Vidhyazhini Thirumaran

Highly accomplished IT Leader with 18+ years of extensive experience in software development, digital transformation, and product leadership. Proven expertise in building and scaling high-performing engineering teams, driving strategic initiatives, and delivering cutting-edge solutions in Mobility, eCommerce, Enterprise Self-Service, and AI-powered Conversational Bots. Recognized for pioneering AI application in developer experience and SDLC, expertise in distributed microservices architectures on cloud platforms (GCP), and a strong track record in enhancing customer experience and driving digital sales.

Ford Motor Ltd, India Director of Developer Experience | December 2024 – Present

• Lead a polyglot team of 60+ developers, driving state-of-the-art application development and supporting 15,000+ developers globally.
• Spearheaded strategic initiatives for GCP migrations from legacy applications, API management (Apigee) and enterprise API strategy & governance.
• Oversaw performance engineering, Quality Engineering & Testing (QET) teams, and developer tools management across the organisation.
• Directed annual strategic planning and comprehensive budget management for the department.
• As a director I was responsible for managing $5M Organisation

Ford Credit (Ford Motor Ltd), India Senior Engineering Manager | March 2023 – December 2024 (21 months)

• Led and mentored a team of 20+ engineers, delivering Reactive Single Page Applications and completing critical migrations to the Quantum platform for Ford Credit’s Account Manager.
• Architected and implemented a Universal Component Library, standardizing design systems for a unified user experience across all front-end channels.
• Designed and led the development of a microservices orchestration system using Apollo GraphQL, GCP, and Spring Reactive technologies, integrating various domain APIs via REST clients.
• Championed the development and maintenance of robust CI/CD pipelines on GCP (Cloud Build, Cloud Run), ensuring efficient and secure deployments of containerized applications and implementing DevSecOps practices.
• Actively represented Ford Credit in industry conferences (e.g., TECH FLOURISH, TECH FEST on GraphQL adoption) and internal initiatives (Women of Ford).

Freshworks, India Engineering Manager | December 2021 – March 2023 (15 months)

• Managed a 10-member full-stack (Dev & QA) team, overseeing the development and maintenance of the Freshsales CRM application (Ember.js, Ruby on Rails MVC).
• Collaborated with Product Management to define sprint requirements, driving planning and providing accurate delivery estimates.
• Awarded "Phenomenal People Leader" for Q2 product engineering, recognizing exceptional leadership.
• Successfully delivered multiple epics to production, resolving critical P1 issues and ensuring high product stability.
• Built and scaled a fully functional engineering team from scratch, including talent acquisition, mentoring, and performance appraisals.
• Reduced customer support tickets by implementing root cause analysis (RCA) and permanent fixes, improving product reliability.
• Optimized RSpec unit test execution time across squads, reducing run times to under 20 minutes through parallelization.

Verizon Data Services India Ltd, India Senior Manager - System Engineering | February 2015 – December 2021 (60 months)

• Managed next-generation digital platforms including “Express Store,” Mobile App, and dotcom for postpaid and prepaid customers.
• Led a large-scale tech stack migration of an e-commerce application to cloud-native, reactive platforms, transitioning from native iOS/Android to web view.
• Managed a team of 40+ (including vendors), consistently delivering business priorities with high quality, on time, and within SLAs.
• Mentored and managed high-performing teams, ensuring seamless enterprise releases and successful participation in major device launches (e.g., Apple iconic, holiday).
• Developed and implemented strategies to boost digital channel mix, leveraging AI solutions and consumable APIs for customer personalization, significantly improving digital sales metrics.
• Key Projects:Chatbot Application Development: Led product development for a Chatbot application integrating with Google Dialogflow (API.AI), featuring custom wrappers for D-Trees, Agents, and Intents, with fulfillment logic in a Java Spring platform.
  One Message – Communication Engine: Involved in the product development of a high-volume communication engine (9M communications/day) for SMS, emails, and letters, built on Java/J2EE with JMS MQ for resilience and scale.