Technical Project Lead, Senior Solutions Architect

Smitha Varma

***********@*****.***

408-***-**** US CITIZEN

A results-driven Engineer and Technical Project Manager with over 6 years of experience leading technical projects and strategic initiatives across globally spread cross-functional technical teams. Strong background in software development and sustainment, with a proven track record for scoping engineering projects, systems design and architecture, and managing the deliverables for the Software Releases for fully distributed Cloud Enabled Data Storage and Protection enterprise solutions. Proven success in advocating for customers and implementing strategies to drive product adoption, maximize functionality utilization, and enhance customer business growth and satisfaction. Key Achievements:

• Proven track record as a skilled Team Lead, Technical Project Lead, individual contributor, and mentor in customer-focused roles in product support and engineering. Highly proficient in cross-functional collaboration, stakeholder management, and building strong relationships with globally distributed teams.

• Demonstrated expertise in analyzing and translating requirements, defining deliverables, and managing highly impactful software releases, while simultaneously leading multiple customer satisfaction initiatives, and excelling in high-pressure environments.

• Established ability to drive product quality and usability, by recommending valid feature improvements based on customer requirements and feedback, driving upgrade and upselling opportunities. Professional Experience:

HCL America (Contractor at Dell-EMC) 2021-2023

Senior Technical Project Manager Senior Solutions Architect

• Provided technical leadership for software release projects. Successfully managed the scheduled software project lifecycles for Dell’s Cloud-enabled fully distributed Data Protection/Storage/Management software product. Scoped the deliverables and took ownership of overseeing the secure product development and delivery of features and enhancements. Managed the SDLC in Agile/Scrum and Waterfall modes appropriately. Handled risks, constraints and feature-creeps, negotiated the technical debt, prioritized feature enhancements, managed the timelines, ensured adherence to coding standards and code-reviews, set and monitored KPIs, reviewed the documentation and Release Notes, and led the secure deployment to customer base via training and knowledge transfer sessions (NPI) to Customer Support, Customer Readiness and Professional Services.

• Maintained clear and transparent communication with all stakeholders, including executive leadership, cross-functional teams, and customers. Fostered a customer-focused solutions-oriented environment during the program lifecycle, from planning to driving continuous improvements (CI/CD).

• Enhanced the software development-and-test cycles based on post-mortem analysis and feedback. Refined build-and-test cycles and facilitated Test Plan reviews with engineering, ensuring manual and automated test coverage of features and functionalities, including performance, security and compliance, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and minimized escalation count.

• Contributed effectively to the technology roadmap. Created prototype and obtained approval from Product Management for several “value-add” features for improved quality, efficiency and reliability of the product. Regularly assessed and evaluated product performance, including usage data, customer feedback, and market trends, to identify opportunities for product enhancements and new features, for continuous improvement.

• Empathetically managed the diversity and expertise of team members globally. Consistently kept global team members aligned with project requirements and KPIs. Promoted continuous collaborative engagement via Slack, in-person and virtual meetings.

• Established a model to handle software Maintenance Release projects and implemented project workflow changes in Jira, to prioritize and handle the customer reported Escalation fixes, Customer Requested Enhancements (RFEs), along with backlogged feature enhancements, in the scheduled Maintenance (minor) releases.

• Successfully managed customer satisfaction (Total Customer Experience) projects for enterprise customers. Provided engineering leadership for highly visible customer issues, leading to increased customer retention, satisfaction and loyalty. Collected customer requirements, created the Statement of Purpose with objectives, scope, timelines, and took ownership of customer workflows, analyzed logs, delivered fixes and custom solutions, actively tracked KPIs, educated customers on product usage, diffused stress, resolved complaints, and established trust and great working relationships. Contributed to customer success and ROI.

• Mentored and provided Training and Knowledge Transfer of the product’s features to local remote teams.

Dell-EMC (Dell Technologies) 2016-2021

Senior Software Principal Engineer Technical Project Lead

• Enhanced the Current Product Engineering team's serviceability to Customer Support by effectively managing escalation inflow and ensuring consistent adherence to SLAs.

• Ensured the efficient execution of the Close Loop Analysis (CLA) process, enabling QA to replicate, validate, and address customer-reported escalations and fixes.

• Developed internal tools and scripts to troubleshoot and resolve specific product use cases.

• Successfully planned and executed the Maintenance Release projects from inception to delivery.

• Led multiple projects focused on Total Customer Experience (TCE), driving continuous product readiness, quality enhancements, and efficient deployment and maintenance.

• Provided feature enhancements and fixed customer reported defects in the code.

• Designed test cases for the resolved escalations, for QA to validate the fixes in the future releases of the product.

EMC Corp. 2005-2016

Principal Engineer

• Replicated customer reported issues in-house for debugging and resolution.

• Resolved customer reported escalations and RFEs (request for enhancements) in the code. Prior experience

Legato Systems – Software Engineer in R&D and Sustainment Informix Inc. – Software Engineer in the Porting team Education:

• M.S, Computer Science, California State University, East Bay, CA

• B.S., Electrical Engineering, Calicut University, India Technical Skills:

Operating Systems and languages: Unix/Linux, Windows, C, Shell scripting, Python, SQL Technology, Cloud & Networking: Distributed Systems, Client-Server model, AWS, Software integration with APIs, TCP/IP, Firewall, DNS, NFS, Containerization, AI concepts (GPU, Lustre, Data Lake, NuMA)

Code and Configuration Management: Review Board (Code Review tool), Coverity (Static Software Code Analysis tool), Jenkins (CI/CD), Perforce, ClearCase, Git Project Management: Bugzilla, Jira, Confluence, Slack, Microsoft Office Certification: Six Sigma, AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (in progress)

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