Engineering Leader — Platform & DevOps

Aditya Gundecha

I help organisations treat their platform as a product — setting the technical direction and growing the teams that deliver it.

12+
Years in platform & DevOps
20
Engineers in the team I lead
70+
Engineers mentored
$1.5M
Annual cloud savings
Portrait of Aditya Gundecha

About

Engineering velocity,
reliability & trust.

I am an engineering leader in the platform and DevOps space with over a decade of experience turning software delivery into a strategic advantage — and raising the teams that sustain it.

I treat the platform as a product: I set technical direction, shape delivery strategy, and build the engineering culture — shift-left quality, automation over toil, security by default — that lets organisations ship faster and at scale.

Today I lead a platform team of around 20 engineers. Across New Look, Equal Experts and Siemens I have led transformations, re-platformed large microservice estates, and mentored close to 80 engineers into stronger practice.

Leadership

How I lead & the impact of it

~20Engineers in the platform team I lead today
70+Engineers mentored across teams and clients
$1.5MAnnual Azure savings from a cost programme I owned
Monthly → On-demandRelease cadence transformation I led
01

Platform as a product

I treat the internal platform like any other product — with users, a roadmap and clear outcomes — so engineering teams move faster on top of it instead of fighting it.

02

Mentoring as a multiplier

Having mentored close to 80 engineers, I lead by raising the people around me. Durable capability in the team beats any single heroic delivery.

03

Shift-left by default

Quality, security and observability belong early in the lifecycle, not bolted on at the end. I build the culture and automation that make the safe path the easy path.

04

Autonomy with guardrails

I set direction, standards and guardrails, then give teams the autonomy to own their work — aligning on outcomes rather than micromanaging the how.

Experience

A decade of DevOps leadership

  1. Lead Senior DevOps Engineer

    2022 — Present

    New Look

    Lead a platform team of ~20 engineers, owning delivery strategy and engineering culture across New Look’s e-commerce platforms.

    • Set the delivery strategy for the Fabric programme, moving the organisation from monthly releases to on-demand delivery — meeting a board-level business metric for rapid feature deployment and competitive advantage.
    • Made shift-left, quality-first delivery the default, embedding QA earlier in the lifecycle and shifting the team’s operating model away from late-stage firefighting toward faster, lower-defect release cycles.
    • Championed DevOps culture across the Fabric programme and the wider organisation, aligning development and operations around shared ownership and measurably increasing deployment frequency and reliability.
    • Directed the automation roadmap that removed manual release toil, significantly reducing deployment times and improving uptime across e-commerce platforms.
    • Grew the capability of the team and partner departments through mentoring and coaching in CI/CD and cloud automation, raising productivity and engineering standards across multiple departments.
  2. Senior DevOps Consultant

    2021 — 2022

    Equal Experts

    Led cross-functional delivery and advised client leadership on cloud strategy for John Lewis, Waitrose and O2.

    • Led cross-functional teams delivering cloud infrastructure for John Lewis, Waitrose and O2, ensuring seamless operations across Azure and AWS.
    • Authored cloud-governance frameworks that guided client teams toward scalable, secure and cost-effective cloud — with knowledge transfer that left the capability in-house.
    • Owned the migration strategy for critical O2 services across Azure and AWS, coordinating internal client teams and external partners through delivery.
    • Ran leadership workshops that equipped team leads at John Lewis and Waitrose with advanced DevOps and cloud-native practice, accelerating their transformation journeys.
    • Mentored engineers across client engagements, building a culture of continuous learning in cloud management, security and automation.
  3. Senior DevOps Engineer

    2018 — 2021

    Siemens PLM

    Led the platform modernisation of MindSphere — an industry-leading IIoT and Digital Twin platform — toward cloud-native delivery.

    • Led teams through the move from Application Service Environment to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), setting the target architecture and migration approach.
    • Established multi-cloud CI/CD pipelines from scratch, giving teams a repeatable delivery path across environments.
    • Directed the observability strategy, standing up a stack on Azure-native tooling plus Grafana and Prometheus to give teams a shared view of production health.
    • Owned a cost-optimisation initiative that saved up to $1.5M per year on Azure infrastructure — turning platform ownership into measurable business value.
    • Oversaw delivery of 50+ services on Azure DevOps and the re-homing of around 80 microservices onto a modern, observable platform.
  4. Software Engineer

    2013 — 2018

    Siemens PLM

    Core member of the Cloud inception team that delivered the MindSphere PaaS from the ground up.

