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Microsoft

Heading initiatives to increase Azure's margin efficiency across Azure Core (Compute, Storage, and Networking), H/W, Supply chain, Data center services, and Finance. 
This rocketship is a multi-billion dollar portfolio and an amazing place to be!

Sr. Program Manager (Azure IaaS)

Am part of Office's Data and Insights team that is leading the data-informed culture in Office. Our highly scalable pipeline processes over 100 billion events daily, providing user insights, data for user targeting/feature creation, modeling, and telemetry across millions of clients daily.

Am Lead for Office Telemetry (Office's secure, compliant event data pipeline) COGS, and tools. Saved $8M in 8 months to come under budget in FY19 – this is awesome because when I started 8 months back, Office was over budget by $7.5M, so in a short time we turned things around! 
Closely working with finance, data science, developers across 30+ Office teams. Monthly updates to CVP/Execs. 

As part of O365 growth and user lifecycle team, my goal was to increase subscription revenue by increasing retention and renewal. Was leading O365's SMB Onboarding and Engagement initiatives worldwide across all channels (web, and retail which includes direct, resellers, syndication).

Senior Program Manager (Office365)

2016 - 2018: Product Manager - Bing Local - Revenue and UU growth initiatives for Local segments.

- E2E owner of 9 local segments - airports, parking, rental properties, trails, camping, schools, senior care, child care, and pet care. This includes planning, establishing the vision, winning competing strategy, defining and owning success metrics, external deals and legal checks, tracking product development (UX/Relevance/Design/Data), experimentation/flighting/release, and metric/query analysis for opportunity/bug identification. 
- Heading Bing Local’s customer satisfaction team for US/Canada market. Reduced bug backlog from 1+ years to daily current. This includes vendor management, and working with several teams in Bing local, and Satori (Bing’s knowledge graph)
- Headed local data pipeline/infrastructure improvement - increased local business data precision from 92% to 99% in 8 months for top US businesses (top 25% of all impressions). To contrast, achieving 1% precision jump using existing methods takes more than a year. This included vendor management, human labelling, measurement, and quality control.
- Led 20+ changes in local platform based on user feedback, and data analysis including redefinition of top local segments, and metrics to evaluate them across devices

Keywords - Business and E2E product ownership (UX, data, relevance). Experimentation (A/B flights). Scorecard analysis. Data management (from signing deals to quality). Vendor mgmt. Human labeling and measurement.

Senior Program Manager, AI and Research (Bing)

2015 - 2016: Product Manager - Bing search on Windows Threshold, Bing search on Edge (IE rewritten from scratch). Worked with 15+ different partner teams across Windows, Bing, MSN, Edge, and Cortana

- Shipped Bing Search in Windows 10 start menu, Edge browser, and MSN.com while working with 15+ teams in these products. New revenue stream for Bing - increased Bing’s query share in US by 1% . Windows 10 flagship feature.
- Shipped experimentation platform for Edge browser search box. Was adapted/extended by MSN for Edge’s new tab page. Led user research, design, and usability studies for query formulation in Edge
- Led opportunity/query analysis and experimentation in Edge browser QF and shipped features that added $12MM revenue in FY17

Keywords - query formulation. auto-suggest/auto-complete. Statistical data analysis. Cohort analysis. User studies/research. Experimentation (A/B flighting).

Senior Program Manager (Bing)

Boot-strapped Bing's User Experience team in India. Established partnerships, laid down working principles including experimentation rigor, scope, and growth strategy. Launched several rich differentiated experiences to increase user base, and engagement in US and top international market 

Product manager for Bing SERP page in ALL int’l markets, across ALL form factors - Shipped new Bing UX on desktop, iPhone/android phones, Windows phone, iPad, Kindle, Xbox in 40 major and 300 minor Bing markets. Increased Bing revenue by $20MM annually in int’l markets, and decreased page load time by 30ms.
Shipped new UX features in top 15 international markets for Bing – taskpanes, carousel framework, rich autosuggest UX, and Ajax support. Shipped RTL support in Bing. Shipped localized answers for top 30 international markets in Bing.

Product manager for several critical Bing answers (Movies, Showtimes, Dictionary, Weather, Finance, Cricket, Calculator, Converter, Lottery, Automobiles, Recipe, and Facts). Led strategy development and technical delivery across 40 markets with 12+ partner teams. Tracked these segments to win in blind side-by-side test against Google for UX, relevance, and data pivots. 
Led integration of these answers in Windows 8.1 search, and Office (dictionary module in Word’s “Smart Lookup” feature). 

Led Bing's partnership with Nokia to make Bing default search engine on Nokia feature phones. Doubled user base and engagement for this market-device category in 6 months.

Worked on 
(i) the Modern Reader app for PDF/XPS/OXPS files 
(ii) Modern Music and Video apps

I was the owner of 
-	PDF graphics, rendering, and printing, XPS support, and Reader app performance (files open fast, and panning is butter smooth)
-	Snap view of the Modern Music and Video apps 
-   Perf lead for PDF reader - includes defining scope, metrics, and tracking them to success.
-  Release manager for PDF reader

Stuff I'm proud of - 
-	Patent received for “UI of the Snap view of Media applications”
-	Microsoft IDC Innovation award finalist 2012 for Perf-o-meter - Performance Analyzer and bugger for PDF and XPS
-	Microsoft IDC Innovation award finalist 2011 for PDFStop - PDF planning and rendering verification tools
-	Star awards for (i) PDFStop toolset – a cross functional multi-disciplinary tool for analyzing PDFs, (ii) Selfhost champion in Windows
-	Rave reviews on perf of the Reader - “Large files open quickly and scrolling through documents is equally fast…. This is far more pleasant to use than Acrobat Reader (and noticeably faster)” (Source: http://reviewtechnew.com/hands-on-windows-8-review/

Program Manager II (Windows 8)

Product and Program management of Windows 7 Inbox apps and gadgets - Desktop gadgets, Paint, Snipping tool, and Windows Journal.

Team UX/Usability champion, and Release manager.


Contribution
Product mgmt:
	• Researched and identified opportunities for new features and apps such as location awareness in weather gadget, and multi-touch support in paint
	• Defined and wrote detail product strategy/feature specifications for engineering team. 
	• Owned prioritizing features, taking call on feature add and cut, and feature bugs. Moving out low usage apps/features to serviceability. 
	• Wrote the MSDN documentation for gadgets, and location awareness.
Program mgmt
	• Drove feature delivery through while working with internationally placed cross-functional teams of designers, software development engineers, other program managers to guarantee a smooth and efficient product delivery
	• Point of contact for all partner teams such as – user design, usability, documentation, localization, security, privacy, and legal team. 
	• Ensure clear communication and coordination across the business, design and development teams.
	
	• UX champion for the IDC Windows client group: led efforts for usability testing, user surveys, and self-hosting,  UX fit and finish review 
	• Release manager : ran the Shiproom (release status meeting), monitoring incoming and bug fix rates, age of bugs, ensuring parity in bug priority, reporting to management and other teams.

Other activities:
-	Drove the Windows Customer Reach Program in IDC: The program aims to partner with our customers throughout the Windows product cycle. I formalized and pioneered this for the Windows group in India. Worked with sales and marketing, product support, and legal teams. Organized CIO summit in IDC. The program has now been taken by a separate team to execute at IDC level.
-	Mentor for two Program Managers, who were new to the role.

Program Manager II (Windows 7)

Windows Live ID (aka Microsoft Passport) is a single sign-on authentication service for all Windows Live properties. 


Passport Support Tool (PST) is a web based tool used by Customer Support Reps (CSRs) to resolve any issue

Contribution
-	Program management for Passport Support: added support for Windows Live 5.0 features (linked ids, federated accounts) in PST.
-	Reduced customer support operational cost by 3%, and planned for a total of 7% in the coming year. Increased Customer Satisfaction by 5% with projected increase of a total of 8% in the coming year. 
-	Live site support – released 2 QoS (patch) releases. Ensured 100% uptime for PST. 
-	UX point of contact for Windows Live: I worked with several teams under our organization’s umbrella to improve their web design and user flows that led to direct measurable profits.
-	Mentor for one Program Manager, who was new to the role.

Program Manager (Windows Live ID)

Flextronics Software Systems

Implementation of SIP call related services such as Call forwarding, Call barring, Call hold etc. for IMS Application Server. Several infrastructure modules supporting the IMS Application Server, such as CALEA based Legal interception using MySQL, IMS Call Audit Manager, Log manager, and Subsystem Fault Manager

Language/OS/tools: C/Solaris/IBM’s Rational Suite, GNU dev tools, ElectricFence (Linux), Clearcase, MySQL
Contribution
-	Project management: handling 3 key projects of the IMS Application Server. Regular customer interaction, SDLC process implementation, Quality management, Resource management. Organized cross cultural training (both technical and cultural for Ukrainian engineers). 
-	People management: Lead manager for a cross cultural international team of 21 (6 in Ukraine, 6 in Bangalore, and 9 in Gurgaon), Performance and Compensation management of Gurgaon team, ensuring high motivation and engagement levels, conflict management (including cultural issues)
-	Participation in Program Management, Project Quality Management, Risk management, and regular Project status reporting to Engineering Director (my manager), and AVP – Products.
-	Technical review of all artifacts produced. Led product performance improvement activity resulting in an improvement by a factor of 40% in 5 weeks. Least number of customer problems were reported in the infrastructure modules

