PRAKASAM S.
Direct Of Software Engineering
Bangalore,KA
Summary
Results-driven Senior Director of Engineering with over 27 years of experience in building high-performing global teams and scaling SaaS products. Proven track record in establishing two greenfield Global Capability Centers focused on engineering capability, team structure, and ownership models. Recognized as an AI adoption strategist with expertise in structured frameworks and governance of AI initiatives, leading product transformations that generated over $87 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) while maintaining a remarkable 97% customer retention rate. Pioneered enterprise-scale agentic AI orchestration systems that facilitate multi-agent workflows for autonomous planning, development, testing, and code review, complemented by deep technical knowledge across monolithic architecture, distributed systems, microservices, reliability engineering, and AI integration.Beyond technology, spearheaded PowerSchool's CSR strategy, partnering with NGOs to strengthen government school infrastructure and drive measurable gains in enrollment and student outcomes.
Overview
27
27
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Manager → Senior Director
PowerSchool
01.2018 - 01.2026
- Lead India GCC engineering for 4 products ($28M–$87M ARR over 7 years). Managed 50+ engineers across Chennai and Bangalore. Own product architecture, team development, platform reliability, and AI innovation strategy.
- AI Orchestration & Agentic Systems (Special Programs)
- Designed & deployed multi-agent orchestration system orchestrating 5+ specialized agents (planning agent, development agent, unit test agent, integration test agent, code review agent, QA test agent) to autonomously handle observability tickets end-to-end.
- Orchestration workflow: Ticket ingestion → ticket scoring (readiness check) → planning agent creates development plan → dev agent codes → unit test agent generates tests → integration test agent validates → code review agent evaluates PR quality → QA agent runs test suite.
- Implemented iterative refinement: Each stage generates confidence score; if
- Metrics & Impact
- 70% efficiency gain on routine observability tickets (human engineers freed for other work)
- 30-40% full-automation success rate for bug fixing
- ~20 % partial-automation success for feature development (agent produces 80% of work, human refines final 20%)
- 90% ticket readiness threshold prevents low-quality tickets entering pipeline
- Guardrails & Safety: Built governance layer — agent actions logged, human approval gates for high-risk changes.
- Team Impact: Freed senior engineers from ticket-level work; team now focuses on new features, scalability, system design (higher-leverage work).
- AI Innovation & Governance
- Part of AI Innovation Committee — represented India Center of Excellence (CoE) along with other leaders to shape AI adoption strategy and governance frameworks.
- Structured 3-wave adoption model:
- Wave 1 (2024): Free exploration phase (all tools allowed). Gathered feedback. Evaluated ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude.
- Wave 2 (2024-2026): Workflow automation. Built POCs: test generation agents, documentation agents, incident diagnosis agents. Pilots → rollout.
- Wave 3 (2026+): Agentic orchestration. Orchestrated agents for end-to-end workflows.
- Governance Framework: Part of review team to establish approved tool list, data protection policies (no PII to AI, no production access), audit logging, security review process.
- Metrics:
- 70% of engineering team actively using AI tools (code generation, test writing, documentation)
- 30-40% of bugs now have AI-assisted diagnosis before human involvement
- ~20% of user stories have AI-generated initial code (human review + refinement)
- Product Engineering at Scale (4 Products)
- Enrollment Established India ownership model. India team owned major decisions, releases, customer escalations. US engineers shifted to timezone-support role.
- Enrollment Express ($500K → $20M ARR): Post-acquisition product from Accella.. Reduced complexity 40%, improved performance without full rewrite.
- Safe Arrival ($2-3M ARR): Vendor-managed product (Tech Mahindra). Mandated 100% transition to India in 2 months. Executed rapid knowledge transfer, team building (2-month hiring sprint), flawless vendor handoff. Result: 99.97% uptime, zero customer impact during transition. Now 100% India-owned.
- Special Programs ($13M → $24M ARR): Complex product serving 30+ US states, 5 Canadian provinces. Executed core model optimization . Fixed database query bottlenecks. Result: 40% performance improvement, revenue doubled to $24M, 97% customer retention (highest in PowerSchool portfolio).
- Organization & People Leadership
- Helped to Establish Chennai GCC from handful of engineers → 50+ engineers across 4 teams. Set up engineering team structure, hiring standards, knowledge-transfer model, ownership expectations from day one.
- High-Bar Hiring: Hired 30+ senior engineers, 5 engineering managers. Personal involvement in final-round interviews. Focus on problem-solving mindset + ownership mentality + technical credibility.
- People Development: Set explicit readiness goals → gave stretch assignments → promoted only after demonstrated capability. Framework: weekly 1:1s, team meetings every 3 weeks, continuous feedback.
- Radical Transparency: Annual goals (product + growth) reviewed continuously. No surprises at review time.
- Platform & Reliability Leadership
- SLO/SLI Framework: Defined SLOs for critical services (99.99% availability) monitored through NewRelic tool, PagerDuty. Incident Management: Built on-call discipline. Engineers own SLOs. Improved MTTR. Blameless post-mortems drive systemic improvements.
- Other Company-Wide Contributions
- SDLC Council: Continuous improvement of Jira workflows, field definitions, process standardization.
- Tool Evaluation Committee: Lead evaluation & rollout of New Relic (observability), Nagios (monitoring), Veracode (security scanning),. Flow, LinearB etc
- Engineering Metrics Committee: Drove adoption of Pluralsight Flow (engineer metrics), Jellyfish (CapEx/OpEx tracking). Part of team that established PowerScore (balanced scorecard—metrics on productivity, quality, ownership and collaboration).