    • Helped stand up the MindSphere PaaS as part of the founding Cloud inception team, automating deployments for 32+ microservices across 4 lines of business.
    • Drove the migration of 40+ application instances from on-premise infrastructure to Azure public cloud.
    • Removed 50,000+ lines of deprecated code from a $1.2M project baseline, dramatically reducing development overhead and risk.
    • Owned availability of production and development systems built largely on Azure VMs and AKS.
  5. Java Developer

    2012 — 2013

    Siemens PLM

    Delivered features for Teamcenter — a PLM system connecting people and processes with a digital thread for innovation.

    • Authored 50+ technical design documents and implemented business logic for 20 features.
    • Contributed to an Android application (a Code Review application) that was selected for patent registration.

Projects

Flagship work & outcomes

Fabric On-Demand Delivery

New Look2022 — Present

Challenge
E-commerce delivery was locked to a monthly release cadence, blocking rapid feature deployment and competitive advantage.
How I led it
Set the delivery strategy and led the team through it — re-architecting the pipeline, making shift-left quality the default, and championing the DevOps culture change across the Fabric programme and wider organisation.
Outcome
Moved from monthly releases to on-demand delivery, hitting a board-level business metric while increasing deployment frequency, reducing defects and improving reliability.
  • Azure
  • CI/CD
  • Shift-Left QA
  • Automation

MindSphere AKS Migration & Cost Optimisation

Siemens PLM2018 — 2021

Challenge
A large IIoT platform ran on the ageing Application Service Environment with rising Azure spend and limited observability.
How I led it
Set the target architecture and led teams through the move to AKS, directed the build of multi-cloud CI/CD from scratch, and owned the observability and cost-optimisation strategy end to end.
Outcome
Saved up to $1.5M per year on Azure infrastructure and re-homed around 80 microservices onto a modern, observable platform.
  • Azure
  • AKS
  • Kubernetes
  • Grafana
  • Prometheus
  • CI/CD

MindSphere PaaS Cloud Inception

Siemens PLM2013 — 2018

Challenge
A new industrial IoT PaaS had to be delivered from the ground up, with a sprawling on-premise estate to modernise.
How I led it
As a core member of the founding Cloud inception team, drove the automation and migration approach across lines of business and led the push to retire legacy infrastructure and dead code.
Outcome
Automated 32+ microservices across 4 lines of business, migrated 40+ application instances to Azure, and removed 50,000+ lines of deprecated code from a $1.2M project baseline.
  • Azure
  • AKS
  • Microservices
  • Infrastructure Automation

Multi-Client Cloud Governance

Equal Experts2021 — 2022

Challenge
High-profile retail and telecom clients needed secure, scalable and cost-effective cloud operations across Azure and AWS.
How I led it
Led cross-functional teams, authored the cloud-governance frameworks, owned the O2 migration strategy, and ran leadership workshops to build lasting in-house capability.
Outcome
Delivered seamless multi-cloud operations for John Lewis, Waitrose and O2, accelerating their transformation journeys with durable knowledge transfer.
  • Azure
  • AWS
  • Cloud Governance
  • Migration

Skills

Capabilities & toolkit

Core competencies

  • Agile Transformation
  • Shift-Left & Quality-First Mindset
  • Process Automation & Optimisation
  • Cloud Architecture & Infrastructure
  • Microservices & Scalable System Design
  • Technical Leadership & Mentoring
  • Product & Lifecycle Management
  • Business-Driven Technology Solutions

Technical toolkit

Cloud

  • Azure
  • AWS
  • Multi-Cloud

Containers & Orchestration

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

CI/CD & Automation

  • Azure DevOps
  • CI/CD Pipelines
  • Infrastructure Automation

Observability

  • Grafana
  • Prometheus
  • Azure Monitor

Practices

  • DevOps Culture
  • Shift-Left
  • Security-First
  • SRE

Contact

Let's build something reliable.

Open to Engineering Manager, Head of Platform and Director of Engineering roles — and always up for a good conversation about platform strategy and building teams.

adityagundecha@hotmail.com