Sameera Withanage

Sameera Withanage has a diverse work experience spanning over two decades. They began their career as a Software Engineer at Roomsnet in 2001 and later worked as a Freelance Software Engineer before joining Open World Lanka (Pvt) Limited as a Software Engineer. In 2007, Sameera became a Technical Lead at Aeturnum and eventually transitioned to the role of Software Architect, where they led multiple engineering partner engagements and coached teams on platform thinking and Domain Driven Design thinking. They also played a crucial role in the development of Athiva, a proprietary rapid application development platform. Sameera then joined PayPal as the Head of Engineering for Paydiant, overseeing platform development and working closely with product and architecture teams. They also served as a Software Architect within the same company, where they contributed to the implementation of PCI compliant financial instrument vaulting and onboarding components. In 2018, Sameera moved to Venmo and served as the Engineering Manager for the Performance & Scale team, responsible for stabilizing and scaling the platform. They later held the position of Head of Platform as a Service | Data Platforms, leading the platform readiness initiatives for high-velocity events. Currently, Sameera is the VP of Engineering for Country X at Circles.Life, leveraging their expertise in engineering and leadership.

Sameera Withanage obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree in Finance, General from Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology - SMU in 2009. Sameera also has additional certifications including "Blockchain Business Models" from Duke University | Coursera, "Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership" from MIT Sloan School of Management, "Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Cloud Architect Specialization" from Coursera | Google, and "Executive Data Science Specialization" from Coursera, all obtained in 2021.