Sumil Panicker

Results-oriented Engineering Manager with 20+ years of experience in leadership, software development, and program management. Skilled in leading large and complex projects/programs, cross-functional teams, and driving technological innovation. Proven track record in strategic planning, risk mitigation, and stakeholder management. Worked in leadership roles at Amazon (5.5 yrs), Cisco (12 yrs), and Mercari (1.5 yrs).

• Code Review
• Engineering Management
• Interpersonal Skills
• Communication
• Hands-on Technical Leadership
• Technical Requirements
• System Design
• Design review

• Experience in hiring, onboarding and deploying various talents ranging from different levels of software engineers, engineering managers, technical program managers and product managers.
• Experience with building, managing and leading large multifunctional teams comprising of engineers, QA and managers.
• Strong experience with grooming, growing and promoting people to leadership roles.
• Built high performing teams. Consistently received manager scores of 4.7/5 and team score of 4.5/5 in Amazon.
• Promoted, empowered, and practiced servant-leadership.
• Mentored and guided team members to success.
• Identified strengths and areas for growth in direct reports and guided them to grow in their careers while being more productive on the team.
• Nurtured an environment of continuous engineering improvement through mentoring, feedback, and metrics.

• Led large and complex projects and programs involving cross functional departments and teams and improved and delivered products.
• Accountable for the success of overall project/programs and coordinated the projects and interdependencies between various projects.
• Proficient knowledge of Project/Program Management principles and processes.
• Expert practitioner of agile, waterfall methodologies.
• Expert in defining, prioritizing, estimating, planning and executing large-scale complex Projects & Programs.
• Exceptional in stakeholder management and tracking of external commitments.
• Responsible for all the technical aspects of software engineering, from design to production release and post-release support.
• Promoted the program and accurately shared progress and risks involved in the entire program with all stakeholders including leadership.
• Anticipated and managed risks and issues using risk logs and issue logs and identified owners for each item.
• Led the recovery planning in case of delays.
• Set up regular reporting mechanisms with stakeholders and ensured that regular meetings, slack channels, and dashboards are in place.
• Created and maintained organisational roadmap by engaging with relevant stakeholders.
• Drove yearly and quarterly planning by creating intake process to assess and prioritise requests.
• Maintained organisation wide resource efficiency by managing resource mapping and creating process to manage change requests.
• Worked backwards from target launch date to set action plans in each quarter and set up key milestones to achieve them.
• Led kick off and subsequent business meetings during the program/project.

Coached employees on agile and XP development methodologies.

Received CEO award for innovation of Monitor+

Fitness is like food for me. I cannot survive without it.