Open to opportunities

Venkatesh Purushothaman

@venkateshpurushotham

Message

I lead software engineering teams to build reliable, scalable, AI-first platforms.

India

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking to lead AI-first, event-driven product engineering where I own end-to-end delivery, scale global teams, and partner with product and compliance to build 99.99% reliable platforms.

I’m a Director-level software engineering leader focused on global product development and GCC site leadership, with a track record of building scalable, event-driven platforms that reach very high reliability targets.

Across travel, eCommerce, FinTech, and payments, I’ve led “0 to 1” and large-scale expansions—scaling engineering teams from 10+ to 100+—and delivered end-to-end accountability from discovery and architecture through development, DevOps/SecOps, testing, and production operations. I prioritize customer outcomes, privacy/PII compliance first, and measurable delivery velocity using an AI-first approach (including AI agentic engineering, AI RAG, and multi-model LLM systems).

I thrive in cross-region collaboration (India and global stakeholders) and “multihats” environments where strategy and execution must move together. I also invest heavily in people: hiring for attitude, mentoring to unlock aptitude, and building self-sustaining, high-performing teams around operational excellence and SRE-grade reliability.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Director, Software Engineering

Current

Serko.AI

Aug 2025 - Present (9 months)

Built and scaled the India GCC team from 0 to 70+ in 6 months and designed an event-driven microservices travel platform (scalable to PaaS) with an AI-agentic SDLC to accelerate delivery velocity. Led global strategy and execution with quarterly planning and end-to-end accountability across discovery, architecture, development, and DevSecOps/ProdOps/DevOps.

Event Driven Architecture GCP REST APIs Snowflake

Director of Software Engineering

Expedia

Dec 2018 - Jul 2023 (4 years 7 months)

Led Expedia’s Reviews platform engineering across global teams, managing UGC ingestion and intelligence for hotel/travel marketplace brands while maintaining 99.99% availability. Drove platform scalability to 2000–5000+ RPS and helped improve SEO, contributing 17% of organic search traffic.

Review Platform AWS React Python

Head of Hardware & Software Eng

Innoviti

Dec 2017 - Dec 2018 (1 year)

Led end-to-end engineering for Innoviti POS retail card payment solutions, including core payment transactions, embedded/Android device software, infrastructure, monitoring, and 24x7 support. Built a real-time analytics/monitoring platform using Kafka/Cassandra/Debezium/MySQL and led a 30+ person PCI-DSS compliant engineering team.

Cassandra Debezium Redis AWS

Head of Software Engineering

Savaari.com

May 2015 - Dec 2017 (2 years 7 months)

Owned end-to-end software product development for web applications, consumer mobile apps, driver-partner apps, and REST APIs powering reliable 24x7 intercity taxi operations. Built products from scratch with a hands-on, multi-hat approach (engineering + DevOps/SRE + DevSecOps), led a 25+ engineering team, and introduced Agile Scrum to accelerate go-to-market delivery.

REST APIs Agile Scrum Web Application Engineer AngularJS DevOps

Director, Software Engineering

Eventbrite

Jul 2023 - Present (2 years 10 months)

Built and scaled the Eventbrite India GCC to 150+ employees and transitioned platform marketplace services group capabilities in India. Led a TP99 99.95% reliable, always-on 24x7 ticketing/CX-CRM stack with AI chatbot-based support, PII/GDPR/CCPA compliance, and scalable async event-driven services.

Kafka SQS Event Driven SOA Python Django GDPR Compliance REST APIs Redis Snowflake React Native