SOMASEKHARAN V
Bangalore
Summary
Dedicated professional eager to contribute to an organization that values and nurtures potential, skills, and talents. Committed to achieving goals while leveraging academic knowledge and professional experience to drive organizational success. Prepared to apply a diverse range of abilities to effectively accomplish tasks and support the overall mission. Enthusiastic about collaborating with a team that prioritizes dedication and innovation.
Overview
20
20
years of professional experience
8
8
Certifications
1
1
Language
Work History
Head of Service Operations
Computacenter India
03.2022 - Current
- Working as Head of Service Operations in Computacenter India from Mar’22 - Present
- Designation: Head of Service Operations
- Project : Daimler GNOC (Mercedes Benz & Daimler Truck)
- Roles & Responsibilities
- Designation: Senior Technology Manager
- Project : Daimler GNOC
- My role is to ensure the seamless delivery of services across a global network organization by strategic leadership. Responsible for budget management, risk mitigation, audit compliance, and the end-to-end delivery of the Global Network operations, aligning operational excellence with interpersonal objectives. Manage the monthly billing. Hiring, effort estimation, preparing finance forecast, finalization for the monthly billing for partner resources and planning for the resources.
- We have planned the operation in such a way that, with the operations team, we handled 16 projects for 2 years and that added revenue for the company. Also, we planned and operate the team, and we optimized the cost for more than 60 resources by adopting automation and proactive PM. Saved 35% more that forecasted cost this helped us to operate smoothly with additional efforts and plan to have additional volume and retaining strong talents. Etc.
- Also saved cost(s) by supporting the transformation of the network devices, migration of the monitoring and ticketing tools etc. Managed the operation even with the ticket volume increased 3 times. This has saved huge cost for the Computacenter and customer.
- Strong leadership skills in managing individuals and leading high performing teams in an international, multicultural account.
- Proven experience of leading teams globally, spanning across geographies and regions
- Ability to influence across multiple functions, business lines in a global matrixed organization
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with ability to communicate technical information to non-technical partners and to listen to identified concerns and adapt accordingly
- Operational Excellence – Leading a high-performing operations team to meet business objectives, KPIs and SLAs.
- Service Delivery – Champion a service excellence culture, resolving escalations swiftly and proactively, and embedding a continuous improvement ethos.
- People Leadership – Inspiring and develop a team through effective coaching, mentoring, and performance management to ensure engagement and capability growth.
- Strategic Planning – Developing and implement initiatives to enhance network performance while maintaining cost control and mitigating risks.
- Client Engagement – Strengthening relationships with internal and external stakeholders through effective communication and operational insight.
- Compliance and Quality – Ensure adherence to service excellence standards and oversee delivery compliance (>97%).
- Proven in operational experience in a multi-site, multi-region, fast-growing environment.
- Strong track record of leadership and people management.
- Demonstrated ability to manage KPIs, SLAs, and financial targets (P&L and budget control).
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills with a continuous improvement mindset.
- Responsible for budgeting, financial analysis, and vendor management.
- Good team management and customer management skills.
- Strong leadership skills in managing individuals and leading high performing teams in an international, multicultural construct.
- Budget and Resource Management of Global Network Operations team
- Develop and manage budgets, rate-card, finance forecast, ensuring alignment with organizational priorities.
- Allocate resources (people, & technology) to optimize service delivery and cost efficiency.
- Monitor expenditures, forecast variances, & implement corrective actions to stay within budget.
- Identify, assess, and mitigate operational, financial, and compliance risks impacting BAU delivery.
- Oversee end-to-end delivery of operations, ensuring timely delivery within scope & budget.
- Define critical metrics and SLAs to measure service performance, address critical issues and bottlenecks proactively.
- Foster collaboration between teams to resolve issues and improve processes.
- Communicate statuses, risks, and outcomes to senior leadership and customers.
- Lead and mentor a distributed team, promoting a culture of accountability and growth.
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance service quality
- Prepare executive reports on performance, risks, and financial health.
