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Pankaj RajPR
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Pankaj Raj

@pankajraj

15+ years hands-on experience in Software Development - Java, microservices, application design, performance engineering, AI & cloud infrastructure

United States
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PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

  • Senior Software Engineer & Architect with 15+ years hands-on experience in Software Development designing, building & scaling complex software systems across Banking, Finance, Healthcare, Advertising, eCommerce, Retail & Travel for startups & Fortune 500 companies

  • Deep expertise in Java, J2EE, microservices, distributed systems, application design, system architecture, performance engineering, AI, & cloud infrastructure

  • Equally effective as a hands-on Individual Contributor & as Technical Leader, driving architecture, execution, & delivery across multiple engineering teams

  • Self-starter executing projects from inception to delivery with complete ownership

  • Expertise across SDLC - analysis, design, development, documentation, testing, quality, integration, SCM, build, deployment (CI/CD), release management, production support, maintenance & enhancements

  • Strong communicator with excellent written, verbal & presentation skills; able to quickly understand new businesses & technologies

KEY ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Successfully replaced legacy mainframe systems with modern, cloud-native Java applications. Currently migrating Princess Cruises' mainframe to microservices architecture, having previously replaced a legacy Walgreens system driving massive operational cost savings

  • Architected an event-driven AWS Kinesis pipeline to sync large data volumes between legacy DB2 & Aurora PostgreSQL & Redis & later increased throughput capacity by 500%, eliminating severe latency bottlenecks

  • Zero-downtime migrations across three Java LTS releases (8 to 21), significantly reducing technical debt. Architected an AI-first engineering workflow, integrating autonomous agents into CI/CD pipelines to automate code reviews & repository audits, drastically cutting SDLC lead times

  • Engineered an ultra-low-latency caching architecture - Redis & cache2k - to slash database read loads. Ensured sub-second response times and high availability for critical, heavy load REST APIs

  • Profiled distributed microservices to resolve memory leaks and optimize AWS ECS/EC2 instance sizing for peak price-to-performance efficiency

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

PC

Senior Software Engineer

Nov 2017 - Apr 2022 (4 years 5 months)

Comprehensive project details and technical achievements for this period are detailed in the current Princess Cruises role above. Was re-hired by Princess Cruises again in 2023 for the same project due to my deep knowledge of Princess IT Systems and Applications.

Walgreens Co. logoWC

Lead Software Engineer

Walgreens Co.

Jan 2006 - Jan 2010 (4 years)

Replaced legacy data-entry system with Java-based web application, significantly reducing manual costs. Upgraded and maintained ESOP software with Oracle backend.

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Virginia Tech logoVT

Virginia Tech

Master of Science, Industrial and Systems Engineering

Grade: A

Activities and societies: Research

Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech

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