Nags Sellaiah

Accomplished Engineering Leader with 20+ years transforming insurance operations through strategic technology initiatives, enterprise architecture excellence, and hands-on team leadership.

Currently Principal

Engineer at Chubb Insurance, leading technical strategy and directly owning hiring for engineering teams across Property & Casualty, Personal Risk Systems, and Global Markets portfolios, including vendor partnership for technical recruitment. Proven track record scaling engineering teams (8 to 50+ members) with 70-80% of mentees promoted into expanded roles, establishing technical governance frameworks, piloting AI-assisted engineering practices across development teams, and driving platform innovations that deliver measurable business impact.

Seeking

Head of Engineering or VP of Engineering opportunities to bring full organizational ownership of people, budget, and technical strategy to the engineering culture I've built.

Principal Engineer, EMEA IT at Chubb Insurance (2022-05 – Present)

Lead technical strategy, governance, and engineering excellence across Property & Casualty, Personal Risk Systems, and Global Markets portfolios for one of the world's largest insurance organizations (130+ countries, $50B+ in premiums).

• Define and execute technical strategy for enterprise IT solutions across three major insurance portfolios serving millions of customers
• Established comprehensive technical governance framework, reducing production defects by 45% while accelerating delivery velocity
• Lead architectural decision-making for development platforms, influencing technical direction of systems processing billions in annual premiums
• Created enterprise-wide coding standards and guidelines adopted by 50+ developers across EMEA organization
• Founded and lead Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Property & Casualty systems, establishing technical authority for engineering best practices
• Transformed development culture from siloed teams to collaborative, quality-focused engineering organization
• Created reusable component libraries and architectural patterns accelerating delivery across multiple teams
• Architected solutions for high-volume insurance operations supporting peak loads during renewals and catastrophic events
• Piloted Claude Code as an AI-assisted code review layer, now generating automated review reports for every project delivered across 7 development teams
• Built an AI-driven production health-check automation validating live insurance quote flows end-to-end, cutting a 30-minute daily manual routine to under 1 minute
• Own hiring decisions for the engineering team, partnering directly with vendor organizations to source and recruit technical talent
• Mentor and develop engineering talent across multiple geographies, with 80% of mentees promoted or taking expanded responsibilities
• Champion technical excellence through code reviews, architecture discussions, and hands-on collaboration
• Partner with Product, Business, and Operations teams to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions
• 40% improvement in development velocity while maintaining quality standards
• 45% reduction in production defects through governance implementation
• 35% performance improvement in critical insurance systems under peak load
• 99.9% uptime maintained across all managed platforms

Enterprise Architect, Integration Leader, EMEA IT at Chubb Insurance (2017-10 – 2022-04)

Defined enterprise architecture strategy and led integration initiatives modernizing insurance systems while ensuring regulatory compliance and operational excellence.

• Architected enterprise Mendix strategy, standards, and governance frameworks adopted across multiple insurance business units in 15+ countries
• Designed mission-critical applications for policy administration, claims processing, and underwriting serving millions of policyholders
• Established data governance standards ensuring SOX, GDPR, and insurance regulatory compliance across integrated system landscape
• Spearheaded digital transformation of 15+ legacy insurance processes while maintaining business continuity for systems processing $10B+ in annual premiums
• Architected integration strategy connecting modern low-code applications with core insurance platforms (policy management, billing, actuarial systems)
• Optimized platform performance for high-volume operations handling 500K+ transactions daily, reducing response times by 60%
• Successfully modernized 15+ critical insurance processes with zero business disruption
• Reduced integration development time by 60% through reusable patterns and components
• Achieved 99.9% system uptime for mission-critical insurance operations
• Led technical governance resulting in 50% reduction in architectural inconsistencies

Onshore Technical Lead | Support Lead | Project Manager at Cognizant Worldwide Limited (Client: Chubb Insurance) (2009-02 – 2017-10)

Demonstrated versatility and technical leadership across multiple roles, managing technical delivery, production support, and project management for Chubb Insurance's global P&C systems.

• Led all technical projects and enhancements for Chubb P&C from vendor side, managing $5M+ annual technology budget
• Provided hands-on technical leadership and mentorship for 20+ developers, with 70% of mentees promoted during engagement
• Managed mission-critical production support for insurance systems processing millions in daily transactions
• Implemented proactive monitoring strategies reducing P1 incidents by 35% and achieving 98% SLA compliance
• Delivered 30+ projects ranging from enhancements to major system implementations with 98% on-time delivery rate
• Grew and developed team from 8 to 25 members while maintaining 95% employee retention rate

Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics – K.S.R College of Technology (2004)