Engineering Leader - AI & Platforms

Building consumer and enterprise products that reach hundreds of millions of users.

Engineering leader with 18+ years across web, mobile (iOS / Android), desktop, and backend - with 10+ years leading teams. I currently lead conversational AI and platform engineering at Microsoft Teams, shipping AI-powered experiences (Copilot, Agents, Adaptive Cards) across every client surface. I stay hands-on: architecting streaming AI UX, cross-client schema contracts, and zero-to-one developer platforms.

Redmond, WA, USA  ·  M.S. Applied AI (in progress)  ·  3 patents filed

Impact at a glance

18+ yrs
Building at scale
0→60M
MAU - Teams dev platform (mobile)
10+ yrs
Engineering leadership
3
Patents filed (AI / platforms)

My journey

I started where the hardware met the software. At Cisco in Bangalore, I cut my teeth on embedded video middleware - set-top boxes, real-time streaming, low-latency DVR, and second-screen companion apps. Working across driver teams in the US, Germany, and Canada taught me how large systems actually ship, and I grew from an engineer fixing decoder bugs into a tech lead trusted with quality on a 20M-user product.

Then I learned to build platforms, not just features. At Oracle I took CX Cloud Mobile from zero to ~30M enterprise users - but the work I'm proudest of was invisible to end users: a pluggable architecture, an expression engine, and a heuristic code-generation engine that let entire vertical teams ship ~3x faster without touching the platform internals. That's also where I moved from principal engineer into management, and discovered I could multiply impact through people, not just code.

At Microsoft, I got to do zero-to-one twice. First I built the Teams Developer Platform from scratch - SSO, tabs, bots, message extensions, meeting extensibility - bootstrapping a small team and growing the mobile platform to ~60M monthly active users. Then, as the AI wave hit, I pivoted the same playbook toward conversational AI: shipping Copilot and Agent experiences across web, mobile, and desktop, architecting streaming AI UX and Adaptive Cards at scale, and prototyping the multi-agent patterns that shape where the product is going next.

The throughline: I stay deeply technical while leading at scale, I love the ambiguity of the first version of something, and I keep learning in public - currently an M.S. in Applied AI, three patents filed, and a stream of open-source tools for the developer and AI communities. The next chapter I'm looking for is one where that combination - builder instincts plus leadership reach - matters most.

Experience

Microsoft
2019 - Present
Director of Engineering / Principal Engineering Manager - Teams Conversational AI & Platform
  • Lead engineering for conversational and AI-powered experiences across Teams' web, iOS, Android, desktop, and backend surfaces.
  • Shipped M365 Copilot integration and Agent experiences across all client surfaces, meeting Microsoft Build '23, '24, and '25 announcement milestones.
  • Architected Chain-of-Thought API design and streaming AI UX across mobile and desktop - schema contracts, backward compatibility, and parity.
  • Own Adaptive Cards streaming, rendering, and schema evolution across all clients (Fluent v9 migration, citations, native optimization).
  • Earlier (2019-2022): built the Teams Developer Platform from zero - SSO, tabs, bots, message extensions, meeting extensibility - growing mobile platform to ~60M MAU.
Oracle
2014 - 2019
Principal Engineer → Sr. Development Manager - Oracle CX Cloud
  • Built Oracle CX Cloud Mobile from zero to ~30M enterprise users across iOS, Android, React Native, and Web.
  • Designed an extensible platform with pluggable modules and a heuristic code-generation engine that let vertical teams ship ~3x faster.
  • Built an expression engine and client-side scripting engine for dynamic, customer-extensible UI.
  • Architected enterprise SSO & identity (SAML, JWT, client certificates); led a team of 10+ engineers end-to-end.
Cisco
2007 - 2014
Software Engineer → Tech Lead
  • Led Cisco Connect (web + mobile, J2EE backend, ~20M users) and Videoscape middleware SDK for second-screen companion devices.
  • Designed real-time streaming, recording, and low-latency DVR; built middleware SDKs for embedded platforms.
  • Designed authentication / authorization modules (OAuth 2.0, SAML) for video collaboration platforms.

