Navaneeth Rao / Staff Software Engineer

I make complex systems dependable.

I build cloud platforms and distributed systems for search, payments, and developer infrastructure.

01 / Selected systems

Engineering with
a measurable impact

Three platforms. Different constraints. Outcomes tied to the systems that delivered them.

Walmart 2024 to present

Serving models.
Scaling search.

Migrated Search from single-tenant clusters to secure, multi-tenant Kubernetes model serving across locales.

  • Java
  • Python
  • Kubernetes
  • GCP
25%
lower inference latency
99.9%
platform availability

Supporting hundreds of millions of daily search queries.

Explore the engineering

Platform challenge

Move single-tenant Search clusters to shared model-serving infrastructure across tenants and locales.

My contribution

Designed multi-tier inference routing between low-latency cache serving and deep model execution, with query routing and failover across environments.

Beyond the migration

Built query normalization and tokenization adopted across Search teams, and established architecture governance and distributed systems training.

PayPal 2023 to 2024

Financial risk.
Faster decisions.

Engineered a GCP reporting platform for fraud detection and chargeback analytics, then modernized the data workflows behind it.

  • Java
  • GCP
  • DynamoDB
  • Databricks
10M+
daily transactions processed
30%
lower operational costs

Fraud and chargeback analytics for merchant systems.

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Platform challenge

Support high-volume risk analytics while modernizing legacy data workflows and improving feature delivery.

My contribution

Built the financial risk reporting platform, orchestrated Databricks analytics, and migrated core RDBMS workflows to DynamoDB.

Additional outcomes

Analytics efficiency improved by 30%. ORM-based data-layer modernization reduced the feature-to-production lifecycle by 50%.

IBM 2016 to 2019

Global infrastructure.
Operational clarity.

Led a team of 10 engineers running monitoring and alerting for IBM Cloud across 50+ data centers and 10,000 servers.

  • Kafka
  • Elasticsearch
  • Grafana
  • Java
99.99%
uptime maintained
$3M+
infrastructure cost reductions

A logging pipeline ingesting 500 TB each day.

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Platform challenge

Maintain visibility and reliable operations across a global cloud infrastructure footprint.

My contribution

Led monitoring with Icinga, Grafana, and PagerDuty. Built a logging pipeline using Logstash, Kafka, Elasticsearch, and Kibana that informed infrastructure cost reductions.

Operational ownership

Led the cross-functional engineering team and served as the subject-matter expert for L1 escalations on a 15-minute SLA.

02 / Career

A wider scope
with every role

From secure applications to global infrastructure, developer platforms, and ML serving. Technical leadership grounded in operating the systems I build.

  1. 2024 to presentWalmartStaff Software Engineer
  2. 2023 to 2024PayPalStaff Software Engineer
  3. 2019 to 2023FordSenior Software Engineer
  4. 2016 to 2019IBMSoftware Engineer / Team Lead
  5. 2015MicrosoftService Engineer Intern
  6. 2012 to 2014InfosysSenior Systems Engineer

MS in Computer Science, UT Dallas. MBA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Explore the full experience and education

Technical range

Built across the stack

From API contracts and data pipelines to cluster operations and model serving.

Languages & frameworks

  • Java
  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Spring Boot
  • Node.js

Cloud & infrastructure

  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Azure
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • OpenShift
  • Jenkins
  • Tekton

Data & analytics

  • Kafka
  • Databricks
  • DynamoDB
  • BigQuery
  • Elasticsearch
  • MongoDB
  • PostgreSQL

ML infra & observability

  • ML serving systems
  • Inference routing
  • Distributed systems
  • Grafana
  • Prometheus
  • OpenTelemetry
  • Datadog
  • CI/CD

Next problem

Let’s build something dependable

Open to staff and principal engineering roles in platforms, infrastructure, and distributed systems. Reach out on LinkedIn to start a conversation.

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