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Yash Chheda

Software Engineering Manager @ Appian

Yash.Chheda

Cloud Native Platform Engineering

I lead the platform engineering team behind a multi-region Kubernetes fleet — and I build the systems and the team that keep it reliable under continuous audit.

Kubernetes clusters
100+

internal and customer workloads

AWS accounts
25+

across 25 AWS regions

Annual cloud savings
~$1M

capacity planning vs reactive scaling

MTTR reduction
~40%

via AIOps-driven automation

About

Platform engineering, and the teams that run it

Engineering leader with 12+ years across cloud-native platform engineering, full-stack development, and fintech. I manage a 10-engineer Cloud Native Platform Engineering team at Appian, owning the multi-account, multi-region Kubernetes and AWS fleet that runs Appian's internal and customer workloads.

The platform operates under continuous FedRAMP, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS and DoD IL5 audit, so velocity has to be built inside those constraints rather than in spite of them. I was one of the technical leads on the multi-year Stratus migration that moved customers off legacy infrastructure onto that platform.

Promoted four times in six years, from individual contributor to manager of the team behind the platform I helped build. Still hands-on in Go, Terraform, and design review — I think that is what makes technical management credible.

What I work on

Focus areas

My work sits where platform reliability, cost, and compliance meet — usually all three at once.

Kubernetes platform

Architecture direction for a multi-account, multi-region Kubernetes fleet: cluster topology, upgrade paths, and rollout safety for a multi-tenant estate carrying both internal and customer workloads.

  • Kubernetes
  • AWS
  • Terraform
  • Go

AIOps & operational toil

Replacing human runbook steps with automation that acts before a person has to. Cut manual operational interventions ~35% and reduced MTTR ~40%, returning engineering capacity to roadmap delivery.

  • Observability
  • Automation
  • SLOs
  • Incident response

Shipping under audit

Contributing to audit readiness across FedRAMP Moderate/High, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS and DoD IL5 through platform and OS hardening against CIS Level 1 benchmarks, plus control evidence.

  • FedRAMP
  • SOC 2
  • CIS benchmarks
  • DoD IL5

Teams & delivery

Hiring, performance management and career development for a 10-engineer team, alongside quarterly delivery planning with product, SRE and security. Mentored engineers into independent owners as a technical mentor and squad coach.

  • Engineering management
  • Mentoring
  • Agile
  • Roadmapping

Experience

Twelve years, and one platform I grew up with

Four promotions in six years at Appian — individual contributor to manager of the team behind the platform I helped build.

Appian Corporation

Oct 2019 – Present · McLean, VA · remote from Minneapolis, MN since Jan 2026

  1. Software Engineering Manager, Cloud Native Platform Engineering

    Oct 2025 – Present

    Technical delivery owner for a 10-engineer platform team accountable for 100+ Kubernetes clusters across 25+ AWS accounts and 25 AWS regions, running both internal and customer workloads.

    • Own hiring, performance management, compensation and career development for the team, while staying active in architecture and design review.
    • Drove AIOps-based automation of operational toil, cutting manual operational interventions ~35% and reducing MTTR ~40% — capacity returned directly to roadmap delivery.
    • Own technical delivery across quarterly release cycles, from sprint planning to production rollout, with product, SRE and security stakeholders.
    • Set architecture direction for cloud-native infrastructure on Kubernetes and AWS, including upgrade paths and rollout safety across the fleet.
    • Contribute to audit readiness across FedRAMP Moderate/High, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS and DoD IL5 through platform and OS hardening (CIS Level 1 benchmarks) and control evidence.
    • Lead cloud cost optimization across the fleet, delivering ~$1M in annual savings by tying capacity planning to growth forecasts rather than reactive scaling.
  2. Technical Mentor, Software Development

    Apr 2023 – Oct 2025

    Technical lead, Agile squad coach and mentor for the cloud platform team through the multi-year Stratus migration.

    • Served as one of the technical leads on the Stratus cloud migration, moving customers off legacy infrastructure onto Kubernetes-native infrastructure — a multi-year programme spanning multiple squads.
    • Mentored 4 engineers through weekly 1:1s focused on professional growth, and contributed to staffing, capacity planning and onboarding across the platform organisation.
    • Served as Agile squad coach — sprint planning, estimation, reviews and retrospectives — while remaining a hands-on contributor in Go and Terraform.
    • Acted as escalation point for high-visibility production incidents, converting findings into automation and runbooks instead of tribal knowledge.
    • Raised the technical bar on Go, Terraform and Kubernetes practice through design reviews, pairing and documentation that shortened new-engineer ramp time.
  3. Senior Product Engineer, Cloud Native Infrastructure

