Pursuing technology-powered ideas to innovate in various domains. Focused on exploring how AI/ML can help enterprises, operators and providers to capitalize on the large expanse of opportunities that 5G creates. I will be talking to industry experts, technologists, entrepreneurs and executives to uncover opportunities and finding meaningful ways of addressing them.

Serving as a member of the Linux Foundation AI governing board member

As the Head of Ericsson's Global AI Accelerator (GAIA), I was responsible for building up (from scratch) and running a large (300+), global and diverse R&D team of Data Scientists, Data Engineers, ML/AI Architects, Software Engineers and Business Analysts across 4 locations - Santa Clara, Sweden, India and Canada. GAIA has responsibility for accelerating Ericsson's ML/AI charter - by way of enhancing Ericsson's company-wide product portfolio with AI-capabilities as well as bringing AI and ML elements to catalyze the company’s automation agenda.During my time in this role, I lead- The delivery of more than 200 projects – ranging from intelligent automation of several telecom workflows to building deep AI capabilities into the guts of the company’s RAN, Core, OSS and Managed Services portfolios- Evangelizing AI with the board and executive team, all the way to the product teams- Foundational initiatives in the “AI-fication” of the company – starting from high-end talent acquisition to defining data science development workflows to embedding data science as a mainstream component of product development and service delivery workflows

Vice President, Technology, Digital Services (Jun 2016 – Aug 2018) Responsible for a global technology organization spread across Silicon Valley, Stockholm, Germany, Budapest, Montreal, Ireland and China. The unit covers a broad portfolio that includes the following areas - several of which have Ericsson in Market Leadership positions.- Cloud Infrastructure - Telecom Cloud Infrastructure (NFVi) and Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure- Classic Telecom Network Functions - Packet Core, Mobile Core, Voice Core (IMS)- Control Layer - SDN, Network Management, OSS/BSSMy unit's responsibilities include Technology Leadership, Portfolio Strategy, System Architecture, Portfolio Innovation & Prototype Development, Industry Standards and Open Source, Technology Scouting & Partnerships. Vice President, Technology, IP (Dec 2014 – Jun 2016) Lead Technology Leadership, early customer engagement/PoCs, technology scouting and ecosystem engagement and development. Lead the development of PoCs and blue-prints that contribute to the realization of several industry 
trends like next-gen central office/CORD, disaggregated networks, white boxes, SDN (for Cloud & 
Transport), 5G and others. Took on the additional role of leading the company's IP Operating System (IPOS) 
Product group and affected several measures to streamline its charter and operations.

Established the unit from scratch - starting from location assessment, facility build-out, support system
build-out, branding, talent acquisition, establishing the charter as well as governance of this unit.
 Recruited some of the best engineers in Bangalore into the unit, created a structure that optimized the
 operation and helped scale very quickly to more than 4000 people, with 650 people in R&D.
 Ericsson R&D India is now a very critical and strategic part of Ericsson's global R&D foot-print.
 Started up and eventually scaled up Ericsson's SDN Development team - responsible for Ericsson's SDN
products. 
Expanded the scope of this unit to include several other product development units (OSS, IMS, etc.)
 and other functions such as Research and Technology Development.

Vice President of Engineering, 
Ericsson, Inc (Santa Clara, CA 01/2009 - 05/2010)Responsible for jump-starting the broadened scope of Ericsson's IP strategy and launching of two ambitious
initiatives - the third generation IP Router and the creation of a portfolio-wide IP Operating System
 (Ericsson IPOS).
 Organized the product development unit for the heightened ambition with focused groups for next generation
 and strategic initiatives.
 Kick-started new ways-of-working as well as defining the new governance as a part of fitting into Ericsson's 
portfolio from the autonomous unit that Redback Networks was run as.Vice President & Head of Software Engineering - 
Ericsson, Inc (Santa Clara, CA - 06/2007 - 12/2008)Responsible for all of IP platform-independent software and forwarding development - a global 600+ member 
organization across 4 locations.
 Lead the first set of critical integration projects following the acquisition of Redback by Ericsson - packet core, 
deep packet inspection, IMS/Border Gateway Function and an ambitious initiative to
 make Redback's IP Operating System (SEOS) portable across a broad range of Ericsson Packet Products. 
Lead the integration of Redback's IP Platform into several Ericsson solutions and eventually, getting into the
 company's mainstream sales funnel.

Established and developed new personalities (Mobile Gateway, L4-L7, SBC, BGF, Wireless Gateway) for Smart Edge,
 Redback's flag ship product which was focused on BRAS. Rebuilt the Forwarding and Routing teams following
 a mass exodus of top talent. Lead the creation of Redback's second generation line cards with an order of
 magnitude increase in capacity (10X throughput) and differentiating capabilities (market-leading capabilities in traffic
 management and QoS capabilities). Partnered with product management and sales to accelerate the Routing,
 BRAS and IP services roadmap - resulting in substantial business wins for the company with key
 customer acquisitions like BellSouth (now AT&T), KT, VZ, FT, etc.. 
Lead the definition and realization of several partnerships with technology vendors - broadening the 
range of deployment possibilities and by extension, the relevance of Redback, the company and its products. 
Over a 2.5 year period, the company's valuation increased by a multiple of 8 and the company got acquired for a 14x multiplier (of annual revenue).

Director of Engineering
 (07/2001 - 11/2004)As the Head of Engineering and a member of the company’s Executive Team, refocused the engineering team following a dramatic shrinkage in the company's value. Took drastic measures to re-shape the financial structure of the company, while keeping customer commitments. Lead the transfer of customer contracts to a vendor/partner as well as selling the company's intellectual
 property - to enable the liquidation of the corporation.Director of Software Engineering
 (01/2001 - 06/2001)Responsible for all of Software Engineering. Lead the conception and development of CoSine's 2nd
generation product - a brand new architecture with increased capacity and several hardware-assisted
capabilities in the areas of IP/MPLS Routing/Switching, tunneling, L2/L3 VPNs, QoS and Traffic Management 
- one of the firsts in the industry to implement these functions in hardware.
 Worked with several key customers to re-haul the product's OAM capabilities - for operational use as well as 
integration into several of our customers' OSS systems.Engineering Manager, 
Layer-2, Tunneling & QoS (06/2000 - 01/2001)Principal Engineer 
(01/1997 - 01/2000)One of the first engineers hired into the angel-backed company. Involved in prototyping and
 demoing several initial capabilities to VCs in an effort to raise more capital. Lead the development and bring up of most of the
 software components (base Operating System called IPNOS, BGP, OSPF, Frame Relay, ATM) on the company's radical mission of building a network-based IP-Services platform. Took the lead in specification and development of the first 3 large releases of Software - including leading-edge innovations
like frame relay over IP and layer 2 VPNs. Culminated with the company enjoying one of the hottest IPOs of
the time - a 1:20 over-subscribed IPO event.

Involved in the company's entry into high-end remote access servers and gateways for carriers and large
enterprises - for the high-speed modems and ISDN technologies.
 R&D Lead for MTSR, the company's embedded router/remote access server for enterprises and SMBs.