Group Engineering Manager

New feature development, maintenance, and Worldwide support for company’s flagship product – ANSI/ITU-T variants of SS7 stack (TCAP, SCCP, MTP3, and MTP2)
 
Language/OS/tools: C/Linux, Solaris/IBM’s Rational Suite, GNU dev tools, Clearcase
Contribution
	- Technical leadership of 5 – 9 engineers several cycles of SDLC for MTP3, SCCP, and TCAP
	- Project management: End-to-end handling of several patch and feature releases - planning, development, testing, interface with the technical writers, and product testing team. SS7 Project was audited for TL9000 and scored 100%. Received “Customer Delight Award” for revamping the complete product documentation in 3 weeks resolving the biggest customer pain point that resulted in a substantial increase in customer survey ratings.
	- Customer support: SLA tracking and resolution of reported problems, primary interface with customer, and technical handling in Pre-sales Handling of all critical and major problems reported. 100% SLA in the first month itself (up from 92% previously)

Process and Tool champ: evaluated several software tools for our company such as Polyspace, McCabe, Logiscope, Splint and several others. Used IBM’s Rational Quantify to improve performance of our product several folds. Used IBM’s Rational Purify and ElectricFence to remove memory leaks/bugs.

Engineering Manager

Technically led the team to build a Protocol Validation Suite for testing data transfer (TCP/IP) over Spaceway, a satellite based broadband content delivery system developed by Hughes Network Systems (our parent company). 
 
Language/OS/tools: C/Linux, Solaris, VxWorks/WindRiver’s Tornado, Performance pack, CUnit, ElectricFence (Linux), IBM’s Rational Suite, GNU dev tools, Clearcase, Telelogic TTCN, Xdesigner

Contribution
	- Substantial contribution to each stage of SDLC: Requirement capturing, feature description after interaction with the customer, Design development, Coding, unit and integration testing. Technical review of all artifacts produced like code, design documents, test plans, and reports. Documentation for the entire project. 
	- Automated unit testing using CUnit (http://cunit.sourceforge.net/) on VxWorks to reduce testing time to one-fifteenth over 3 cycles. Conformance, Interop testing, and regression testing using Telelogic TTCN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TTCN) 
	- Improved performance and software quality using WindRiver’s performance pack (for VxWorks), and Rational Quantify for Solaris and Linux.
	- Wrote the complete customer documentation for the project

	- Individual award for assuring on-time delivery and leading Quality practices in Spaceway User Terminal ; Titled “Software Quality Engine” for leading quality activities in the team, and participating in the same at organization level (2003)
	- Team award for on time quality deliveries and consistently exceeding customer expectation for Spaceway – PVT (2002)

Sr. Software Engineer

Built an X/Motif GUI based Solaris tool to monitor power values of ongoing GSM calls on Thuraya Geo-stationery satellite Network. The tool interfaced with an attached Rhode&Schwarz spectrum analyzer to monitor frequency power levels.

Language/OS/tools: C/Solaris, VxWorks/IBM’s Rational Suite, GNU dev tools, Clearcase, Xdesigner, XRT widgets, Rhode&Schwarz SDK

All stages of SDLC - 
	• Gathered and documented requirements after detailed discussions with customer (Thuraya). Wrote feature specifications for the overall application. 
	• Designed and coded the GUI, and spectrum analyzer interface 
	• Testing (Unit/Integration/Regression/Factory acceptance/Customer acceptance)
	• Wrote the customer documentation
	• Demo'ed and trained the customer to use the tool. 
	• Got the final sign-off and unblocked all payments related to the tool.

Got the “Individual achievement Snap award” for perseverance and maturity show in getting final acceptance from customer.

Software Engineer

Seasoned leader with experience in defining, building, and growing outstanding products, and platforms through big data, experimentation, and working with amazing people across geographies, disciplines, and companies.

16 yrs as a PM in Microsoft - Azure (2yrs), Office (3yrs), Bing (6yrs), Windows and Windows Live (5yrs)
8yrs as a Group Engg Manager, and Dev lead in Aricent. 

Meditation practitioner for 25+ years.

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