Poonacha Kongetira

Poonacha Kongetira is the VP of Hardware at SambaNova. Poonacha was previously at Google from March 2017 to August 2021, where they led development of custom silicon accelerators for Datacenters. Prior to that, they were at Avogy Inc. from March 2015 to December 2016 as VP Systems Engineering. There, they were responsible for electrical, mechanical, and FW engineering for Zolt power supplies. This included board design and manufacturing, EMI and safety compliance, thermal design for user comfort and reliability, mechanical enclosure design for function and cosmetics, Firmware for charging & communication. Poonacha also launched ZoltPlus - a tiny multi output charger - which won the 2015 Innovation award at CES. It is the highest power efficiency in its class. Kongetira has also been VP Engineering at NetSpeed Systems from August 2013 to January 2015.

Poonacha Kongetira received their MSEE from Purdue University in Electrical Engineering and their Bachelor's Degree from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in Electrical & Electronics Engineering. Poonacha also attended Bishop Cotton Boys School.

They are on a team with Peter Buckingham - VP, Software Engineering, Mary Jo Doherty - VP, Engineering, and Prabhdeep Singh - VP, Software Product. Their manager is Kunle Olukotun, Co-Founder & Chief Technologist.