Hema

Accomplished Program Manager with over 19+ years of IT experience, including 8 years of experience in Engineering and Technical Program Management, Release Management, and NPI Management, through Agile/Hybrid Framework. Facilitated strategies for the Dev, Ops, Factory, Quality teams for project execution.

Managed Project

Scope, Cost, Schedule, Resources, Change, Stakeholder, Performance, Risk mitigation, Quality, Manufacturing Readiness, issue resolution and escalation. Defined/enhanced processes and estimates for Design, Develop, Testing and deployment. Capture project metrics, prioritizing critical issues, managing dependencies, driving Go/No Go decisions. Facilitate product design with product managers, PMO, BizOps, Software/Hardware engineers, and other stakeholders.

Engineering Program Manager at Apple Inc (2022-11 – Present)

• Scaled Apple Pay/PayLater, Wallet, Commerce, Payment and Airpod FW/SW delivery velocity by 20%, across 10+ global engineering workstreams by structuring an optimized Agile/Scrum, Hybrid framework and driving high-discipline sprint planning, retrospectives, and backlog grooming in Radar.
• Established a proactive RAID log (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) and comprehensive dependency mapping system, successfully mitigating 5+ critical-path architectural bottlenecks prior to hardware validation testing.
• Managed executive stakeholder communication through weekly exec readouts and interactive KPI dashboards, driving organizational alignment and achieving 100% consensus on multi-quarter roadmaps for high-visibility initiatives.
• Served as the primary technical interface between core hardware design and embedded firmware engineering teams, managing system architecture integrations and streamlining communication protocols to reduce integration bugs by 10%.
• Structured data-driven resource forecasting and capacity planning models for an engineering team of 20+ developers, optimizing headcount allocation and reducing project resource variance.

Technical Program Manager at HCL Tech (2016-10 – 2022-11)

Client: Google Inc

• Led enterprise-level cross-functional initiatives across Workday/HCM, Coupa/VMS, SFDC/CRM, GUTS, Integra ETL, SAP FICO, and AI/ML projects, driving them from roadmap planning through successful Agile production go-lives.
• Orchestrated a critical database migration (extract, clean, validate, load) from Orgstore to Google Cloud Spanner alongside a comprehensive API migration, ensuring zero downtime and high data integrity.
• Drove corporate Legal Risk Assessments for HR, Finance, and Facilities API data to enforce strict legal, compliance, and regulatory alignment across distributed engineering teams.
• Managed core operational governance, including fiscal budget planning, expense approval workflows, and procurement processes, while presenting data-driven project health metrics to executive stakeholders.
• Facilitated all Scrum ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement) to optimize sprint execution, unblock engineering teams, and maintain a steady release cadence.
• Delivered executive-level program reports and dashboards highlighting key delivery trends, operational insights, and strategic recommendations to steering committees.

Sr. SDET at Apple Inc (2015-03 – 2016-03)

• Developed a Restful web-services automation using PYTHON to optimize Big Data pipelines for Apple Maps, leveraging Apache Spark and Hadoop to process massive geospatial datasets.
• Orchestrated CI/CD pipeline across GitHub actions and Jenkins; automated build, test, and release workflows to eliminate manual gate bottlenecks and reduce deployment cycle time by 20%

Sr. QA Engineer at Cisco Systems Inc. (2009-05 – 2011-02)

• Executed data-driven test automation using Selenium and Java within the TestNG framework; validated integration functionalities for social networking software, resulting in a 30% reduction in critical bugs reported post-launch.
• Conducted Unit and Code coverage testing and established the % of the developer's code that has not been tested by the test team. Maintained the code in SVN. Video Testing, Voice to Text conversion Testing on Cisco embedded devices, looking into device logs for failures/exceptions.

Sr. Web Automation Engineer at Adobe Systems Inc. (2007-01 – 2009-01)

• Engineered and executed Perl validation scripts to audit data migration accuracy during the transition from a legacy Japanese database to the Adobe Global Customer Care (GCC) CMS platform.
• Led end-to-end database testing by writing advanced SQL queries to validate complex business logic, data integrity, and Content Management System (CMS) configurations.
• Authored and delivered stakeholder status reports, tracking project milestones, data quality metrics, and migration velocity to ensure on-time delivery

Software Engineer at Mindtree Consulting (2001-09 – 2006-02)

• Led test planning, development, execution, and monitoring for core Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software modules, specifically focusing on Purchase Orders (PO), Invoicing, and Billing workflows.
• Coordinated cross-functional onsite and offshore QA teams, ensuring seamless communication, alignment on project timelines, and timely delivery of test cycles.
• Executed comprehensive end-to-end (E2E) testing for SAP FICO and related business modules, validating critical financial flows across Sales Orders, Invoicing, Accounts Receivable (AR), and Accounts Payable (AP).

Bachelor of Engineering in Telecommunication – Sir M. Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology, Bangalore University (1996 – 2000)