Yash Chheda
Software Engineering Manager — Cloud Native Platform Engineering
Minneapolis, MNyashchheda91@gmail.comlinkedin.com/in/chhedayashgithub.com/yashchheda
Summary
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.
Experience
Appian Corporation
Oct 2019 – Present
McLean, VA · remote from Minneapolis, MN since Jan 2026
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.
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.
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.
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
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 experience
- 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.
Skills
- 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
Education & certifications
- M.S. Computer Science — California State University, Fullerton2016 · Fullerton, CA
- B.E. Information Technology — K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering, University of Mumbai2013 · Mumbai, India
- Appian Certified Lead Developer (2021) · Appian Certified Senior Developer · C/C++ Certified Programmer