- Additional Responsibilities
- Decision maker for any operation related topics
- Decision maker for sow corrections
Senior Manager - Technology
Computacenter India
07.2017 - 02.2022
- Worked as Senior Manager -Technology in Computacenter India from July17 – Feb’22
- Designation: Senior Technology Manager
- Project : Daimler GNOC
- My role is to ensure the seamless delivery of services across a global network organization by strategic leadership. Responsible for budget management, risk mitigation, audit compliance, and the end-to-end delivery of the Global Network operations, aligning operational excellence with interpersonal objectives. Manage the monthly billing. Hiring, effort estimation, preparing finance forecast, finalization for the monthly billing for partner resources and planning for the resources.
- We have planned the operation in such a way that, with the operations team, we handled 16 projects for 2 years and that added revenue for the company. Also, we planned and operate the team, and we optimized the cost for more than 60 resources by adopting automation and proactive PM. Saved 35% more that forecasted cost this helped us to operate smoothly with additional efforts and plan to have additional volume and retaining strong talents. Etc.
- Also saved cost(s) by supporting the transformation of the network devices, migration of the monitoring and ticketing tools etc. Managed the operation even with the ticket volume increased 3 times. This has saved huge cost for the Computacenter and customer.
- Strong leadership skills in managing individuals and leading high performing teams in an international, multicultural account.
- Proven experience of leading teams globally, spanning across geographies and regions
- Ability to influence across multiple functions, business lines in a global matrixed organization
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with ability to communicate technical information to non-technical partners and to listen to identified concerns and adapt accordingly
- Operational Excellence – Leading a high-performing operations team to meet business objectives, KPIs and SLAs.
- Service Delivery – Champion a service excellence culture, resolving escalations swiftly and proactively, and embedding a continuous improvement ethos.
- People Leadership – Inspiring and develop a team through effective coaching, mentoring, and performance management to ensure engagement and capability growth.
- Strategic Planning – Developing and implement initiatives to enhance network performance while maintaining cost control and mitigating risks.
- Client Engagement – Strengthening relationships with internal and external stakeholders through effective communication and operational insight.
- Compliance and Quality – Ensure adherence to service excellence standards and oversee delivery compliance (>97%).
- Proven in operational experience in a multi-site, multi-region, fast-growing environment.
- Strong track record of leadership and people management.
- Demonstrated ability to manage KPIs, SLAs, and financial targets (P&L and budget control).
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills with a continuous improvement mindset.
- Responsible for budgeting, financial analysis, and vendor management.
- Good team management and customer management skills.
- Strong leadership skills in managing individuals and leading high performing teams in an international, multicultural construct.
- Budget and Resource Management of Global Network Operations team
- Develop and manage budgets, rate-card, finance forecast, ensuring alignment with organizational priorities.
- Allocate resources (people, & technology) to optimize service delivery and cost efficiency.
- Monitor expenditures, forecast variances, & implement corrective actions to stay within budget.
- Identify, assess, and mitigate operational, financial, and compliance risks impacting BAU delivery.
- Oversee end-to-end delivery of operations, ensuring timely delivery within scope & budget.
- Define critical metrics and SLAs to measure service performance, address critical issues and bottlenecks proactively.
- Foster collaboration between teams to resolve issues and improve processes.
- Communicate statuses, risks, and outcomes to senior leadership and customers.
- Lead and mentor a distributed team, promoting a culture of accountability and growth.
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance service quality
- Prepare executive reports on performance, risks, and financial health.
- Additional Responsibilities
- Decision maker for any operation related topics
- Decision maker for sow corrections
Technical Lead
Iron Mountain Services
08.2011 - 06.2017
- Worked as Technical Lead in Iron Mountain Services from August-2011 Till June-2017
- Roles & Responsibilities:
- Handling Iron Mountain global firewall operations team & projects
- Handling firewall implementation, setting up new network and infrastructure devices.
- Implementing and testing new technology and features in Network security infrastructure
- Strong hands-on experience in handling Check Point Firewall with URLF, IA, Application control, IDS/IPS, IPsec, SSL VPN, Remote Access, Anti-Bot, AV, https inspection, DHCP Relay, NAT, Clustering, upgrades, HFA installation and licensing.
- Management of Check Point and Cisco (multi-context, Routed and Bridge) Firewalls.
