About Experience Skills Impact Photos Contact
Available for new opportunities

Hi, I'm
Karthik Rajendran

Engineering Leader · SaaS Architect · AI Innovator

Engineering leader with 14+ years driving large-scale SaaS platforms and high-performing teams. I turn complex technical challenges into scalable, resilient products that move business forward.

Get in Touch Download Resume
0 Years Exp.
0 Engineers Led
0 $M Revenue Impact
0 % AI Productivity Gain
Karthik Rajendran
Freshworks Engineering Manager
Anchanto Scaled 0 → 25 engineers
Karthik Rajendran
150K+
Monthly Active Users
About Me

Engineering Excellence,
People-First Leadership

I'm an engineering leader who believes the best technology is built by empowered people. With over 14 years of experience across enterprise e-commerce, SaaS, and product platforms, I've learned that the most scalable systems are built on equally robust team cultures.

At Freshworks, I led org-wide initiatives across Freshchat and Freshdesk, managing 20+ direct reports and driving $350M+ in revenue impact. I champion AI adoption and developer tooling that measurably moves the needle — delivering ~40% productivity improvements across engineering teams.

I'm passionate about platform modernization, mentoring future leaders, and building bridges between business strategy and technical execution.

🚀
Platform Scaling Monolith → Microservices at scale
🤖
AI-Driven Productivity GenAI, RAG, LLM integration
👥
Team Building Scaled teams from 0 to 30+
📦
Release Governance Owning delivery for 150+ engineers
Career Journey

Work Experience

14+ years of progressive growth from intern to engineering leader, building products used by millions.

Engineering Manager
Feb 2022 – Present
Freshworks · Chennai, India
  • Led org-wide initiatives contributing to $350M+ revenue scaling across Freshchat and Freshdesk products
  • Managed 20+ direct reports and owned engineering delivery across multiple squads
  • Implemented AI adoption strategy improving team productivity by ~40% using GenAI tooling
  • Owned release governance and coordination for 150+ engineers across concurrent release cycles
  • Led performance engineering and mobile app scaling to 150K+ monthly active users
  • Conducted 100+ hiring interviews; managed 65 contractors and 7 vendor relationships
SaaS AI/ML Freshchat Freshdesk Team Leadership Release Governance
Engineering Manager
Aug 2021 – Feb 2022
Anchanto · APAC
  • Scaled integration team from zero to 25 engineers in 6 months — hiring, onboarding, and delivery
  • Led monolith-to-microservices modernization of the core e-commerce platform
  • Built integrations with 12+ marketplaces (Lazada, Shopee, Tokopedia) and 8+ logistics providers
  • Ensured 100% uptime for 25M+ peak transactions across the APAC region
  • Migrated 200M+ users across 200+ marketplace implementations
Microservices APAC E-Commerce Marketplace APIs 0→1 Team Building
Software Architect → Sr. Architect
May 2012 – Jul 2021
Skava / Infosys · 9 Years
  • Advanced from intern to architect in 9 years with 5 consecutive promotions on merit
  • Led enterprise e-commerce platform development serving global Fortune 500 clients
  • Owned critical systems including user, auth, cart, orders, and payments modules
  • Managed a team of 35+ backend engineers across distributed squads
  • Architected and delivered a fully automated CI/CD pipeline adopted org-wide
Architecture Java Spring Boot CI/CD Enterprise E-Commerce
Technical Expertise

Skills & Stack

A breadth of technical depth built across 14 years of hands-on architecture and leadership.

Languages & Frameworks
Java / Spring Boot95%
Node.js88%
Python / Flask / Django80%
JavaScript / TypeScript82%
Architecture & Design
Microservices Design96%
SaaS / PaaS Platforms93%
Distributed Systems90%
Event-Driven (Kafka)85%
AI & Cloud
Generative AI / LLMs88%
RAG Architectures83%
AWS (EC2, RDS, S3…)87%
GitHub Actions / Jenkins91%
Data & Databases
MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB DynamoDB Redis Kafka ElasticSearch
Leadership & Strategy
🎯 OKR Planning 🚀 Hiring at Scale 🌿 Mentorship 📊 Roadmapping 🔁 Agile / Scrum 📦 Vendor Management 🤝 Stakeholder Alignment
Tools & Platforms
Docker Kubernetes GitHub Jenkins Jira Datadog New Relic
Impact & Numbers

Key Achievements

Numbers that reflect the scale and impact of the work done over 14+ years.

$350M+
Revenue impact from org-wide engineering initiatives at Freshworks
200M+
Users migrated across 200+ marketplace implementations at Anchanto
25M+
Peak APAC transactions handled with 100% uptime
~40%
Productivity improvement from AI adoption strategy implementation
30+
Engineers directly managed across squads and organizations
100+
Hiring interviews conducted; built teams from ground up
12+
Marketplace integrations built (Lazada, Shopee, Tokopedia…)
5×
Promotions at Skava/Infosys — intern to Software Architect
Academic Background

Education

🎓
Master of Science in Software Engineering
Anna University
2007 – 2012
Let's Connect

Open to new
opportunities & conversations

Whether you're looking for an engineering leader to drive your next big platform initiative, want to collaborate on something impactful, or simply want to connect — I'd love to hear from you.

Ready to Build Something Great?

I bring 14+ years of engineering leadership — from zero-to-one team building and platform modernization to AI-driven developer productivity and revenue-driving product delivery. Let's talk about what we can build together.

Send me a message
WhatsApp me
Download Resume