Santosh Karvande

Results-driven Lead Product Architect and hands-on engineering leader with 20+ years of experience designing, building, and scaling high performing cloud-native distributed systems — from ground-up architecture and proof-of-concept through production deployment across 500+ enterprise sites. Brings deep hands-on expertise in C/C++, Python, Golang and Java product development, AWS cloud infrastructure, microservices architecture, real-time data processing, and containerisation — consistently owning the full technical stack from system design through execution. Proven ability to define technical roadmaps, establish engineering standards, solve complex distributed system challenges, and ensure architecture decisions drive measurable long-term business impact.

Key Technical Achievements

► 97%+ UAV threat detection accuracy

► 500+ enterprise site deployments

► 35% build-deploy cycle time reduction

► 30% deployment timeline acceleration

► Real-time pipeline — high-throughput

► 35%+ engineering productivity improvement

Lead Product Architect March 2019 – April 2026

AirSight Inc (Airguard India Pvt. Ltd.) Pune, India

At AirSight, a leading-edge software company for aerial security and UAV/drone threat detection, my official designation was Director of Engineering while my functional role was Lead Product Architect — with hands-on ownership of system architecture, product development, performance optimisation, and technical roadmap execution.

Product: Airguard (Real-time UAV threat detection platform)

• Owned end-to-end system architecture of the Airguard platform as Lead Product Architect — defining cloud-native, serverless microservices architecture on AWS from first principles, driving technology selection, component design, and architectural evolution from POC through 500+ enterprise site deployments.
• Hands-on designed and developed core platform components in C/C++, Python and Golang — including the real-time telemetry ingestion engine, event-driven processing pipeline, Detection Fusion algorithm, Geo-fencing module, automated image capture subsystem, and intelligent alerting framework — achieving 97%+ UAV threat detection accuracy.
• Architected and implemented real-time, high-throughput, low latency data streaming pipelines for Data path and Control path components using Kafka, AWS SQS/SNS, and Lambda — handling concurrent telemetry streams from 500+ sensor-equipped sites with low-latency, fault-tolerant processing and auto-scaling under peak load.
• Designed the full AWS cloud infrastructure — EC2, EKS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, OpenSearch, RDS, S3, Cognito, CloudWatch, SES, Redis, Elastic Load Balancer — with a serverless-first, event-driven architecture optimised for high availability, scalability, and cost efficiency.
• Defined and implemented CI/CD pipelines and containerisation architecture (Docker, Kubernetes, AWS EKS) as the primary technical owner, — reducing build-test-deploy cycle time by 35%, introducing automated rollback mechanisms and deployment governance, and enabling 3x release frequency.
• Led hands-on technical delivery from MVP through enterprise scale — driving architecture, code, and system design reviews, establishing coding standards and documentation practices, and accelerating platform evolution across 10+ production release cycles.
• Mentored and provided architecture guidance to 10+ engineers as the technical authority — conducting deep-dive code reviews, defining system design patterns, and establishing engineering best practices adopted team-wide.
• Standardised AI-assisted development workflows (Claude Code, Generative AI tooling) as a hands-on practitioner — improving code review cycle time, debugging efficiency, and overall engineering productivity by 35%+.
• Collaborated cross-functionally with Product, Sales, and Operations to translate business requirements into technical architecture — accelerating deployment timelines by 30% and ensuring architectural decisions were commercially grounded.

Principal Engineer April 2016 – March 2019

Harman Connected Services Pune, India

Global leader in connected technologies for automotive & other industries.

Product: NetVault Backup (Data Backup & Recovery)

• Designed and delivered enhancements across 5+ core modules — Media Manager, File Manager, PostgreSQL backup, and archival interfaces — with hands-on C/C++ development contributing to a more scalable and feature-rich enterprise backup product.
• Owned end-to-end resolution of critical production blockers as the technical escalation point — performing rapid root cause analysis, designing effective workarounds, and implementing permanent fixes that significantly improved system reliability.
• Improved customer satisfaction by 30% through hands-on diagnosis and resolution of 200+ Level-1 and critical production issues — including deep debugging across storage, file system, and database backup stacks.
• Modernised backup infrastructure by re-architecting retention policies, redesigning log capture mechanisms, and enhancing disaster recovery storage appliance interfaces — improving operational efficiency and system reliability for enterprise customers. Improved throughput and reduced latency using RDMA, DPDK
• Provided technical leadership and mentoring to a team of 5 engineers through architecture guidance, hands-on code reviews, and design discussions.

Principal Engineer — Storage Development March 2015 – January 2016

Dell Hyderabad, India

Industry leader in storage appliances, data backup and recovery solutions.

Product: NetVault Backup

• Delivered hands-on enhancements across 4+ features including MS SQL and PostgreSQL database integrations in NetVault Backup — shipped across 2 major product releases, expanding enterprise database backup coverage and improving plugin stability for large-scale deployments.

Senior Engineer November 2008 – December 2014

Indieon Technologies Pune, India

Product engineering firm specialising in Infotainment.

Projects: PushVOD, PVR, Dual Tuner PVR, Advertisement Solution, IPTV Solution, GUI for STB, IoT Integration, NextGen VAS Applications

• Designed, developed, and delivered 8 infotainment projects including PushVOD, PVR, and IPTV Solutions — taking end-to-end technical ownership from architecture through implementation across C/C++ and embedded platforms.
• Architected a secure content distribution platform featuring DRM, subscription management, and embedded IoT integration — delivering a complete head-end to client-device content lifecycle solution.
• Drove technical excellence across a team of 5 engineers through 100+ code reviews, architecture guidance, and hands-on design mentoring

Senior Software Engineer January 2007 – November 2008

Symphony Teleca Pune, India

Software services & solutions provider.

Product: Adaptec's Snap Servers

• Delivered 5 new features enhancing file sharing, device status, and user authentication modules across enterprise NAS systems — with hands-on C development in NFS, CIFS, and file system layers.
• Resolved 15 critical bugs across printer driver, NFS, CIFS, file system, and kernel boot crash modules — improving system stability and reliability across 3 product releases.

Software Engineer December 2004 – January 2007

Versant Corporation Pune, India

Innovator in object storage database solutions for complex data management.

Product: Versant Object Database (VOD)

• Increased VOD product efficiency by 30% implementing 3 major features — ORDER BY Query, FST Parallel Commit, and Read-only Database with Startup script — with hands-on C++ database engine development.
• Improved database stability by resolving 25+ bugs across interface, performance optimisation, and UI stacks.

Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) in Computer Engineering July 2001 – April 2004

Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), Mumbai, India

Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Computer Engineering June 1997 – May 2001

College of Engineering Pune (COEP), Pune, India