- Handling global firewall upgrades, hotfix upgrades for Cisco and Check Point firewalls
- Designing and building new Networks and IPsec/SSL VPN tunnels as per the requirement
- Designing and implementing new Check Point firewalls with URL Filtering, IPS/IDS, Application control, RA VPN, Full Time VPN, SSL VPN, IPsec, Anti-Bot, AV and Identity awareness blades
- Strong hands-on experience in managing and implementing Cisco ASA/PIX/FWSM firewalls.
- Handling VMware NSX firewall and executing the changes in NSX firewall.
- Handling global firewall team’s tasks and assigning engineers for each activity/project.
- Handling new firewall projects, transitions, and escalated issues
- Experience in handling Bluecoat proxy server and knowledge in MacAfee web gateway
- Working as an escalation point for all technical issues and projects.
- Handling all escalated requests/projects in the firewall world and providing the solution for the same.
- Handling Firemon, Backbox, Defender Radius Server, Cisco ACS and CSM servers
- Handling Check Point upgrades for more than 150 firewalls without any downtime
- Handling quarterly HFA upgrade in check point infrastructure without any disruption
- Working with CAB and solutions team for new projects/migrations and integration projects
- Attending weekly CAB, Problem Management and GSRS review meetings, and escalation call meetings on behalf of Firewall team
- Responsible to maintain global Check Point/Cisco firewalls up to date and as per the standard.
- Strong experience in analyzing logs, recovery bridge calls and Wireshark captures.
- Helping team during critical situations, recovery bridge calls and escalation, migrations
- Responsible for team forecast, efforts management, team structure, delivering the end-to-end operations
- Responsible for contract amendment, corrections in the contract and deliverables
- Responsible for preparing the effort and calculation for the project Po and billing
- Handling partner resources, and monthly billing approval
- Responsible for employee engagement activities
- Go-to-person for any clarification in the SOW/MSA and contract deliverables
- Responsible for the GNOC team and managing over 80000+ network devices
- Responsible for authorizing transitions and projects
- Sign-off authority for new project handover
- Owning the SIP and CSI
- Hiring and Resource management
- Overall and end to end responsible for forecast, financial clearance etc
- Responsible for handling any dispute
- Define
Network Engineer (Tier 2)
AT&T Communications
08.2009 - 08.2011
- Worked as Network Engineer (Tier 2) in AT&T Communications
- Project : IBM Blue Sky (From August–2009 - August-2011)
- Designation: Network Engineer- Level 2
- Roles & Responsibilities:
- Handling Check Point, Cisco PIX, ASA, Juniper Netscreen firewalls, Cisco Routers & Switches, Cisco CSS& ACE, Nortel Alteon, and BIG-F5 Load balancers
- Doing changes in firewalls, router switches as part of scheduled changes, problem determination and break-fix to resolve the network connectivity issues.
- Coordinating with Global customers for troubleshooting and resolving the issues
- Handling scheduled Check Point, Cisco PIX & ASA, Netscreen Firewall failover and reboots.
- Handling BIG-F5, Nortel Alteon, Cisco CSS, ACE load balancer failover and reboots.
- Handling scheduled Firewall, Switches and Load balancer reboot activities
Network Engineer (Level 2)
Microland Ltd
03.2006 - 07.2009
- Worked as Network Engineer (Level 2) from March 2006 to July 2009 at MICROLAND
- Client 1 : Satyam BPO (From December – 2006 to June 2009).
- Designation: Technical Specialist- Network and Security
- Roles & Responsibilities:
- Configuring and maintaining firewall rules and objects as per the business requirement
- Troubleshooting and resolving network connectivity issues with necessary steps.
- Handling devices, configuration changes and upgrading routers and switches.
- Data center management and administration of LAN and WAN.
- Nortel Passport: Monitoring trunk and PVC with the help of CLI manager, MDM web.
- Administration of Nortel Contivity VPN, IDS administration.
- Taking Network devices and Firewall backups and performing network health check.
- Creating and troubleshooting the VPN Tunnels, VLANs, VACLs and ACLs.
- Implemented SolarWinds to monitor routers, switches, firewalls, IDS, Internet links, DS3 inks VLAN interfaces and Servers, implemented Syslog server.
- Configured PRTG, MDM web and MRTG for monitoring links and traffic.
