Prasuna Guda

Company Overview: Sterling is one of the largest background check companies in the world, with more than 50,000 global clients, including 50% of the Fortune 100.

• Directed teams in supporting backend systems, interfaces, and databases for Sterling Core Platform.
  Oversaw integration of APIs, HUB, Integrations, and Verifications to enhance system functionality.
  Guided teams in creating and designing APIs, balancing technical and functional requirements of products.
• Directs teams of developers and automation engineers that perform technical designs, define technical solutions, develop new systems and features, refactor code, and repair or redesign the existing complex software systems and application functionality.
• Support AWS instances to a globally deployed platform, supporting multiple regions.
• Facilitated collaboration with engineering and product managers to align on client priorities and create actionable deliverable plans.
  Engaged with Tech Leads and Architects to analyze technical designs and ensure efficient implementation of solutions.
• Resource allocation management to provide support for multiple projects and production support by hiring developers and automation teams.
• Actively work with stakeholders, client success partners, and Tech Support to have 24/7 support for software systems.
• Created and maintained a comprehensive set of product metrics to measure user engagement and feature adoption.
• Tracked KPIs and overall product performance, ensuring continuous optimization aligned with business goals.
• Contributed to Monthly and Quarterly Business Reviews, collaborating with Product and program management teams to outline 12-month roadmap and status tracking
• Organize grooming sessions with product owners, tech leads, and developers to ensure requirements are clearly defined and documented.
• Monitor project deliverables continuously and proactively to improve methods and best practices to avoid delays, missing requirements, and inefficient technical solutions or designs.
• Work with vendors to train the resources by identifying any for both offshore and onshore resources.
• Release management for the Sterling platform is to provide efficient support for CI/CD.
• Implemented standard best practices during code reviews, ensuring high-quality outputs. Managed processes continuously to support production needs and timely project deliverables.
  Enhanced code review procedures through ongoing improvements in best practices.
• Define team performance measurements/metrics to have efficient evaluation through mentoring and consistent feedback.
• Integrated software systems with third-party vendors to enhance operational efficiency, and assessed third-party tools for functionality and compatibility to ensure optimal performance.
• Guides team in adhering to system development and testing life cycles, encompassing design, coding, testing, documentation, installation, maintenance, and support of proprietary and/or purchased software systems/applications.
• Confirms test cases, scenarios, testing, and documentation meet customer expectations, conducting ongoing analysis and assessment of automations, making decisions on application enhancements as needed, and prioritizing workloads for teams.
• Evaluates pay, performance, appraisals, work schedules, discipline, and hiring and supports developers in achieving long- and short-term business objectives.
• Direct teams to achieve operational excellence through metric capture from multiple reports, implementing well-defined quality and security targets at organizational level.
• Guide teams to proactively assess regulatory compliance and resolve auditing (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOX) queries and concerns.
• Implemented status tracking systems to monitor product development progress and communicate effectively across teams.
• Facilitated identification of bottlenecks, providing timely updates on key project milestones.

• Established communication protocols with stakeholders to identify needs and enhance delivery plans.
• Conducted analyses to pinpoint process gaps, ensuring alignment with industry standards and corporate objectives.
• Implemented process improvement strategies by leveraging Six Sigma methodologies for operational excellence.
• Managed business and technical issues to deliver effective solutions through strategic project management.
• Provided technical leadership throughout project life cycles, analyzing and designing innovative solutions.
• Recruited and developed a consulting team for Kentucky Project, including senior consultants and analysts.
• Facilitated collaboration between clients and development teams to define contracts and service level agreements.
• Served as subject matter expert for Integrated Tax Systems Project, ensuring compliance with customer expectations.

• Gained extensive functional knowledge in various domains, such as life, annuities, reinsurance, and general ledger, accounting, and leading hedge, and played a technical SME role.
• Played a very significant role in planning, prioritizing, resourcing, executing, leading, and delivering many critical financial and actuarial applications, processes, and transformations for projects ranging from $100M to $2B successfully.
• Participated in program/project planning, budgeting, hiring, conducting interviews, mentoring, and team performance reviews.
• Managed and led a 20-member team of business analysts, developers, and quality engineers to complete several complex and time-sensitive projects.
• Directed the team to strictly follow system development/testing live cycles, including design, coding, testing, documentation, installation, maintenance, and support of proprietary and/or purchased software systems/applications.
• Successfully implemented migration projects that involve application migrations from on-premises to AWS, Windows, and Unix application servers to the latest versions, as well as database (Oracle/SQL Server) migrations.
• Successfully managed and led a huge initiative of Transamerica’s Transform Project to migrate 28 admin systems to a Vendor Admin system, integrating several finance downstream systems, converting and decommissioning legacy systems to the new admin system, and recommending, designing, and developing architectural solutions with the new admin system.
• Lead projects by actively involving designed, developed, and supported multiplatform systems: UVT (Pricing & Trading), Leading Hedge, Unity (Fund Performance systems), CMS/RT Lawrence (Cashiering system), Taxport (generating tax forms 1099, 5498, PR, etc.), FinScan (OFAC), Patriot Manager (AML), GEAC (General Accounting Ledger, Accounting Voucher, Publishing), and several other homegrown systems.
• Contributed to evaluating new vendor products, tools, and software, analyzed different technical and functional features, and recommended them based on a long-term perspective.
• Heavily involved in gathering requirements, direct customer interaction during project planning, specifications, design, development, and product implementation phases for all the environments.
• Managed and actively participated in end-to-end Waterfall and Agile functional, regression, and system testing for projects in the design, development, and production phases.
• Reviewed, analyzed, and evaluated business and user needs, establishing and documenting business requirements.
• Lead BRD’s review to ensure the vendor system is meeting the business’s requirements, and recommend enhancements to the vendor’s systems.
• Oversaw the configuration, maintenance, and efficient integration with third-party vendor software, and aligned with organizational requirements.
• Scheduling, allocating, and monitoring work among the multiple teams, and being responsible for the successful delivery of the entire project or sub-projects by performing code reviews, technical spec reviews, and mentoring teams.
• Consistently performed above and beyond in coming up with the best standard practices and making sure they are followed across the teams and divisions.
• The Lead/Mentor of the Production Support Team provided them with knowledge about systems and technologies, defects/issues analysis, solutions, and SLAs to ensure the business is supported 24/7 without any outages or financial losses.
• Lead multiple teams to support activities, analysis, technical design, quality assurance testing, troubleshooting for both batch and online application programs in distributed systems, and have good knowledge about Vantage Admin Systems, server infrastructure, security, and auditing.
• Lead projects and provided support to both traditional and modern leading hedge systems and processes.
• Supported the VOS (Variable Oracle System) Pricing and Trading System and played the role of Technical Lead for the project of replacing VOS with UVT (Vendor System).
• Lead the project to launch the SAP/LRM Reinsurance system, gaining a good understanding of the overall SAP architecture, LRM module, and BW reporting.
• Played a Subject Matter Expertise role for various distributed systems developed with multiple technologies (Oracle Forms, Oracle Batch Processes, Java, .NET, Informatica, etc.).
• Create and supervise a thorough set of product metrics alongside product management team to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), analyze user engagement, track feature adoption, and review overall product performance, securing alignment with business objectives and facilitating ongoing optimization.
• Partnered with Information Security team to enforce compliance with established security policies, assessed regulatory frameworks while addressing audit queries for SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOX requirements, reviewed auditing reports meticulously to ensure robust risk mitigation measures, and coordinated with various teams to disseminate updates on security practices and compliance expectations.