Group Delivery Head
Aptean
01.2017 - 01.2018
- Oversaw .NET enterprise product delivery across PSS domains, managing 75+ cross-functional engineering and QA professionals
- Drove executive-level customer engagement and delivery governance, maintaining high client satisfaction across a $70M+ portfolio
- Reinforced India leadership culture with a focus on organizational excellence and cross-domain best practices
- Enterprise software provider across Public Safety, Public Administration, and Healthcare. Portfolio: $70M+.
Delivery Manager → Associate Director
Jadoli Systems
01.2011 - 01.2017
- Helped to Establish Mysore GCC from greenfield — built full engineering organization of 100+ engineers, QA, and services professionals
- Led simultaneous delivery of the J2EE enterprise Life Science products, managing cross-functional teams across Safety and Clinical domains
- Owned ISO/CMMI L3 quality processes; drove process compliance, audit readiness, and continuous improvement programs organization-wide
- Championed Agile transformation; introduced Scrum practices and trained teams, significantly improving delivery cadence and team morale
- Active participant in RFP/RFI responses, contributing technical architecture and delivery solutioning to $25M–$40M business growth initiatives
- Life Science Safety and Clinical domain enterprise software. Team scaled to 100+. Revenue contribution: $25M–$40M.
Program Manager
Consona
01.2010 - 01.2011
- Delivered J2EE/.NET enterprise CRM software releases via Agile Scrum, managing onsite–offshore collaboration across Belarus and India
- Certified Scrum Master and Agile coach; led Scrum adoption for 25-member delivery team
- Served as ISO/CMMI process expert; ensured quality gates, process compliance, and NFR ownership
- CRM domain enterprise software. Managed onsite/offshore team of 25. Revenue portfolio: ~$40M.
Engineer → Architect → Development Manager
ArisGlobal
01.1999 - 01.2010
- Built career from developer to Development Manager & Architect over 11 years; led teams of 75+ engineers and QA professionals
- Architected and delivered Java/C++ enterprise Life Science platforms with focus on scalability, performance, and high availability
- Conducted load runner-based performance testing and security vulnerability assessments; implemented secure coding standards organization-wide
- ISO/CMMI L3 functional consultant and NFR owner; delivered technical trainings and built capability across the engineering organization
- Travelled extensively to global customer sites for critical troubleshooting and configuration; directly reduced escalation timelines
- Active contributor to Sales RFP/RFI responses, bringing technical depth and domain expertise to business growth initiatives
- Life Sciences enterprise software — safety, pharmacovigilance, and regulatory domains. 11-year progression from developer to development manager. Revenue: ~$25M.
Education
MCA -
Bharathidasan University
IndiaSkills
Languages & Frameworks: Java, Spring Boot, C#, NET, TypeScript, React
Cloud & Infrastructure: Azure and AWS
Databases & Data: MySQL, Oracle, SQl Server, DynamoDB, Redis
Monitoring & Observability: New Relic (APM, infrastructure), CloudZero, CloudWatch, X-Ray (distributed tracing), Splunk, PagerDuty
Additional Information
Headed PowerSchool's CSR team from 2021, driving NGO partnerships to enhance government school infrastructure, resulting in improved facilities, higher admission rates, and better student outcomes.
Timeline
Senior Manager → Senior Director
PowerSchool
01.2018 - 01.2026
Group Delivery Head
Aptean
01.2017 - 01.2018
Delivery Manager → Associate Director
Jadoli Systems
01.2011 - 01.2017
Program Manager
Consona
01.2010 - 01.2011
Engineer → Architect → Development Manager
ArisGlobal
01.1999 - 01.2010
MCA -
Bharathidasan University
CORE COMPETENCIES
- AI Leadership
- Agentic AI Systems & Orchestration (multi-agent workflows: planning agent, development agent, test agent, code review agent)
- AI Adoption Strategy (3-wave framework: individual tools → workflow automation → agentic systems)
- Prompt Engineering & Context Engineering (team enablement, guardrails, governance)
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) for domain-specific AI knowledge.
- Large Language Models (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot integration)
- AI Metrics & Measurement (efficiency gains, success rates, measurement frameworks)
- AI Governance & Safety (data protection, approved tools, compliance)
- Engineering Leadership
- Global Capability Center – engineering focused setup (helped establish 2 GCCs from greenfield: Mysore 2011, Chennai 2024)
- High-Performance Team Building (200+ engineers managed; hiring, development, scaling during the 20+yrs)
- Organizational Transformation & Culture Setting (radical transparency, merit-based promotion)
- Multi-Product Portfolio Leadership (products across different domains life science, CRM, Public Safety & Service and EdTech)
- Succession Pipeline Development (identified and developed next-level leaders)
- Technical & Platform Architecture
- Expert in managing and scaling monolithic, distributed, and microservices architecture
- Owning the Distributed Systems & Reliability and Observability
- Database Design & Optimization (relational, NoSQL, replication/backups)
- Performance Optimization & Technical Debt Management (Core model approach)
- Metrics-Driven & Business-Acumen Leadership
- Engineering Metrics Framework (DORA, Flow metrics, CapEx/OpEx tracking, balanced scorecard)
- ARR Growth & Customer Retention Alignment (tie engineering outcomes to revenue)
- Risk & Incident Management (MTTR, on-call discipline, blameless post-mortems)
METRICS & IMPACT
Career Span: 27+ years | Team Scale: 200+ engineers | GCCs Established: 2 from greenfield (Mysore 2011, Chennai 2024) | Products Led: 10+ | Combined ARR Growth: $28M → $87M over last 7 years | Retention Excellence: 97% | Safe Arrival Uptime: 99.97% | Performance Improvement: 30% | AI Adoption Rate: 70% of team using tools within 6 months | Agent Orchestration Success: 70% full automation (observability), 40-50% (bug fixes)