    Sep 2021 – Mar 2023

    • Built the Kubernetes-native foundation for the Stratus platform, growing adoption to cover the majority of all Appian customer deployments.
    • Developed Kubernetes operator modules in Go and provisioned AWS infrastructure as code with Terraform.
    • Built AWS integrations to provision secure, scalable customer Kubernetes sites, and extended the cloud operations dashboard into the single entry point for every activity on a customer cloud site.
    • Root-caused production failures where customer deployments would not start; partnered with AWS support on a kernel defect that froze site volumes, leading to a fix on the AWS side.
    • Designed, shipped and documented Appian Web APIs, and led two engineers as secondary squad coach across sprint planning, estimation, reviews and retrospectives.
  4. Application Engineer → Senior Application Engineer, Business Applications

    Oct 2019 – Sep 2021

    • Architected and delivered customer applications end to end on the Appian low-code platform in SAIL, from requirements through design, development, testing and maintenance.
    • Cut a core business process from 28–30 minutes to 4–5 seconds by refactoring legacy logic and process models.
    • Designed and built the mission-critical Appian Certification programme application.
    • Replaced third-party plugins with equivalent in-product features written in Java, and developed Java-based availability checks for critical third-party integrations using RPA bots.
    • Built nightly synchronisation between Appian and external systems including Salesforce and HRIS, and mentored new developers; received department Badge Awards for top performance and ticket resolution speed.

Ethos Lending LLC(acquired by One American Bank)

Dec 2016 – Oct 2019 · Irvine, CA

  1. Software Engineer

    Dec 2016 – Oct 2019

    Full-stack engineer on a digital mortgage lending platform, retained through the company's acquisition by One American Bank.

    • Built the microservices architecture for a fintech lending platform: .NET Core 2.1 and C# 7 Web APIs, Vue.js and Razor front end, MS SQL Server, deployed as Azure App Service containers.
    • Designed the Azure API Management gateway, routing external third-party traffic through an internal conversation logging proxy to backend services.
    • Implemented OAuth 2.0 authorization via IdentityServer4, validating access tokens on every request entering the gateway, and delivered single sign-on across the application suite.
    • Created CI/CD build and release pipelines from scratch, managed containers with Docker Compose, and migrated an in-house queue implementation to RabbitMQ.
    • Added test coverage with Coverlet, OpenAPI documentation via Swagger UI, and exception logging through Application Insights.
    • Built Encompass SDK plugins to update loans, delivered an in-house eSign and document merge feature, and redesigned the Broker Portal UI.

Earlier

  • Zagace Inc.— Full Stack Web Developer,San Jose, CA · 2016

    SaaS ERP product on the Yii PHP framework with PostgreSQL and an AngularJS front end.

  • California State University, Fullerton— Web Developer,Fullerton, CA · 2015–2016

    Departmental web applications in ASP.NET and C# with Better CMS.

  • CavIT Pvt. Ltd.— Software Development Coordinator,Mumbai, India · 2013–2014

    Vacation booking portal in ASP.NET and VB.NET backed by MS SQL Server.

Toolkit

Skills

No percentage bars. Self-assigned proficiency scores are unfalsifiable — here is simply what I work with.

Leadership
Team Management (10 reports)·Hiring & Onboarding·Mentoring & Coaching·Agile / Scrum·Roadmap & Release Planning·Incident Command·Cloud Cost Optimization
Cloud, DevOps & SRE
AWS·Kubernetes·Docker·Terraform·Linux·Azure·AIOps·Observability·Infrastructure as Code·GitLab CI·Azure DevOps·Git
Languages
Go·Java·C#·SAIL (Appian)·SQL·Shell / Bash·JavaScript
Platforms
Appian·ASP.NET Core·Spring·REST APIs·Node.js·Vue.js·RabbitMQ
Databases
PostgreSQL·MS SQL Server·MySQL·MongoDB·Redis·SOQL
Compliance
FedRAMP Moderate & High·SOC 2·HIPAA·PCI DSS·DoD IL5·DoDIN APL·IRAP·Cyber Essentials Plus

Credentials

Education & certifications

Education

  • M.S. Computer Science

    California State University, Fullerton

    2016 · Fullerton, CA

  • B.E. Information Technology

    K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering, University of Mumbai

    2013 · Mumbai, India

Certifications

  • Appian Certified Lead Developer2021
  • Appian Certified Senior Developer
  • C/C++ Certified Programmer

Contact

Let's talk

I'm most useful where reliability, cost, and compliance all matter at once, and where the expectation is to solve that with engineering rather than headcount. Always happy to compare notes with people building cloud platforms at scale.