Senior Technical Program Manager - Retail IT Solutions

Sree Budhavarapu **********@*****.***

San Jose, CA 95122 408-***-****

Sr. Technical Program Manager

Over 15 years of experience leading high-level projects and programs for Fortune 500 companies to disruptive startups, including Stealth mode startup, Kohl’s, Elementum, Informatica, E2Open and Oracle. Solid background in strategic planning and execution of complex initiatives and innovative projects, including close collaborations with executives, internal teams, vendors, and contractors.

Certified Scrum Master

Post graduate program in AI ML Business applications, UT Austin, Sep 2020 - May 2021 Course Work details: https://eportfolio.greatlearning.in/sree-budhavarapu

● Experience and success in taking on new initiatives from concept to delivery.

● Skilled in aligning teams, processes, and technologies to achieve exceptional results for challenging programs.

● Strong combination of an expert technical background with excellent business acumen and team leadership.

● Executed and delivered Successful programs/projects in high conversion domain like Retail, Data Science, Data Integration, Supply chain, CRM, Tax & Finance and Search Engine optimization (SEO).

● Working with Business, Engineering and DevOps for defining and implementing MLOPs, seamless integration and deployment and management of ML and data Model.

● Led and executed GCP cloud migration projects from Monoliths to microservices containerization for Digital landscape.

● Driven multiple projects under Marketing Transformation Program and Data Analysis and serve the customer with consistent, relevant marketing campaigns, enabling personalized experience across digital channels using different tools.

● Experienced in creating stories and business critical reporting metrics for executive level from various analytical tools.

● Experienced in Working with UX/UI teams on design and human interaction with the digital media.

● Setting up KPI and SLA for different teams and following up and helping the teams to achieve them.

● Domain expertise in DevOps/Infrastructure Retail, Data Science, AI ML, Supply Chain, Data Integration, ETL, Tax, Pay Roll, Health Care, Insurance and Enterprise applications.

Work Experience

Sr. Technical Program Manager

Firework (AI Platform for eCommerce) -San Mateo, CA -January 2023 to Current

● Acting as single point of contact for Agile Process, JIRA Admin and deliverables of the entire organization.

● Initiated Agile methodology and implemented JIRA tool across the organization.

● Evaluated and implemented SmartSheets tool across the organization with automation rules.

● Running Portfolio management meetings with all stake holders and ensure delievrables per quarterlyplanning schedule.

● Running agile ceremonies on daily basis and follow up with internal/external teams and working throughunblocking the teams

● Working with business team and customer facing team to understand issues on priority, creating ticketsin JIRA and work with engineering team for delivery as per SLA.

● Working with Business, Engineering and DevOps for defining and implementing MLOPs, seamless integration and deployment and management of ML and data Model.

● Worked with business team for integrating Salesforce CRM with JIRA to automatically convert customerissues as bugss in JIRA.

● Initiated and completed JIRA back log clean up as bacjward as 5 years.

● Representing the team on other major initiatives and alerting my team on deliverables and priorities.

● Conducting SoS meetings for the programs we are driving. Coordinating all teams for conflict resolutionand on time deliverables.• Sharing program status to leadership and come up with plan B as needed.

● Training team on agile and ensure we are following the process while ensuring productivity andefficiency.

● Coordinating with product owner and business to get clear requirements and dependency info beforehand to ensure sprints can be planned/managed better.

● Coordinated programs that involves teams spread across the globe working in different time zonesand culture (Eurpoe, APAC, Americas) Sr. Technical Program Manager

eBay Corporation-San Jose, CA January 2022 to December 2023 Program Manager – Payments & Tax (Consultant)

● Working closely with business, engineering (Dev & QA) and rest of PMO to launch key TAX initiativesfor EU Asia

● Successfully delivered FRVAT program in a complex integration environment with new EU complianceguidelines saving $$$ to the company avoiding compliance penalties.

