Summary
Overview
Work History
Skills
Websites
Education Certifications
Current Role
Timeline
Generic

Gargi Thakur

Hoboken,NJ

Summary

Performance-driven technology leader with 18+ years of experience shaping organizations and driving innovation through strategic technology management. Expert in steering the entire software development lifecycle, enhancing operational efficiency, and fueling revenue growth. Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams, navigate complex challenges, and negotiate innovative solutions. Seasoned Agile Coach with a relentless focus on delivering measurable results in dynamic and uncertain environments.

Overview

17
17
years of professional experience

Work History

Director, System Reliability Management

Lifion by ADP
  • Increased company revenue by streamlining processes and implementing AWS cost-optimization (saved $1.5M per year).
  • Enhanced team collaboration through regular communication, goal setting, and performance evaluations.
  • Developed high-performing teams by providing mentorship, guidance, and opportunities for professional growth.
  • Improved project efficiency with strategic planning, resource allocation, and time management practices.
  • Improved MTTR for production incidents via automation, runbooks, removing process bottlenecks and conducting blameless incident reviews.
  • Proactively identified potential risks and implemented mitigation strategies to minimize negative impacts on projects or business operations.
  • Cultivated a positive work environment that fostered employee engagement, increased retention rates, and boosted overall team morale.
  • Worked closely with executive leadership, senior VPs, directors across the org to guide operational strategy.

Senior Manager, Technical Program Management

Lifion by ADP
04.2017 - 12.2021
  • Managed a team of highly engaged 5 technical program managers along with their career development and progression
  • Successfully built the technical program management team from 5-members to 35-members team (interviewed over 250 candidates in the past 5 years)
  • Collaborated with, and influenced various engineering, reliability, product, customer success, sales, ADP’s Central Legal, Privacy, Compliance and Global Security Organization (GSO) teams etc
  • To drive complex and ambiguous projects which have impact on engineering productivity, client go-lives, opening up sales pipeline in the new regions, keeping customer data secure etc
  • Led and successfully completed many multi-quarter cross-functional initiatives GDPR, SOC-1, SOC-2 compliance, migration from Flowdock to Webex Teams, OKRs framework etc.
  • Drove analysis, resolution and response of Security incidents working with GSO, product, engineering and customer success teams
  • Created and rolled out vulnerability management workflow and dashboard in Jira to showcase trends report to stakeholders at various levels
  • Worked with Sales RFP teams on new client questionnaires related to security, privacy, compliances etc
  • Provided weekly risk/status updates to VP, Senior directors, project sponsor, product owner, business stakeholders as well as Program Manager Community
  • Drove and educated best agile practices across the org.

Technology Lead

Infosys Ltd. (Client – Avon Products, US)
07.2013 - 04.2017
  • Worked for multiple markets of Avon’s GI3 application - UK, Turkey and LATAM guiding regional business teams through site-walkthrough/review meetings, technical discussions, config and content deployments
  • Participated in product/backlog refinement calls with the Product owner/business team understanding user journey and assessing technical feasibility of requirements
  • Coached various teams in their Agile journey and mentored various team members on Scrum basics as Avon was going through their Agile transformation
  • Communicated with various other stakeholders on a regular/need basis.

Development Engineering Manager

Infosys Ltd. (Client – Cisco Systems, Inc.)
01.2005 - 10.2012
  • Managed a team of 6 engineers which included Infosys and Cisco associates
  • Worked for various Cisco products as a Project Manager for global development team, responsible for end to end delivery of all DRS features, defects, enhancements and customer cases
  • Understood the feature requirement in scrum meetings, evaluated framework impact, high level and detailed design of various features of the given product suite
  • Tracked and reported status to various stakeholders and program managers
  • Troubleshot various customer issues relating to backing up/restoring files and SFTP issues.

Skills

  • Collaborative Leadership
  • Contract and Vendor Management
  • Strategic and Roadmap Planning
  • Leadership Development
  • Stakeholder Engagement
  • Hiring and Retention
  • Incident and Change Management
  • AWS Cost Optimization Strategies
  • Disaster Recovery Planning
  • Agile Software Development

Education Certifications

  • Bachelor of Technology, Computer Sci. and Engg., Punjab Technical University, India, 2000, 2004
  • Advanced Cyber Security Certificate, Stanford School of Engineering, 03/2021
  • Certified Scrum Professional
  • Certified Incident Responder, PagerDuty

Current Role

Director, System Reliability Management, Lifion by ADP

Timeline

Senior Manager, Technical Program Management

Lifion by ADP
04.2017 - 12.2021

Technology Lead

Infosys Ltd. (Client – Avon Products, US)
07.2013 - 04.2017

Development Engineering Manager

Infosys Ltd. (Client – Cisco Systems, Inc.)
01.2005 - 10.2012

Director, System Reliability Management

Lifion by ADP
Gargi Thakur