Cloud Self-Service

Technical Leader II
Oct 2018 – Jul 2021

At Cisco, I played a pivotal role in enabling the transition from on-premise to cloud-based contact centre solutions by shaping the Cloud Self-Service platform — a cornerstone for delivering scalable, customer-driven support experiences. Joining as an architect, I led the foundational design and implementation of services that redefined Cisco’s approach to Interactive Voice Response (IVR), enabling conversational, cloud-native customer interactions.

Over the course of two years, I drove both technical architecture and team-building initiatives, helping align cloud services with evolving customer needs while embedding best practices for distributed system development.

Major accomplishments:

  • Led the architecture, technical direction, prototype development, and productization of the Virtual Voice Assistant (Brain Child) — a conversational IVR service that empowered contact centres with intuitive, cloud-driven customer support capabilities.
  • Built and mentored a team of 20+ engineers, delivering 5 microservices that form the backbone of Cloud Self-Service, ensuring scalability, resilience, and user-centric design.
  • Owned the end-to-end technical landscape for Cloud Self-Service, influencing engineering standards, observability frameworks, and integration patterns across the platform.
  • Advocated for and institutionalized Consumer Driven Contract (CDC) Testing using Pact 3.0, ensuring robust service interoperability and faster, safer deployments across distributed teams.

Learnings & impact:

  • Architectural leadership requires balancing long-term vision with immediate execution, ensuring teams remain empowered while meeting strategic objectives.
  • Building cloud platforms at scale demands an integrated approach that combines observability, testing rigor, and consumer feedback loops.
  • Developing teams alongside technology accelerates delivery and fosters a culture of ownership, trust, and continuous learning.

This experience deepened my understanding of how cloud architectures transform legacy services, how engineering practices scale in distributed environments, and how teams thrive when empowered with purpose, process, and autonomy — all of which continue to shape my leadership philosophy.