● Understanding the requirements and breaking them to finer deliverables for DEV, QA, Infra and Ops.

● Working with Business UAT and owning environment setup including test data and facilitating end toend business UAT.

● Conducting bug scrub meetings and following with all stake holders on unblocking the teams to makeprogress.

● Assisting business folks in debugging the issues to narrow the problem areas by executing the testcases manually and running through API tool to verify API responses.

● Navigating through the process/blockers to facilitate workarounds and bring efficiency in the processfor overall program delivery. Staff Program Manager (QA)

Kohl's, Inc-Milpitas, CA September 2015 to December 2021 Digital (Mobile (Native App, mCom) and Desktop)

● Working across Business, Product, Platform, UX Design, Engineering, DevOps and QA teams to coordinatedependencies, keep track of the critical path, to expose and mitigate risk to the overall roadmap andto drive decisions around priorities that come in conflict with a cross-team wide versus a product teamcentric set of priorities.

● Proactively managing vendor deliverables with focus on budget and schedules.Key Program deliveredGCP Cloud Migration:

● This program spans across the organization with multiple groups, vendors and teams.

● Collaborated with Enterprise Architecture team / DevOps to ensure cloud strategy and approach artifactsare created, maintained, and leveraged, including planning at each level of Assess, Pilot, move data,Move Applications, Cloudify and Optimize.

● Actively drive the program level issues to closure or appropriately escalate to the executive steering committee.

● Setup and led different levels of status meetings with Executive Cloud Steering Committee and other stakeholders meeting with input from Cloud ManagementOffice leadership.

● Prepared weekly status reports by performing regular reviews of project/programstatus, metrics, financial reporting, KPIs to ensure successful project implementation.

Search Engine Optimization:

● As part of Digital growth Enterprise wide initiative, led the SEO programswhich consists of multiple line items to be integrated for overall enhancement including google AMPproject.

● Coordinated and articulated closely with the SEO digital marketing team to identify, prototype,measure and expand the changes to company wide products.

● Page optimization, link structure updates and duplicate content maintenance in mobile & desktop site changes have improved indexation of Kohl's mobile and desktop site, as measured by organic search traffic and number of pages indexed, which is worth $23 million in sales Year-over-Year Personalization & Loyalty Program:

● As part of personalization program AI based solution is providedto offer additional discounts to the client based on purchase history and other demographic data.

● Coordinated various departments from,Business, Marketing, Sales, Platform, Engineering and multiple QA groups from inception to production.We have adoptedA/B scenarios to slowly ramp up the user base for new experience.

● This is one of the major initiativesfor Kohls Digital transformation in increasing the sales and more return customers. Co-ordinated anautomated test data creation sub project for this program to ensure smooth testing and validation atdifferent levels.

Payments & Credits:

● Led a large-scale project for deploying one of the most prided private label creditcards know as Kohl's charge card management (KCCM).

● Coordinated with multiple internal teams andexternal vendors like zoot, Pay point and Capital one.

● Created complex project plan, partnering with thevendors to match their release and credit events. KCCM being on high security radar, Security teamswere involved in every step of the project to comply with companywide security policies.Led the credit team to testing and get appropriate credit approval from Capital one.PayPal/Venmo payment integration,

● Led and worked with a cross functional team from12 systems to implement PayPal and Venmo as one of the tenders in the checkout for both Mobile and Webstore.

● Coordinated with Braintree as an implementation partner and approval agency. The implementation will have 3% shift in bankcard customers to PayPal. Sr. Technical Program Manager

Elementum-Mountain View, CA June 2013 to September 2015 Roles and responsibilities:

● As a technical project Manager led and delivered multiple projects,

● Collaborated with Product, Engineering,QA team to create the project plan, Sprint planning.

