Experience

In February 2023, I left Virtusa after a 20 year stint to engage in my passion: helping startups thrive! I am currently engaged with selected startups as a fractional CTO, board advisor and angel investor. 

A few startups I've been working with as fractional CTO and/or advisor:

At Virtusa, I lead Engineering Innovation reporting to the Chief Operating Officer for the larger portion of my stint there. Interestingly,  it includes a rare mix of a startup-like intrapreneurial role coupled with a large enterprise technology leadership role that included evaluating acquisitions and contributing to strategic initiatives.  I relocated to the US in 2018 and reside in Orange County, CA. 

Role: Corporate tech leadership role: Ensuring engineering governance and productivity as well as scaling our engineering processes and systems

A big part of my role at Virtusa was to scale the hard-core engineering  ethos and culture of the organization as we scaled from serving ISVs to enterprises early in the organization's journey. This involved building and rolling out our engineering intelligence platform used by over 15000 associates, as well as setting up the processes and systems to scale engineering governance activities. I was responsible for setting up engineering review boards, governance systems, defining engineering measures, standards, best practices etc. and rolling them out and institutionalizing them across the organization. I reported to the board on several engineering measures and carried them as my KPIs.

I also drove enterprise-wide programs to introduce new or updated systems and processes. eg. Open Source Strategy, Secure Coding Processes, Work From Home Enablement etc. My teams were also responsible for early enablement and R&D of many emerging technologies within the organization.

Role: Intrapreneur, Solutions Designer and Product Innovation Lead

In this role I worked with my team at the Global Technology Office to build a deep understanding of the industry trends related to our organizational strategies, our clients' pain points and challenges in these areas. We then collaborated with various groups that work with clients as well as clients themselves to conceptualize and define solution ideas. We worked with other stakeholders to create MVPs as well as the roadmaps for these solutions and oversee their delivery in an agile model. The next step was to oversee the rollout/adoption and measure the outcomes, incorporate these solutions into our sales cycle and participate in the feedback loops to enhance/refine the roadmap. 

High Profile Sales and Client Engagements - Large Digital and Cloud Transformation Programs

I participated as a technology leader and subject matter expert in high profile sales where it was important to convincingly portray Virtusa's value proposition and differentiation. Strategic and open discussions at these early stages was important to set the right direction and expectations with the client and can often set the stage for future success.  

Similarly, I also provided leadership to some of the most strategic client engagements for the company including large scale digital and cloud transformation programs, consulting to the client and delivery teams as a lead technologist. 

Prior to Virtusa, I worked as the Chief Software Architect and in other technology leadership roles in San Francisco, London and Sri Lanka.  During my university years in Sri Lanka and UK, was employed part time as a Web-Master/Programmer and as a Software Engineer developing in FoxPro, Informix 4GL and C/DDB4.

Tech CSR: Providing oversight to Tech-CSR

Virtusa's Global Technology Office was instrumental in driving our TechReach CSR program and contributing to Open Source. During the Asian Tsunami, we contributed heavily to the Sahana Disaster Management Project with one of my team-leads taking a sabbatical to lead the project. We contributed Akura, the Open Source School Management System, first to schools in Sri Lanka and then to the world. When the conflict in Sri Lanka ended in 2009, we contributed a rehabilitation management system to the Sri Lanka Army, to expedite the rehabilitation and societal re-integration of ex-combatants. When the Pandemic ravaged India in 2021, my team built a mobile application for our teams who were scattered across the country, to connect with the company and get vital location-centric information (beds/oxygen available, nearby vaccination campaigns and alert the help desk if they needed urgent help etc.).

Private Equity, Angel Investment and Advisor to Startups 

I've been involved as an angel investor and advisor to multiple startups. I find it extremely rewarding to work with young leaders and teams to mentor/coach them towards success. While they benefit from my years of experience having seen what works and what doesn't  and helping them explore all options, I get super-charged by their contagious passion and energy: Definitely a symbiotic win-win!

I've also taken a keen interest in all forms of Private Equity and Alternative Investments: Real Estate, Venture, HML, GP Stakes, and niche non-correlated asset classes.

Education 

I obtained my BSc honors (first class) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Katubedda, Sri Lanka (the premier engineering university in Sri Lanka) and my Masters in Parallel Computers and Computation from the University of Warwick UK.