Surya Vakkalanka

Surya Vakkalanka has over two decades of experience in various roles and industries. Surya is currently working as an Advisor at blindfold.ai, where they help individuals create anonymous resumes to overcome bias and maintain confidentiality. Prior to that, they served as the Founding VP of Engineering (Product and Innovation) at Eightfold, contributing to the company's growth and achieving a valuation of over $2 billion.

Surya has also held leadership positions at Samsung Electronics America, where they served as the Director of Engineering (Cloud Platform) and led platform engineering for Samsung's customer experience and loyalty app. Surya built data-driven microservice APIs and personalized content recommendation platforms using technologies like Node.js, Kubernetes, Docker, and AWS solutions.

Before joining Samsung, Surya worked at Samsung Next as a Founding Engineer, where they developed Terrain, a smart home screen for Android that was acquired by Samsung. Surya also worked at HP as the Principal Architect, leading the design and implementation of the cross-platform JavaScript Framework called EnyoJS, which was later acquired by LG Silicon Valley Lab.

Surya's experience also includes roles as a Principal Architect at ServiceNow, Founder of multiple startups such as Pixawe and Hutke, Mobile Architect at Apple, and Sr. Product Manager and Architect at Yahoo! Inc. During their tenure at Yahoo!, Surya led a product line generating substantial revenue and implemented self-service tools for video player customization and management.

Earlier in their career, Surya served as the Director of Software Engineering at ZL Technologies, where they developed turn-key email solutions for the financial and healthcare industries.

Overall, Surya Vakkalanka's work experience demonstrates their expertise in engineering, product management, architecture, and entrepreneurship across a range of industries and technologies.

Surya Vakkalanka obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Surya also completed the altMBA program in 2018. In addition, Surya earned a Master's Degree in Engineering from Virginia Tech. Surya holds certifications in Certified Scrum Master and Music Arranging and Orchestration from Berklee College of Music. Surya also completed an Executive Product Management Certificate from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009.