Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Timeline
Generic
Hareesh Jagannathan

Hareesh Jagannathan

Minneapolis,MN

Summary

Accomplished engineering leader renowned for problem-solving acumen, strategic prowess, and adaptive leadership in the dynamic retail sector. With a rich background spanning 17 years, brings a blend of hands-on engineering expertise, unwavering passion, and a relentless drive to tackle intricate customer challenges head-on. Experience encompasses the development of web-scale applications, including REST APIs, reactive web apps, and sophisticated data processing pipelines leveraging reactive streams and big data frameworks. Additionally, possesses 9 years of specialized expertise in search technology, with a comprehensive understanding of designing robust search solutions—from advanced querying and faceting to spellcheck, suggestion, and ML-based relevancy tuning. Proficiency extends to complex data augmentation for search indexing, as well as architecting SOLR deployment strategies, performance tuning, KPI tracking, and business performance optimizations. Furthermore, significant experience in building recommendation platforms that utilize ML-based solutions to construct hyper-personalized recommendation engines, elevating customer experiences to unprecedented levels of customization. Over 5 years, demonstrated exceptional leadership capabilities, adeptly building and nurturing high-performing teams, providing mentorship, and orchestrating the successful delivery of multiple high-impact customer experiences.

Overview

17
17
years of professional experience

Work History

Associate Director of Engineering (Recommendation Platform)

Best Buy
09.2022 - Current
  • Led teams of up to 30 personnel, overseeing daily performance, as well as implementing training and improvement plans.
  • Collaborated with senior leadership to devise a strategy for transitioning the existing Recommendation Platform from Collaborative Filtering to ML-powered Recommendations.
  • Directed multiple teams and squads to deliver various ML-based Recommendation solutions.
  • Led squads in enhancing customers' shopping experiences through the Recommendation Platforms service, utilizing NextJS, React, React Native, and GraphQL.
  • Collaborated with Product, Data Science, and other stakeholders to develop a Sequential recommender for Next Event Prediction using LSTM.
  • Spearheaded the development of a Product Embedding model using autoencoders for creating compare recommendations, in collaboration with Product, Data Science, and other stakeholders.
  • Collaborated with Product, Data Science, and other stakeholders to build complimentary recommendations using LLM (GPT4) and GRU models.
  • Oversawdevelopment of Recs ranker using Two Tower model, in partnership with Product, Data Science, and other stakeholders.
  • Prioritized tasks and allocated resources effectively to maintain team focus and productivity.
  • Partnered with Data Scientists to brainstorm and develop Deep Learning ML models, including training, feature engineering, serving, and integration into search workflows.
  • Managed technical debts and prioritized initiatives to ensure system stability and operational efficiency, while aligning with product vision using the OKR framework.
  • Cultivated a culture of continuous improvement by fostering an environment where staff share innovative ideas and provide resources for professional development.
  • Strengthened the team through active recruitment, mentoring, and skill development of existing team members.

Associate Director of Engineering (Augmented Intelligence Service)

Best Buy
01.2022 - Current
  • Concurrently manage multiple teams with multiple squads to deliver various ML based search solutions
  • Architected, built and managed delivery of a platform to bring ML model serving at web scale with multi layered caching strategies
  • Collaborate with Data scientists to brainstorm and solution Deep learned ML model training, feature engineering, serving and integration into search workflows
  • Managed the enterprise SOLR Platform team and architected solutions based on new SOLR architecture for various search needs within enterprise
  • Collaborate with engineering leadership to align my portfolios vision with enterprise engineering vision
  • Manage Tech debts and prioritize Tech debts and “Keep the lights On” initiatives Collaborate with product leadership to strategize vision and align per quarter commitment with product vision using OKR framework
  • Build team by doing active recruitment, mentoring and skillset development of existing team members.

Senior Engineering Manager (Search Product Team)

Bestbuy
01.2019 - 01.2022
  • Managed a team of 25 engineers across 5 squads to deliver many key search experiences ranging from faceting, sponsored ranking, Relevancy
  • Built a Dense Vector Search in 2020 using off the rack models like Spacy,ELMO for creating Vector embedding and used Milvus as Vector Store.
  • Solutioned built and delivered a streaming data pipeline in GCP using node code approaches to deliver search relevancy signal using collaborative filtering
  • Modernized Search platform by transition the indexing pipeline from monolith to distributed event driven microservices connected via Kafka
  • Built a Devops model by implementing CI/CD for 40+ apps using Jenkins,Gradle and custom Jenkins pipeline plugins
  • Architected various ML model-based relevancy tuning approaches to SOLR Search workflows
  • Built a stable support and maintenance team that relied on custom built observability using Grafana, Prometheus for monitoring, logging and alerting for all search indexing and querying time apps
  • Search APi's and Solr performance tuning using various java garbage collection tuning approaches
  • Stake holder communication that enabled in onboarding many new tenants on to search platform.

