strict attention to detail, reviewed SLAs, project-specific statistics, and major issues, identified team's training needs for successful project execution and individual development, set team goals and conducted appraisals.
- Successfully led the application maintenance team with zero SLA breaches for high severity incidents.
- Functioned as a System Administrator for Daimler at Portland Oregon as a part of a strategic move to take over Tumbleweed from contractors to Syntel development and support team, provided the customer with cost benefits and better/cost-effective support model round the clock.
Project Lead
Patni Computer System
Pune
08.2003 - 10.2007
- Worked for Sandvik in Sweden and GE Payroll in Fort Myers, Florida.
- Grew from developer to project lead to Project manager role in a span of first 4 years of career while working with Patni for client Sandvik.
- Translated actual business requirements into technical specifications and developed efficient, re-usable, and speedy modules and routines to minimize processing time.
- Requirement analysis, technical design, coding, testing, and deployment in production for a given functional requirement.
- Worked on IMS to DB2 project including the whole ETL cycle and developed a dual running module to make the system work on IMS and DB2.
- Played a key role as an onsite coordinator and technically guided the team to deliver business-critical projects, including branding projects to support client's merger and acquisition.
- Developed methodology and tools for migration from IMS to DB2 and from NATURAL to COBOL.
Education
Post Graduate - Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
University of Texas Austin
Texas08.2021
B.E. - Electronics & Telecommunication
Pune University
Pune,India06.2003
Skills
Technology Architecture & Integration
Talent Management
Planning & Execution
Problem Solving & Critical Thinking
Stakeholder management
Digital Transformation
People Leadership
Organizational Leadership
Platform Engineering
Organizational efficiency through Agile and AI
Enterprise transformation leadership
Accomplishments
- Vision and Courage: Demonstrated vision and courage by making key decisions on core platform replacement and steering towards self-build on AWS, resulting in long-term business growth and meeting NPS aspirations.
- Digital Transformation: Successfully led the Mortgages Rate Switch journey to a self-serve digital channel, resulting in over 70% of applications being moved to digital.
- Role Modeling, Change Champion and Relationship building: Chosen as the first global leader and role model to lead and represent engineering for Secured Borrowing as part of the PODs model, establishing strong relationships with the Mortgages CEO and breaking down location barriers.
- Automation Mindset for Operational Excellence: Implemented automation for Mortgages Completions journey using APIs and 3rd party integrations, saving over 70 FTEs(in year) for the operations team.
- Tech modernization of legacy systems, optimize roles, and foster a culture of continuous improvement, resulting in visible and sustainable results. Played key role in building strong resilience capability for all legacy platforms for business continuity.
- Mentored and coached female talent, resulting in several reaching director level positions. Strong advocate of diversity of thoughts and D&I mindset.
- Successfully led and delivered a portfolio of £10M annually for regulatory/mandatory/cyber/unsupported infra remediation.
- Led and successfully delivered the first massive digital program to expose Mortgages legacy platform via API, winning an international Digital Edge award for Barclays.
- Ways of Working Transformation: Created roadmap for implementing scaled agile with organizational constraints for new platform build.
- Engineering Excellence: Set strategic direction for Secured Borrowing engineering team to leapfrog from the 2nd most unstable platform to gold standard platforms.
- Established High Performing Platform teams and Automation testing capability with strong operational excellence & continuous improvement ethos, shared learning through GUILDs and engineering way of problem solving.
Certification
CTO Certification from ISB
Timeline
Head of Platform Engineering
Broadridge Financial Services
02.2025 - Current
CTO Certification from ISB
12-2024
Post Graduation in AI/ML from University of Texas
08-2021
Scaled Agile Consultant Certification
07-2018
Scrum Master Certification
09-2015
Director-Global Head of Platforms – Life Moments (Mortgages, Savings and Insurance Platforms)
Barclay Technology Centre
03.2011 - 02.2025
PMP
11-2010
Project/Engagement/Account Manager
Syntel
10.2007 - 02.2011
Lean Agile Certification
02-2007
Six Sigma Green Belt certified
06-2006
Project Lead
Patni Computer System
08.2003 - 10.2007
Post Graduate - Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
University of Texas Austin
B.E. - Electronics & Telecommunication
Pune University
Work Availability
monday
tuesday
wednesday
thursday
friday
saturday
sunday
morning
afternoon
evening
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AWARDS & APPRECIATION AT BARCLAYS
Shortlisted for Women of the Year category at the 2019 Women in IT award across Asia., Won the Change Advocate end of the year award in 2018 at Barclays for making a significant difference in transitioning from traditional quarterly releases to monthly releases., Nominated and shortlisted for the prestigious WearetheCity Rising Star award., Awarded a certificate by Barclays for an internship with a start-up in the MSME business domain, CreditWatch., Accredited with SMART value award in 2008 at Syntel and Valuable Contribution Award (VCA) in 2004 at Patni.
GLOBAL EXPOSURE
- Portland, Oregon
- Florida, USA
- Sweden
- UK
- India
Quote
There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.
Tony Robbins
Software
Languages
English
Bilingual or Proficient (C2)
Hindi
Bilingual or Proficient (C2)
Gujarati
Intermediate (B1)
Interests
Tennis
Reading
Cooking