Innovation In Making

Mallikarjuna Mudiam

Director of Engineering | Payments Infrastructure | Cloud & Data Platforms

📍 Atlanta, GA | | 📞 678-314-8536 | linkedin.com/in/mmudiam

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About Me

Innovative, results-driven Engineering Leader with 20+ years of progressive experience spanning software engineering, automation, and leadership roles across fintech, insurance, logistics, and e-commerce sectors. Proven ability to build and scale engineering organizations, modernize legacy architectures, and drive business-critical transformations with measurable impact.

Specializes in cloud-native platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), event-driven microservices, DevSecOps automation, scalable CI/CD pipelines, and real-time data architectures. Experienced in shaping vision and execution strategy for payment infrastructures including acquirer processing, card issuing, settlement, onboarding, and billing.

Led end-to-end platform migrations from on-prem to cloud, built a full-featured data lake, and integrated AI/ML capabilities in personalization and developer experience. Passionate about building reusable frameworks, enabling continuous delivery, and empowering product-aligned teams to deliver with velocity, quality, and security.

20+ Years Experience
60+ Engineers Managed
4 Global Locations
5+ Industries

Professional Experience

2016-Present

Director of Engineering

MerchantE – Atlanta, GA

Leading engineering teams across multiple geographies to deliver core payment processing platforms:

  • Directed delivery for core payment processing platforms, including Authorization, Clearing, Settlement, Merchant & Partner Billing, and Onboarding services
  • Managed 60+ engineers across development, QA, data, and DevOps in US, Argentina, India, and Thailand
  • Led full migration of legacy services from on-premises data centers to AWS, enabling high availability and scalability while reducing infrastructure costs
  • Established CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub, SonarQube, CloudFormation/Terraform, and AWS-native tooling
  • Delivered cloud-native services supporting multiple business models: Direct Sales, ISO, ISV, PayFacs, and FIs
  • Launched a robust Data Lake initiative and governed reporting architecture, enabling near real-time insights for financial operations
  • Advocated for OpenAPI-first documentation practices and shift-left testing
  • Partnered with Product, Sales, and Operations to align engineering roadmaps with evolving business strategy

Key Results:

  • Achieved 4x deployment velocity with 50% reduction in production issues
  • Reduced time-to-board new merchants by 40% through automation
  • Enabled real-time clearing and settlement processing with millisecond SLAs
2002-2016

Senior QA Manager & Test Automation Architect

Cox Automotive | TSYS Loyalty | Macy's | UPS | Dell | Fundtech | MCI | Berkshire Hathaway

Led test automation and quality engineering across large-scale enterprise platforms:

  • Designed frameworks using Selenium, JBehave, Appium, and QuickTest Pro, integrated with Jenkins/Bamboo
  • Architected automation strategies for batch, web, and API testing across verticals: Payments, Logistics, Insurance, Retail, and Telecom
  • Pioneered BDD adoption and shift-left QA practices using Java, Groovy, and Junit frameworks
  • Built load/performance testing strategies using LoadRunner, JMeter, and SoapUI for high-availability systems

Highlighted Projects:

  • TSYS Loyalty: Built automation pipelines for Visa/MC/Discover rewards platforms and batch processing systems
  • Cox Automotive: Delivered CI-aligned automation suite for auto auction platforms with real-time dashboards
  • UPS Online Tools: Tested 20+ XML-based shipping APIs; led web service interoperability and regression strategy
  • Dell DARS: QA strategy for account receivable systems including stress/load simulations and UAT automation
  • Macy's WMS: Automation suite for warehouse movement systems using JBehave and Selenium Grid
  • Fundtech CASHplus: Performed performance testing of multi-currency banking suite using LoadRunner

Technical Leadership & Skills

Core Expertise

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • AWS (EKS, Aurora, Lambda, Cognito, CloudWatch)
  • GCP (Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Spanner)
  • Azure (API Gateway, Cosmos, Redis)
  • Containerization & Orchestration
  • Serverless Architectures
  • High-Availability Systems

DevOps & CI/CD

  • Jenkins, GitHub Actions
  • Terraform, CloudFormation
  • Cloud Build, CodePipeline
  • SonarQube, Artifact Registry
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • Continuous Deployment

Backend & APIs

  • Java, Node.js, Python
  • REST, gRPC, GraphQL
  • OpenAPI (Swagger)
  • Kafka, Redis
  • Microservices Architecture
  • Event-Driven Systems

Frontend & Automation

  • React, Selenium
  • JBehave, Jasmine, Protractor
  • BrowserStack, Junit
  • Cucumber, BDD Frameworks
  • Test Automation Pipelines
  • UI/UX Testing

Data & Analytics

  • Vertex AI, BigQuery
  • QuickSight, Data Lakes
  • PostgreSQL, MongoDB
  • S3, Glue, ETL Pipelines
  • Real-time Analytics
  • Business Intelligence

Leadership & Strategy

  • OKRs, Agile/Lean
  • 1:1 Coaching, Mentoring
  • Global Team Building
  • Strategic Planning
  • Product-Engineering Alignment
  • Technical Roadmapping

Key Achievements

Notable Projects & Achievements

Commerce Personalization Platform (GCP)

Designed and deployed microservices-based e-commerce personalization system using GCP Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Spanner, and Redis. Built autoscaling CI/CD pipelines using Cloud Build and Artifact Registry.

Card Issuing API Platform (Azure)

Led architecture for a PCI-compliant Issuing solution with APIs for Authorization, Clearing, Issuing, and Reporting. Enabled scale through autoscaling containerized services and Azure SQL + Redis for state.

Cold Chain Medical Logistics (AWS)

Developed real-time stock, fulfillment, and cold-chain APIs using AWS EKS, Aurora, SQS, and CloudWatch. Designed with regulatory traceability, auditability, and auto-scaling from Day 1.

Constituent & Voter Management Platform

Platform supporting 80M voters and 200K volunteers, with XLS ingestion, PDF generation, and QuickSight dashboards. Delivered secure workflows using Cognito, Lambda, and Fargate.

Banking Platform Integration

Integrated onboarding, card servicing, loan processing, and marketing across Salesforce clouds and Mule APIs. Delivered cohesive experiences across mobile, online, and internal apps.

AI-Powered E-Commerce Recommendations

Implemented GCP-based recommendation engine using Vertex AI, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Redis cache. Increased conversion rate by 17% through dynamic personalization.

Blog

Thoughts and insights on technology leadership, engineering practices, and industry trends

Coming Soon

Building Effective Distributed Engineering Teams

Strategies for leading and managing engineering teams across multiple geographies and time zones.

Coming Soon
Coming Soon

Cloud Migration: Lessons Learned

Key insights and best practices from migrating critical payment processing services to AWS.

Coming Soon
Coming Soon

DevSecOps in Financial Services

Implementing secure development practices in highly regulated financial environments.

Coming Soon
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