Principal Engineer

Oct 2024 – Present

At Talkdesk, I joined as the 4th employee in the Communications (Comms) Organisation in India, where I had the opportunity to contribute during the early growth phase — helping shape the engineering culture, architectural direction, and talent acquisition strategy. This role reflects my commitment to building high-performing teams and scalable systems while embedding best practices that endure as organizations expand.

Major contributions:

  • Early Growth & Technical Leadership: Rapidly aligned with company culture and engineering processes, contributing to foundational architecture decisions that guided early-stage product development.
  • CXA Standalone: Initiated and bootstrapped the Ascend Connect project (now part of the CXA Standalone offering) using Kotlin and native tooling, accelerating product development during critical early phases.
  • Talent Acquisition: Conducted over 150 interviews in 6 months, directly shaping the hiring strategy and building a world-class engineering team that aligns with Talkdesk’s long-term vision.
  • Voice Offerings – VDI Connect: Led the transition and delivery of the VDI Connect Preview release within 2 months, followed by onboarding an additional provider to meet evolving business needs without compromising execution timelines.
  • Technical Enablement: Delivered a widely attended technical talk, “Professional Software Development 101s,” engaging 80+ engineers across global teams and emphasizing Clean Code principles and Test Driven Development in the era of AI-assisted coding.

Learnings & impact:

  • Early-stage technical leadership requires balancing speed, scalability, and cultural alignment — building systems that are not only performant but maintainable and future-proof.
  • Engineering excellence is as much about hiring the right talent and fostering learning environments as it is about making architectural decisions.
  • Best practices like clean code and automated testing are critical, especially as development teams embrace AI-assisted tools — ensuring quality remains at the heart of delivery.

This experience reaffirms my passion for enabling teams, driving architectural clarity, and embedding engineering best practices — all while contributing to the growth and resilience of high-impact products in dynamic environments.