Sandeep Paste

Strategic and hands-on Engineering Leader with 18+ years of experience delivering large-scale digital transformation across Digital Banking, Corporate Banking, Payments, Wealth Management, and Core Banking modernization. Proven expertise in building and scaling secure, high-availability, and regulatory-compliant SaaS and enterprise platforms aligned with business and customer outcomes. Strong technology leadership across microservices architecture, cloud-native development (AWS/Azure), distributed systems, API-led integration, and event-driven architecture.

Experienced in modernizing legacy core banking systems, implementing payment platforms, and driving DevOps, CI/CD, and automation practices to improve engineering velocity and system resilience. Demonstrated success in cloud cost optimization, performance tuning, and ensuring security and compliance (PCI-DSS, ISO standards). Proven ability to lead globally distributed engineering teams, manage large-scale programs, and collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders including Product, Architecture, and Business leadership.

Skilled in Agile/Scrum delivery, engineering governance, talent development, and building high-performance cultures focused on innovation, quality, and continuous improvement.

Vice President – Technology Unit - Axis Bank India Ltd

(2023-04)

Digital Banking, HR Tech

• NBBL (Banking Connect): Led end-to-end delivery of Net Banking 2.0, driving architecture, cloud deployment, and cross-functional execution to enhance interoperability, customer experience, and reconciliation efficiency.
• Orchestrated large-scale program execution by aligning stakeholders, vendors, and multi-stream teams (Technology, Testing, BSG), ensuring timely and high-quality delivery.
• Strengthened platform resilience and compliance by implementing robust risk mitigation strategies, INFOSEC-aligned architecture, and comprehensive testing (Sandbox, grey-box, black-box).
• Drove strategic transformation initiatives, optimizing processes, managing change control across scope, cost, and timelines, and enabling scalable, customer-centric banking solutions.
• HR Tech Domain: Improvements - Transformed HR expense management by digitizing reimbursement modules (Food, Telecom, Travel), enabling accurate, compliant, and seamless claim processing with improved employee experience.
• Implemented AI-driven validation for text and PDF-based bills, significantly reducing manual effort, improving accuracy, and accelerating approval cycles.
• Modernized legacy HR systems (Property Proposal, PCM) by integrating AI capabilities to streamline workflows, enhance decision-making, and reduce operational costs.
• Led end-to-end delivery across architecture, technology, and execution, establishing an automation-first roadmap to build a scalable, efficient, and future-ready HR ecosystem.
• Lending: FinLend Product enablement for Channels - Delivered seamless loan servicing for retail customers by designing and implementing ESB-based orchestration, ensuring faster, reliable, and integrated experiences across channels.
• Enhanced key lending journeys such as part-payment, overdue payments, and loan closure with real-time GL updates, improving accuracy, transparency, and turnaround time.
• Strengthened customer experience through dedicated ownership, continuous follow-ups with Lending and BSG teams, and proactive issue resolution to ensure smooth and consistent service delivery.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): Championed adoption of AI-assisted and vibe coding practices across the SDLC, transforming development cycles from weeks to days and significantly improving engineering productivity and speed to market.
• Embedded AI capabilities into core engineering workflows including requirement specification, UI/UX design, data modeling, code reviews, debugging, and testing through seamless integration with IDEs and CI/CD pipelines.
• Collaborated with the AI CoE to build reusable enterprise AI capabilities (Text-to-Speech, Image-to-Text, Text-to-Audio) and contributed to foundational assets like RAG and MCP, enabling scalable, innovation-driven application development.

Senior Technical Architect – Core /Retail Banking Platform (Technology) - PROFINCH SOLUTION PVT LTD

(2021-06 - 2023-04)

Clients: Gulf Bank of Kuwait (GBK), Mashreq Bank

• Defined and delivered scalable, business-aligned architectures for complex banking platforms, combining performance optimization, capacity planning, and resilience engineering to ensure high availability.
• Led large-scale implementations and migrations including BI reporting (Oracle BI Publisher) and FCDB to OBDX 20.1 transformation for Gulf Bank of Kuwait—tailoring solutions to meet client-specific and regulatory needs.
• Designed and deployed critical capabilities such as role-based access management and accelerated salary processing integrations, ensuring secure, efficient, and time-bound delivery.
• Drove execution excellence by managing end-to-end infrastructure across environments and rapidly optimizing integrations (e.g., replacing JMS with web services for critical interfaces), significantly improving system performance and reliability.

Senior Principal Consultant (Technical Architect) - Oracle Financial Services Software

(2014-09 - 2021-06)

Business Applications: FCUBS, FCPB, FCDB, OBDX. Clients: BANKMED, BMO, HDFC, KOTAK and BREDESCO

• Led large-scale core banking transformations, including migration to Oracle Flexcube Treasury 18.1 for a 40K+ customer base, executing 15+ mock runs to ensure a zero-disruption, production-ready Go-Live.
• Delivered seamless Wealth Management migration for Kotak Mahindra Bank, minimizing business impact while maintaining high system stability and data integrity.
• Demonstrated strong full-stack engineering expertise across Java, Struts2, Spring MVC, and ODT/RAD, building scalable, maintainable, and high-performance banking solutions.
• Architected and integrated complex banking ecosystems by connecting FCUBS with Acumen, FCDB, OBDX, and FCPB using MQ, LDAP, and SSO, enabling secure, real-time interoperability.
• Established modern engineering practices by implementing CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and SONAR-Qube driven quality gates, improving release reliability and code quality.
• Strengthened operational resilience by optimizing batch processing, automating interfaces, and resolving production issues within strict SLAs, ensuring consistent system uptime and performance.

Senior Software Engineer - BNP Paribas India Solution

(2010-11 - 2014-09)

Business Application: Corporate Banking (e-Cash), TF (e-W@re), Payment reconciliation (e-Receipts)

• Successfully transitioned critical systems from vendor-led (Wipro) to in-house development, strengthening ownership, improving agility, and reducing dependency risks.
• Combined hands-on development expertise with strong stakeholder collaboration to translate business requirements into scalable, high-quality solutions.
• Led and mentored engineering teams using Lean methodologies, driving best practices across design, development, testing, and SDLC governance.
• Delivered high-impact innovations—such as a bill payment engine processing ~10,000 records in under 3 seconds—while ensuring robust quality through structured testing and documentation standards.

Associate Consultant - Intellect Design Arena (Polaris)

(2007-09 - 2010-11)

Project: Intellect Trade Implementation (MHB/SHB - Vietnam)

• Built scalable, modular applications using Java, JSP, JavaScript, and J2EE frameworks, leveraging session beans, AJAX, and JMS to enable real-time, event-driven processing.
• Demonstrated strong domain expertise in core banking and treasury systems, including SWIFT-compliant message processing, trade lifecycle handling, and exchange rate integrations.
• Delivered robust backend solutions through optimized stored procedures and well-structured controller/policy layers, actively contributing across the full SDLC in Agile environments.

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) - Information Technology - Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Lorene, Raigad (2007)