Niraj Kumar

NIRAJ KUMAR Tel: - | Email:-| LinkedIn: Niraj Kumar DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, SAP LABS INDIA PVT. LTD. POST GRADUATION IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT FROM IIM INDORE SUMMARY Accomplished technology leader in software development, delivery and operations. Has immense experience in defining and driving execution of strategic objectives, managing cross-geographical and multicultural teams, gaining efficiency via lean & agile development methodologies and on leveraging technology as an enabler. Passionate about making successful teams and successful individuals thereby contributing to the success of organizations. EXPERIENCE SYNOPSIS • • • • • • • Deep expertise in all aspects of software delivery processes; aided by diverse hands-on experience and strong technological grounding. Sound understanding and contributions to product architecture and design. AI-First mindset to drive innovation, optimize processes, and deliver data-driven solutions to enhance business outcomes. Hired, developed and led high-performing teams comprising of managers, architects, developers, across multiple geographies; drove hiring, mentoring, and career progression strategies that built resilient, ownership-driven teams. Delivered cloud-based products at scale by architecting and implementing DevOps-driven practices (CI/CD, resilience engineering, telemetry, live-site-first), significantly improving product reliability, scalability, and release velocity. Led end-to-end software delivery across Agile, Lean, and Waterfall models; ensured on-time, high-quality outcomes by defining scope, optimizing execution, and embedding continuous improvement initiatives. Orchestrated global, multicultural collaborations on concurrent high-pressure projects; built alignment across stakeholders, mitigated risks, and ensured compliance with organizational policies and industry best practices. Influenced strategic decision-making by combining deep technical expertise with leadership acumen; delivered board-level presentations on critical business initiatives. RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS SAP Labs & Ariba Technologies Designation: Director of Engineering & Head of DevOps Platform teams April 2023 – Present • Responsible for global teams across Bangalore, Palo Alto, and Budapest, includes Managers, Architects, Experts and Developers, to deliver scalable cloud platform and solutions. • Owning strategy, setup and operations of over 200 microservices on 30 multi-cloud landscapes for SAP Ariba Microservices, aligned with Enterprise Hyperscaler strategy. • Defining and using best practices and governance for automated microservices lifecycle on SAP BTP (Cloud Foundry and Kyma) - onboarding, development, operations, monitoring, and optimization. • Designed and delivered Managed Temporal as a BTP Service for SAP’s Lines of Business, enabling cost optimization for licensing, infrastructure, and operations. Developed the business case to establish ownership and led its full lifecycle, including service architecture, roadmap planning, cost determination, operational setup and production support. Collaborated with stakeholders to align requirements and ensured robust, scalable, and efficient service delivery. Designation: Senior Engineering Manager July 2019 – March 2023 • Led SAP Ariba’s DevOps platform team, Cobalt, in India and contributed to multi-fold improvement in efficiency, reliability and scalability for over 200 microservices in environments across AWS, GCP, Azure and bare-metal data centers. • This provides simple interface for DevOps functionality for teams by abstracting technical components namely Docker, Kubernetes, Nomad, Vault, Artifactory, Datadog, Dynatrace and more. • Defined technical strategy and provided architecture and design guidance leading to successful delivery. • Managed stakeholders alignment, and vendor partnerships. • Product Manager for multiple teams, translating stakeholder and product requirements into actionable features, user stories thereby ensuring seamless delivery and alignment with business priorities. • Key technologies: Jenkins, Kyma, Cloud Foundry, SAP BTP, SAP Unified Services, Azure DevOps, Cloud Orchestrator, Multi Cloud, LLM, AI, HashiCorp – Nomad, Vault, Terraform Designation: Senior Development & Project Manager April 2016 – June 2019 • Led transformation in teams in DevOps to achieve multifold efficiency improvement in development, operations and delivery leading to high frequency of deployment, short time to deploy and drastic reduction in services outages. -1- • • • Defined and implemented first version of DevOps & delivery aspects for SAP Business Rules service on Cloud Foundry for AWS, GCP, Azure and AliCloud, which included fully automated steps for build, compliance checks, tests, promotion, release, deploy and operate. This laid the foundation for a common approach for all microservices in the unit. Executed productization and delivery activities on Cloud Foundry. Defined and realized Continuous Delivery, Operations, hand over to L1/Cloud Engineering support, set up Manager on Duty & Developer on Duty etc. Key technologies: SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry, Jenkins, Groovy, Dynatrace, AWS, GCP, Azure, AliCloud Designation: Senior Development & Project Manager August 2004 – March 2016 • Handled development & delivery of multiple projects in SAP Cloud Integration: o Designed and delivered first version of Integration Flow (iFlow) Editor, an SAP UI5 & Eclipse based Graphical Tooling component for visual modelling & configuration of A2A and B2B communication. o Core runtime middleware component for A2A and B2B runtime communication. o Managed multiple scrum teams comprising of Architects, Managers, Product Owners and Developers. o Contributed to product definition, roadmap and stakeholder interactions • Handled development & delivery of multiple projects in SAP NetWeaver: o Led development and delivery of multiple releases of Enterprise Repository Services (ESR). ESR is a critical part of SAP’s Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) story, a component that stores and manages SOA assets centrally. o Led NetWeaver Development Infrastructure (NWDI) projects in India. NWDI provides functionality for version, change and software logistics management. This is part of SAP NetWeaver. o Led .NET integration with NetWeaver in the areas of Development Infrastructure (a.k.a. NWDI .NET) and Enterprise Services Framework (a.k.a. ESF .NET). ESF component aimed at bringing SAP’s SOA based Enterprise Services in .NET. • Key technologies: Java, SAP UI5, Eclipse Plug-in, JEE, SAP BTP, SAP NetWeaver, C#, .NET Designation: Development Coordinator (Technical Lead), Senior Developer October 1999 - July 2004 • Co-ordination, development & delivery of Mobile Application Repository Project (MAR), part of CRM Mobile story of SAP. MAR provided services for modelling, persistence, versioning and change management of CRM mobile design time objects. These were eventually generated into CRM mobile runtime components used in the Salesforce automation scenarios. • Key technologies: C++, ATL COM, SQL Server, Visual Basic, C#. Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (Bangalore), now Tech Mahindra Designation: Senior Software Engineer January 1997 - October 1999 • Worked on various projects in the areas of Natural Language Processing, Visual Modelling and mobile applications for Japanese and American clients. • Technologies worked on were C++, MFC and ATL COM, HTML, JSP, JavaScript PATENTS ISSUED Application No.:-, United States Patent Application Title: System and method for rule-based object navigation Date of Issue: 9th December 2004 Application No.:-, United States Patent Application Title: System and method for generator state object validation Date of Issue: 9th December 2004 Application No.:-, United States Patent Application Title: System and method for asynchronous resource management Date of Issue: 9th December 2004 EDUCATION Post Graduation Graduation Masters in Business Management, General Management University: Indian Institute of Management, Indore Bachelor Of Engineering in Electrical & Electronics Engineering University: Andhra University -2-