Tech Lead

Bestbuy
01.2014 - 05.2019
  • Lead team of Engineers (between 4-15 developers) to deliver various search features
  • Extensive Experience in building reactive stream based applications, Distributed computing and Containerized applications
  • Active participation during planning and execution of Epics using agile methodologies
  • Experience in transforming monolithic application to microservices
  • Design/Architected many search features and managed team of developers to deliver the same
  • Pioneered building many new applications using cutting edge technologies like GCP tools, Spring Webflux and Akka streams
  • Played key role in delivering many Apache SOLR based search solutions which would enable delivering better search experience
  • Built a CI framework using docker for executing Integration and Automation tests.

Android Mobile App Developer

BI Worldwide
02.2013 - 12.2013
  • Technical consultant role with responsibilities including building a mobile web application and a hybrid app using the mobile web
  • Built the android app from scratch .App involved Webview, invoking native features like Camera ApI
  • The application also involved building a responsive mobile web application using Javascript, JQuery, Bootstrap, HTML5,CSS3,MediaQueries
  • Built Restful service to be used by Jquery template and JQuery AJAX to build dynamic web pages of mobile web

Senior Developer (Bestbuy Mobile DOTCOM)

Wipro Technologies
05.2011 - 02.2013


  • Developed reusable code libraries that streamlined development efforts and improved consistency in software architecture across multiple projects.
  • Architected, Designed, Developed BestBuy Mobile CMS system and pioneered BestBuy first AWS APplication
  • Full stack Engineering ranging from Application development using Spring,CXF-JAXRS , JQuery , DevOps and cloud deployments using Chef.
  • Lead the Team of 4 from onsite and coordinating with business team to get the requirements, working with development team and tracking through delivery.

Application Developer (International Point of Sale(IPOS))

Wipro Technologies
10.2007 - 06.2011
  • Developed core features on the ORACLE POS system for Best Buy's International POS platform, including LDAP integration, financial modules such as loan origination, and security implementations using KMS Keys.
  • Served as the Onsite Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Best Buy in China, Mexico, Turkey, and the UK.
  • Led the development efforts as the Lead Developer for building financial modules for Best Buy UK's IPOS application, which involved integrating IRPOS BBYUK with credit devices to enable credit tendering and developing bank loan functionality as a tender option for Best Buy UK.
  • Successfully implemented Best Buy's ORACLE POS system in over 20 stores worldwide.

Education

Master's in computer science (Machine Learning Specialization) -

Georgia Tech (In Progress)
Atlanta, GA

Bachelor of Engineering in Polymer technologies -

Crescent Engineering College, Anna University, Chennai, India
India
01.2007

Skills

  • Strategic leadership
  • Analytical Thinking
  • Project Management
  • Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Shell Scripts
  • J2EE, Spring, Spring Boot ATG e-commerce, Apache CXF, JAXB, REST, ROC(Netkernel), JSF, RichFaces, Hibernate, JUnit, Struts, Jquery, Mockito, Angular JS, Akkaio
  • Tomcat, JBoss, Apache Httpd Server, OAS
  • GCP/AWS Proficiency

Timeline

Associate Director of Engineering (Recommendation Platform)

Best Buy
09.2022 - Current

Associate Director of Engineering (Augmented Intelligence Service)

Best Buy
01.2022 - Current

Senior Engineering Manager (Search Product Team)

Bestbuy
01.2019 - 01.2022

Tech Lead

Bestbuy
01.2014 - 05.2019

Android Mobile App Developer

BI Worldwide
02.2013 - 12.2013

Senior Developer (Bestbuy Mobile DOTCOM)

Wipro Technologies
05.2011 - 02.2013

Application Developer (International Point of Sale(IPOS))

Wipro Technologies
10.2007 - 06.2011

Master's in computer science (Machine Learning Specialization) -

Georgia Tech (In Progress)

Bachelor of Engineering in Polymer technologies -

Crescent Engineering College, Anna University, Chennai, India
Hareesh Jagannathan