Pushpalata Dwaram
Bangalore
Summary
Dynamic Director of Engineering with around 16 years of expertise in leading modernization, cloud migration, and platform transformation for enterprise SaaS products. Demonstrated ability to scale high-performing teams, managing 13 direct reports and influencing more than 160 team members to drive innovation and enhance operational reliability. Committed to delivering measurable business impact through strategic leadership and a focus on continuous improvement. Proven track record of aligning engineering initiatives with organizational goals to foster growth and efficiency.
Overview
15
15
years of professional experience
Work History
Director of Engineering
Diligent Corporation
10.2024 - Current
- Lead engineering strategy, architecture, and delivery for multi-tenant enterprise SaaS products.
- Scaled a global engineering team from 0 to 34 FTEs and 90 contractors, driving consistent delivery performance.
- Built and delivered key AI‑First Diligent initiatives.
- Directed cloud modernization programs reducing infrastructure cost by 25% and improving application performance by 40% which helped in revenue increase by 250% (4M $ to 14M $) in a year.
- Established CI/CD, regression, and performance testing frameworks increasing release predictability and reliability.
- Strengthened platform security through API hardening, and improved production observability.
- Mentored and developed Engineering Managers and senior ICs, fostering innovation, accountability, and technical excellence.
- Delivered platform integrations, increasing product adoption and revenue by 15%.
- Achieved zero production incidents over 6 months via proactive monitoring and controls.
- Drove AI adoption across teams, improving cycle time and productivity by 20%.
- Migrated 3 enterprise products to AWS, achieving higher uptime and scalability.
- Built engineering teams ground up for multiple enterprise applications.
Senior Engineering Manager
Diligent Corporation
09.2022 - 10.2024
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of software engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
- Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and guide career development with clear growth plans.
- Drive hiring efforts, including sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding new team members.
- Own the planning, prioritization, and timely delivery of engineering initiatives.
- Convert business requirements into actionable engineering tasks and technical plans.
- Ensure high-quality execution through code reviews, engineering best practices, and process improvements.
- Coordinate cross-team dependencies and unblock engineers proactively.
- Participate in architecture discussions, design reviews, and long-term technology planning.
- Promote engineering excellence through documentation, automation, and code reviews.
- Ensure system reliability, performance, and availability through monitoring, alerting, and incident management.
- Drive root-cause analysis and continuous improvements after incidents or failures.
- Oversee adherence to security, compliance, and coding standards.
- Collaborate closely with Product, Design, QA, and other partner teams to align on requirements, timelines, and deliverables.
Engineering Manager
Diligent Corporation
11.2019 - 08.2022
- Lead the technical and operational takeover of the acquired product, including architecture deep-dive, codebase review, and dependency mapping.
- Establish clear understanding of existing system design, tech debt, and integration points with current company platforms.
- Hands-on development to fix quality issues in ReactJS, NodeJS and PHP code leading the product from maintenance mode to feature development mode.
- Drive knowledge transfer sessions with the previous engineering team or vendor, ensuring documentation and processes are captured.
- Build a new in-house engineering team from scratch by defining roles, hiring talent, and setting up onboarding plans.
- Establish engineering culture, team norms, coding standards, and quality expectations aligned with company values.
- Mentor and coach new team members, fostering psychological safety, collaboration, and ownership of the acquired product.
- Prioritize engineering investments (stability, scalability, feature parity) to align with business goals.
- Drive process setup—CI/CD, code reviews, testing frameworks, branching strategies, incident handling, and release management.
Staff Software Engineer
Diligent Corporation
01.2016 - 11.2019
- Break down ambiguous problem statements into clear, actionable technical solutions.
- Oversee end-to-end technical implementation, ensuring quality, scalability, reliability, and performance.
- Re-architected home page of GRC product making it SPA and rewriting the APIs from legacy tech stack.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment between business goals, product direction, and engineering execution.
- Serve as a technical representative in planning, strategic discussions, and organizational decision-making.
- Drive clarity in requirements, technical scope, and trade-offs for cross-team initiatives.
Senior Software Engineer
Diligent Corporation
12.2014 - 12.2015
- Provide technical guidance during design reviews, code reviews, and architecture discussions.
- Influence engineering culture by promoting best practices, continuous learning, and innovation.
- Contribute to building APIs for mobile application.
- Hired engineers ranging from Principal Engineers to interns and growing the team from 1 to 100+.
- Contributing to application by building features for customers.
- Lead prototyping efforts for new concepts.
- Lead incident investigations, root-cause analyses, and long-term fixes to avoid recurrence.
Technical Consultant
Blue Yonder
07.2013 - 12.2014
- Partner with clients to gather requirements, understand workflows, and translate business needs into technical specifications.
- Conduct discovery workshops, product demos, and technical deep dives to guide clients toward optimal solutions.
- Configure, customize, and implement product features based on client requirements.
- Train client teams on platform features, workflows, and best practices.
- Create user guides, technical documents, and solution references.
Senior Member Technical
ADP
06.2010 - 12.2013
- Worked extensively on the time card manager module used by the employees for timesheet entry and payroll
- Lead the UX modernization and involved in development of custom UI controls using third party Dojo library.
- Delivered impactful product features for supporting accessibility and globalization.
- Bug fixes for improving the quality of the application.
Education
Master of Computer Applications (MCA) -
ICFAI University
Bachelor of Science - Mathematics, Physics & Science
Nagpur University
Skills
- Engineering Strategy & Execution
- Cloud & Microservices Architecture
- Agile Leadership
- DevOps, CI/CD
- Product Modernization & Scaling
- Cross-functional Leadership
- Organizational Design & Growth
- Security & Compliance Governance
- AWS, Docker, IaaC, GitHub, C#, React, NodeJS, Jira, RDBMS, Net
- Engineering metrics improvement
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
Women in Tech 2024, Diligent | Change Agent Award – 3 consecutive years, Diligent | Mentorship Program (Site-level initiative), Diligent, POSH Committee Chair – Leadership in workplace culture & inclusivity, Diligent, Hall of Fame – 2 consecutive years (ADP), Top Gun award (Best Performing Fresher) - ADP, University topper in Post Graduation, Gold Medalist in Graduation.
Timeline
Director of Engineering
Diligent Corporation
10.2024 - Current
Senior Engineering Manager
Diligent Corporation
09.2022 - 10.2024
Engineering Manager
Diligent Corporation
11.2019 - 08.2022
Staff Software Engineer
Diligent Corporation
01.2016 - 11.2019
Senior Software Engineer
Diligent Corporation
12.2014 - 12.2015
Technical Consultant
Blue Yonder
07.2013 - 12.2014
Senior Member Technical
ADP
06.2010 - 12.2013
Bachelor of Science - Mathematics, Physics & Science
Nagpur University
Master of Computer Applications (MCA) -
ICFAI University