Open-source & side projects

Adaptive Cards MCP

★ 27 - 5 forks

MCP server giving AI assistants deterministic tools to generate, validate, and optimize Adaptive Cards for Teams, Outlook, Copilot, and ChatGPT. Lifts LLM card correctness from ~55% to 95%+. Published to npm and listed in the MCP Registry.

TypeScriptMCP SDK924 tests

PushForge

Swift - macOS

Zero-config push notification playground for iOS Simulator, Android Emulator, and macOS. 37 bundled templates (13 for AI-agent patterns), real-time APNs byte counter, and payload/platform mismatch detection. ~2,600 lines of native Swift.

SwiftAPNs / FCMNative macOS

AdaptiveCards-Mobile

Swift + Kotlin

Cross-platform Adaptive Cards UI SDK for iOS (SwiftUI) and Android (Jetpack Compose), designed for mobile integration. Actively maintained open-source SDK.

SwiftUIJetpack Compose

OpenClaw

TypeScript

"Any OS, Any Platform" local-first personal AI assistant with a plugin architecture. Companion repos: openclaw-adaptive-cards (native structured-UI plugin) and markdown agent playbooks for engineering-management workflows.

Local-first AIPlugins

Adaptive Cards IDE & browser tooling

Dev tools

A suite of authoring tools: a VS Code extension with embedded designer and device preview, a Chrome/Edge AI panel for the Adaptive Cards Designer, and a Playwright-based rendering snapshot tool.

VS CodeBrowser extPlaywright

voice-trainer

Azure AI

Open-source Teams app for pronunciation training, built on Azure Speech SDK and Azure OpenAI. A practical example of an AI-powered conversational experience.

Azure SpeechAzure OpenAI

AI / ML work & patents filed

Hybrid Conversational AI Architecture
On-device small language model + cloud LLM for low-latency assistant extensibility. Patent filed (details on request).
LLM + RAG Code Generator
Retrieval-augmented generation pipeline that auto-generates cross-client SDK code. Patent filed (details on request).
Multi-Modal Meeting AI
Gesture + voice-command ML for frontline scenarios (CoreML / MLKit). Hackathon-winning prototype; patent in process.
Multi-agent orchestration prototypes
Early prototyping of multi-agent assistant patterns that informed product direction for agentic experiences.

Skills

Platforms
iOS, Android, React Native, Web (PWA), Desktop (Windows / Mac), Browser Extensions, Embedded
Languages
TypeScript, JavaScript, Swift, Kotlin, Java, Python, C/C++, Objective-C, C#
Frameworks
React, React Native, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, Adaptive Cards, Fluent UI
AI / ML
LLM product development, Copilot/Agent architectures, streaming AI UX, multi-agent orchestration, on-device ML, RAG, vector DBs, TensorFlow, PyTorch
Backend
Distributed services, API design, real-time messaging, Graph APIs, SSO/OAuth, SAML, JWT
Cloud
Azure (OpenAI, Speech, App Service, Functions), cloud services design
Leadership
Team building & mentoring, zero-to-one products, cross-site & cross-functional execution, stakeholder management with execs

Recognition, education & speaking

Education
M.S. Applied Artificial Intelligence - University of San Diego (in progress) · M.Tech Computer Science (Network & Cyber Security) - BITS Pilani · B.E. Electronics & Communication with CS - LNCT Bhopal
Speaking
Invited speaker, TechCohere (Infosys) - "Microsoft Teams Developer Platform, Inside Out" to 100+ solution architects · Cisco WW Developer Conference (Bangkok, Berlin)
Microsoft awards
Garage Hack Advisor - Impact Excellence '23 · AI/ML Vision Award (Hack '22) · Global Garage 2020 (App Screener) · Manager Excellence '21
Earlier awards
Oracle "Numero Uno" & 1M/1M Intrapreneurship Winner · Cisco Chairman's Award, Hackathon Winner (IoT) & Spot Awards · Indian Air Force Flight Lieutenant selection (UPSC CDS)