● Setting up daily standups and practicing coaching the team on Agile practices

● Collected KPI metrics for the Internal and external teams on the project health like burn rate, deviation from the critical flow, iterative tickets and reporting to the customer success team on theprogram progress and financials and the portfolio roadmap to COO

● Led the Manufacture and Transport program designed to efficiently manage the supply chain of the clients and take critical decisions based on shop floor KPIs and supplychain logistics. These modules help drive revenue and accountability across manufacture plants andsites.

● Led and managed consulting deliverable for a large WorkforceManagement project. Led and Implemented CI/CD on AWS and brought efficiency from concept toproduction.

Program and Release Manager

Informatica-Redwood City, CA November 2009 to June 2013 Roles and responsibilities:

● As a Project and Release Manager led multiple releases of company's flag ship Data integration, MDM,Data warehousing and ETL product.

● Worked very closely with business and pro services team fromscoping the features to organize the deliverables to fit into the release in engineering driven organization.

● Coordinating with customer support organization to include product defects to on going releases as wellas hot fixes as necessary while coordinating with sales, support and pro services groups for effectivecommunication across the organization.

● Introduced agile methodology and first adopters of the agile inthe organization and started transformation from waterfall to agile.

● Led a successful team to develop and deliver ETL engine with multiple source and target data types.

● Web service integration capabilities and Big Data feature.

● Published KPIs for every release and followingup all stake holders for action items on

● KPIs and including them in planning and milestone follow up for subsequent releases.

Global Delivery Head

ProActive Consulting-Mountain View, CA May 2006 to November 2009 Roles and responsibilities

● As a global delivery head, I am responsible to provide testing and automation implementation services to the client on LacerteTax, Quick Books and Payroll products.

● Managed 20+ resources globally and owned entire end toend testing services for the client.

● Involved from day1 of the product from inception to production.Coordinating with off-shore managers and on-site client managers for day to day operations, meeting SLAs and coordinating across the organization with test strategy, automation implementation and certifying the application for production.

● Impetrated proprietary automaton frame work for efficientand low maintenance end to end automation testing.

● Co-ordinated with marketing, business teams fordynamic changes of the product and acted as single point of contact for client for smooth operation and risk management.

Project Co-Ordinator and Lead QA Engineer

MPMG, A Sutter health affiliate-Redwood City, CA May 2005 to May 2006 Client: MPMG, A Sutter health affiliate.

Domain: Health care and Insurance

● Worked as liaison between business and managed health care service professionals dealing with Claims,Payments, Referrals and approvals.

● Integrated business applications and created required reports from EZCap application for audit and FDA and ICD code requirements.

● Led a integration pilot with Epic to EZCap.

● Developing and sharing required reports for executives on regular basis for compliance and reporting.

E2Open, Redwood City, CA May 2005 - May 2006

Domain: Supply Chain and Enterprise Integration.

Role: Project Co-Ordinator and Lead QA Engineer

● Owned multiple client's implementation of ordermanagement, supply chain systems integration involving multiple enterprise systems.

● This is to implemen t the solution from end to end from day 1, understanding, test planning and test strategy, coordinating with multiple stake holders,testing and delivering and be the single point of contact for thecustomer.

● SLA measuring & reporting, to address any SLA deviations.

● Conducted periodic reviewsof the engagement & constantly identified areas for improvement.

● Estimation, reviewing and delivering enhancements.

● Developed and maintained the policies and procedure manuals for Incident management, problem management and change management for the client and the other third-party vendors.

● Successfully delivered our solution for multiple clients on schedule within the budget.

Sr Lead QA Engineer Oracle-Pleasanton, CA

November 2002 to May 2005

Roles and responsibilities:

● Led a team of 5 QA engineers with hands on automation for testing PeopleSoft CRM solution andintegration with rest of Peoplesoft enterprise application.

● Designing and developing frame work for newfeatures as well as enhancing automation for existing feature and maintaining regression test suite.

● Representing CRM team in global automation charter and contributed to common frame work across theorganization.

● Worked closely with functional QA engineers and Production support engineers to ensureeffective automation coverage

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