Santhosh Kumar Saminathan
Summary
- 13+ years of experience in building highly scalable software and data products using distributed systems and big data technologies, with a proven track record of leading 0->1 initiatives in AI and data platforms
- 6+ years of managing multiple teams focusing on data engineering and data science
- Proven track record of designing and deploying production grade LLM powered agents and RAG pipelines for real-time analysis and automation
- Solid understanding of distributed systems with experience in processing huge volume of data using Kafka, Spark, and NoSQL databases on AWS and GCP
- Expertise in SQL and Object oriented programming languages including Python and Java
- Experienced in partnering closely with internal teams (Product, Engineering, Customer Success) and directly engaging with external customers to troubleshoot complex issues, align technical solutions with business needs, and ensure timely delivery
Overview
17
17
years of professional experience
Work History
Engineering Manager
Trepp Inc.
01.2024 - Current
- Managed a team of 14 engineers responsible for building software and data products for CMBS, CLO, CRE, and Banking verticals
- Worked closely with CRO and CPO to identify opportunities for new revenue streams and product features
- Led the development of scalable data pipelines on Databricks leveraging Spark and Delta Lake to integrate, cleanse, and model CRE and CLO data from diverse cloud sources such as S3, ensuring reliability, performance, and downstream analytics readiness
- Designed and developed a real time pipeline using Kafka, Flink, and Iceberg to process 100TB of data per day for BI and ML teams
- Built a RAG agent powered by GPT-4 using Pinecone and Flask to automate CRE deal analysis; reduced search time from hours to minutes, and drove ~$400K in annual productivity gains
- Led the development of an LLM powered observability agent that analyzes logs from AWS CloudWatch and auto resolves issues using GPT-4 LLMs, LangGraph and AWS Bedrock cutting response time by 20%
Engineering Manager
BigCommerce
03.2019 - 12.2023
- Defined and executed the short and long term engineering and product strategy for BigCommerce’s Data and ML teams while leading a geographically distributed team of 10 engineers to deliver high quality data and software products
- Worked directly with enterprise merchants and Customer Success teams to diagnose and resolve real time analytics and data quality issues, ensuring reliable insights for storefront performance and strengthening customer trust in BigCommerce’s analytics products
- Led A/B testing initiatives in partnership with Marketing and Product to analyze user behavior and validate product features, resulting in a 12% lift in conversion and data driven optimization of campaign targeting
- Built a recommender system for suggesting similar and related products to shoppers using GraphQL and Google Retail API
- Built a Product description generator using Google GenAI and LLMs which improved listing conversion rates by ~20%
- Implemented batch pipelines to load data into BigQuery datasets within GCP accounts of merchants using Cloud Composer and generated a new revenue stream of $1M+ annually
- Managed implementation of native integration of stores to Google Analytics 4 using a custom data layer
- Developed new analytical reports for carts and in-store search data using real-time data pipeline
- Led migration initiatives for moving data from AWS to GCP with 0 downtime
Team Lead
BigCommerce
03.2018 - 02.2019
- Assumed control of a data pipeline stack from an acquisition, swiftly becoming the SME, and improved metric accuracy by nearly 100% by resolving critical bugs through MapReduce and Hive enhancements, resulting in a 36% reduction in batch processing time
- Designed and developed a real-time data pipeline to collect, process, and persist real-time data handling a volume of 1.6 billion events daily for various engineering projects to power B2C products
- Implemented data infrastructure required to manage components like Kafka, Kafka Streams, HBase, and Aurora in AWS using services but not limited to Terraform, EC2, EMR, ECS, and S3
- Actively mentored junior engineers on the team and built a strong engineering culture focusing on agile methodologies and engineering best practices
Senior Software Engineer
BigCommerce
03.2016 - 02.2018
- Developed and maintained a data lake in S3 that stored over 1 PB of consumer data, enabling data-driven decisions for key business initiatives
- Designed batch ETL pipelines to power Snowflake data warehouse using Airflow
Principal Software Engineer
LotusFlare
10.2015 - 02.2016
- Developed a portal that creates cluster nodes on the fly and processes daily log files that are stored in AWS S3 using Spark, Scala, and Ansible
- Architected a reporting tool for subscriptions data using Hive and AWS Redshift
Senior Software Engineer
Upwork Inc.
07.2013 - 10.2015
- Analyzed user behaviors by implementing A/B testing of features added to the website using Hadoop MapReduce
- Developed a payment gateway that supports credit cards and Paypal payment methods using Java
- Implemented Forex currency transactions to payment gateway enabling collection and remittance in multiple currencies using Java and Guice
Software Engineer-II
EBay Inc
04.2012 - 07.2013
- Improved selling experiences by creating business profiles like shipping, billing, and return policies
- Developed an analytics engine to process buyer events using Hadoop MapReduce
- Implemented a service to eliminate duplicate product listings using Java
Associate System Engineer
IBM
12.2008 - 07.2010
- Enhanced the accessibility for differently-abled users in ecommerce applications using Java and JavaScript
Education
Master of Science - Computer Science
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN04-2012
Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science And Engineering
Anna University
Chennai, India, India05-2008
Skills
- Data Platform: Spark, Flink, Kafka, Airflow, Databricks, Snowflake, dbt, Hadoop, Iceberg, Presto, Terraform
- AI, LLMs: GPT-4, Gemini 15, Qdrant, LangGraph, MCP, PyTorch, TensorFlow, AutoViML
- Databases: HBase, Cassandra, MySQL, PostgreSQL
- Languages: Python, Java, Scala, C
Timeline
Engineering Manager
Trepp Inc.
01.2024 - Current
Engineering Manager
BigCommerce
03.2019 - 12.2023
Team Lead
BigCommerce
03.2018 - 02.2019
Senior Software Engineer
BigCommerce
03.2016 - 02.2018
Principal Software Engineer
LotusFlare
10.2015 - 02.2016
Senior Software Engineer
Upwork Inc.
07.2013 - 10.2015
Software Engineer-II
EBay Inc
04.2012 - 07.2013
Associate System Engineer
IBM
12.2008 - 07.2010
Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science And Engineering
Anna University
Master of Science - Computer Science
Indiana University