- Upgrade of Check Point firewall, SPLAT and NOKIA firewall.
Network Engineer
Deutsche Bank
03.2006 - 11.2006
- Client 2 : Deutsche Bank (From March – 2006 to November 2006)
- Designation: Network Engineer.
- Roles & Responsibilities:
- Data center management, and administration of LAN/WAN.
- IOS upgrade for Switches/Routers.
- Network management using Cisco works, vital suite, Smarts and Entuity.
- Troubleshooting Routers, Switches, and other networking Devices.
- Configuring and implementing new Network devices in the site.
Junior Network Engineer
SUN iTECH
09.2005 - 02.2006
- Worked as a Junior Network Engineer from September 05 to February 06 at SUN iTECH
- Roles & Responsibilities:
- Network Management and Support, configuring and maintaining networks.
Education
Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics & Communication
Acharya Institute of Technology
Bangalore01.2005
Skills
Security Technologies
Check Point (R80x, R77x,76x,75x,70,65,64,60,55,41), Cisco PIX, FWSM, ASA, CSM, Pulse VPN, Load Balancers, Juniper, VMware NSX firewalls, Palo Alto & Fortigate Firewalls, Bluecoat proxy, Provider-1, MDS, MLM, Gaia, SPLAT, Nokia IPSO
Routing and switching
Cisco Routers 1800, 2500, 2600, 2800, 3600, 3700, 3800, 3900 Cisco switches 2950, 3550, 3750, 6506, 6509, 6513, 4500
Trainings attended
Six sigma yellow belt, CISSP training completed
VMware NSX firewall installation and administration, F5 advance level
Firewall Appliances
Check Point 4000, 12000, 15000, 23000, ASA 5515-X, 5545-X, 5525-X, 5515-X, 5550, 5580-20/40, UTM-1, Power-1 507X, Smart-1, Fortigate, Check Point VSX
Load balancers
BIG-F5 LTM and GTM, NetScaler LBs, Nortel Alteon, Cisco CSS, ACE and
Network Protocols
BGP, EIGRP, OSPF, STP, HSRP, DNS, DHCP
Certification
Certified in Introduction to Cisco Sales (700-150)
Interests
Traveling, Cricket, Football, photography, watching TV and listening to music, & reading technical forums
Accomplishments
- Received Bravo Star Gold Award for 2023
- Received leader of the year 2022 award from Computacenter India
- Received leader of the quarter award (Q2, 2021) from Computacenter India
- Received 10+ Bravo awards from Computacenter Group
- Received multiple appreciations from Daimler (Mercedes Benz) for the initiatives and ideas.
- Received Top performer of the year award from Iron Mountain
- Received 20+ You Rock awards from Iron Mountain
- Received awards and appreciations from Iron Mountain for the outstanding work.
- Received MAX (Midland Award for Excellence) award 3 times for customer service.
Leadership Training Completed
- LEAP (Lead Engage Accelerate with Purpose) from IIMB
- Mastering Personal Leadership (MPL) from SyNet
- Creating High Performance Organizations from IIMB
- The Purposeful Leader from Adaptis
- Leadership Essentials
- Foundations of Leadership
- The Etiquette Advantage
- Business Storytelling
- Culture of Candor
- Impactful Interactions
- Present with Panache
- Creative Problem Solving
Other Initiatives and Involvements
- Developed and implemented Rewards and Recognition tool (App) for Computacenter India
- Co-Lead of the Computacenter India Innovation council
- I have been an active member of the Sports Committee for the past 4+ years and driving many employee engagement initiatives.
- Part of Hackathon core team.
Timeline
Head of Service Operations
Computacenter India
03.2022 - Current
Senior Manager - Technology
Computacenter India
07.2017 - 02.2022
Technical Lead
Iron Mountain Services
08.2011 - 06.2017
Network Engineer (Tier 2)
AT&T Communications
08.2009 - 08.2011
Network Engineer (Level 2)
Microland Ltd
03.2006 - 07.2009
Network Engineer
Deutsche Bank
03.2006 - 11.2006
Junior Network Engineer
SUN iTECH
09.2005 - 02.2006
Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics & Communication
Acharya Institute of Technology