Sarath Kumar
Product Leader
IRVING,TX
Summary
Product leader who has guided enterprise data through three eras: traditional warehousing, cloud analytics, and modern AI. With 19 years of experience—including a 14-year foundation in consulting where I built and led cross-functional teams —I specialize in the end-to-end data supply chain. Partnering daily with business, core engineering, and architecture teams, I direct matrixed organizations and mentor product owners, turning stakeholder alignment and tradeoffs under constraint into a core leadership skill set. As a certified CSPO and CSM, I translate multi-year strategy into shipped outcomes through rigorous OKR framing, capital funding alignment, and Agile/SAFe PI planning. Currently owning the data platform portfolio at a regulated financial institution, I enable multiple development teams to deliver scalable data infrastructure, build enterprise agentic AI capabilities, and use AI-assisted workflows to accelerate platform implementations and product management efficiency—all under strict governance and audit controls. Backed by a Post Graduate Program in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Business Applications and hands-on AWS infrastructure depth, I build predictable operating models and hold vendors to uncompromising architecture, access, and security standards.
Overview
5
5
Certifications
19
19
years of professional experience
Work History
Digital / Technical Product Manager Lead (Product Delivery & Platform Execution)
USAA
Plano, TX
12.2021 - Current
- Drive end-to-end delivery execution for a portfolio of AI/ML and automation platforms in a highly regulated financial services enterprise — partnering with product owners, technology, and delivery leadership to keep roadmaps on track, teams healthy, and risk and controls intact.
- Planning & delivery execution — Drove delivery predictability from 23% volatility to 100% on-plan through feature-definition standards, acceptance-criteria rigor, and disciplined backlog governance — the kind of planning and execution rigor a multi-team roadmap depends on.
- Agile & Jira hygiene — Set backlog governance and feature-definition standards across SAFe and Scrum/Kanban teams, keeping Jira hygiene and PI planning discipline tight enough to sustain 170-184% of team capacity in ready backlog.
- Risk and controls — Sustained 99-100% SDLC compliance against ITGC standards across all product platforms, and instituted the data ownership, stewardship, and accuracy controls that keep architecture patterns audit-ready end to end.
- Established backlog governance and feature-definition standards across SAFe and Scrum/Kanban teams, ensuring Jira hygiene and PI planning discipline supported 170-184% of team capacity in ready backlog.
- Coordinated sequencing of vendor SaaS releases and compliance-driven upgrades in regulated environment, representing platform impacts in enterprise-wide planning and communicating release status to technical architects and business executives.
- Achieved 99-100% SDLC compliance against ITGC standards across all product platforms, instituting data ownership, stewardship, and accuracy controls to ensure architecture patterns remained audit-ready end to end.
- Proactive risk management — Escalated Hadoop's vendor end-of-support exposure early, driving 86% asset visibility and 55% of assets flagged for retirement — avoiding multi-million-dollar cost impact — and deprecated legacy ETL platforms, migrating 2,720 jobs onto modern, cloud-native ELT engines.
- AI/ML-enabled operations — Piloted enterprise agentic AI capability on IBM Watsonx Orchestrate — self-service answers over a governance knowledge base with deterministic escalation and non-deterministic agentic behaviors — and led the operating model behind Automation Anywhere RPA, both used daily by employees across multiple lines of business.
- Built and led teams of 15-40
Principal Consultant / Senior Manager
CAPCO
Dallas, TX
11.2019 - 12.2021
- Built and led a 15-person team — 12 engineers and 3 business analysts — with direct hiring, mentoring, and performance-review authority on both the consulting and client sides.
- Delivered three concurrent regulated analytics programs — Card Fraud risk, B2B Sales Operations, and Private Banking reporting — from requirements to production, managing scope and risk in collaboration with CDO and senior directors.
- Developed enterprise data governance framework from the ground up — including cataloging, PII/PCI/MNPI classification, retention, and access controls — to ensure compliance with GDPR and CCPA.
- Mentored junior consultants, fostering professional growth and knowledge sharing within the team.
- Developed and prioritized product roadmaps based on market research and customer feedback.
- Established strong relationships with stakeholders, enhancing trust and collaboration throughout project lifecycles.
- Developed product documentation to communicate upcoming features and products to internal teams.
- Proficient integrator persona managing a strong team of senior engineers across AWS infrastructure, data architecture, security and DevOps
- Led architectural discussions for automation of data ingestion patterns, data masking for confidential information in lower environments, AWS solutions involving Lake Formation, user and application IAM, S3 provisioning, Redshift database management, RDS management, and Splunk integrations (security & application logging)
- Served as a trusted advisor for clients navigating complex industry landscapes.
Sr. Consultant
DELOITTE CONSULTING LLP
Dallas, TX
07.2014 - 11.2019
- Led delivery of enterprise data and analytics platforms for regulatory use cases — LCR, CECL, FDIC 370, capital and profitability reporting — across banking, insurance, digital media, and public-sector clients.
- Managed cross-functional teams of up to 40 across onsite and offshore scrum teams, with full accountability for scope, roadmap, budget, and delivery.
- Managed cross-functional teams of up to 40 across onsite and offshore scrum teams, ensuring alignment on scope, roadmap, budget, and timely delivery.
- Facilitated onboarding, quarterly training, and half-yearly performance reviews; established data quality standards and resolution SLAs that minimized restatements in regulatory reporting.
Technology Lead
INFOSYS
Chicago, Illinois
11.2007 - 07.2014
- Led onsite-offshore teams of 15-20 through Oracle-to-Teradata migration of 1,000+ ETL jobs for Abbott Labs.
- Managed account operations including resource planning, billing, contract renewals, and RFP pursuits, recognized with Applause Award, Most Valuable Player, and Rookie of the Year.
- Led cross-functional teams to deliver innovative technology solutions aligning with business objectives.
- Oversaw architecture design and implementation of scalable software systems enhancing performance and reliability.
- Drove continuous improvement initiatives, optimizing processes and reducing operational costs through strategic planning.
Education
Post Graduate Program - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Business Applications
McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas, United States07-2026
Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) - Electronics & Communication Engineering
University of Kerala
India01-2007
Skills
SQL
Python
Jira
Confluence
ServiceNow
Visual Studio Code w/ Co-Pilot
Product analytics
Multi-year product roadmap development
Portfolio lifecycle & modernization management
Agile / SAFe Program Management
Cross-LOB Stakeholder Management
Release Management & Communication
Certification
Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner (CSP-PO)
Timeline
Digital / Technical Product Manager Lead (Product Delivery & Platform Execution)
USAA
12.2021 - Current
Principal Consultant / Senior Manager
CAPCO
11.2019 - 12.2021
Sr. Consultant
DELOITTE CONSULTING LLP
07.2014 - 11.2019
Technology Lead
INFOSYS
11.2007 - 07.2014
Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) - Electronics & Communication Engineering
University of Kerala
Post Graduate Program - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Business Applications
McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin