PRADEEP A. DALVI

Pune, MH, India   pradeep@dalvi.co.in   +91 7744080000   /pradeep   /pradeepdalvi

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Distinguished engineer with over 21 years of experience specializing in high-performance distributed systems and networking protocols. Recognized expert in Linux kernel development, 10Gbps device drivers, and microservices architecture. Proven track record of bridging the gap between deep-level systems programming and executive-level strategy to build secure, resilient enterprise architectures.

TECHNICAL EXPERTISE & CORE INTERESTS

System Architecture & Distributed Computing

•  Scalable Systems: Expert in architecting highly scalable, fault-tolerant microservices and distributed systems.
•  Distributed Stack: Advanced proficiency in RabbitMQ, Apache HBase, Kafka, Apache Zookeeper, Apache Hive, and Apache Apex.
•  Architecture Principles: Advanced practitioner of Object-Oriented Design (OOD) and Design Patterns to build modular, maintainable software.
•  Development Skills: Comprehensive experience in high-level design, development, and system improvements.

Kernel & Systems Engineering

•  Linux Kernel: Deep expertise in kernel-space development, Loadable Kernel Modules (LKM), and custom OS tuning.
•  Systems Programming: Proficient in C/C++, Java, and Python with a focus on system software development.
•  Driver Development: Proven track record of building complex network device drivers (4G/10G) from scratch & upstreaming to the mainline kernel.
•  Optimization: Specialized in performance optimizations within the OS critical path.

Networking & Security

•  Network Infrastructure: Expert in TCP/IP stack development, performance tuning, and TCP Offload Engine (TOE) for 10Gbps+ environments.
•  Security & Identity: Extensive experience in Network Security (DPI, SSL Decryption, Sandboxing) and enterprise identity protocols including LDAPv3, Kerberos, RADIUS, and 2FA.
•  Advanced Debugging: Strong debugging capacity for resolving complex, low-level system issues.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Software Engineer

 Payments Infrastructure & Zero-to-One Launches

•  Founding Architect: Established the Pune engineering hub as the first hire; built a PCI-compliant Payment Gateway from scratch, scaling to 1M+ daily transactions using MariaDB, RabbitMQ, and Aerospike.
•  Smart Routing Innovation: Designed a proprietary Success Rate (SR) routing engine using a pattern-matching algorithm that achieved a 78% success rate, consistently outperforming internal ML models.
•  Strategic Integrations: Led the deep-level Cybersource (Visa) integration, leveraging granular protocol control to drive a major Indian bank's success rate from below 50% to 70+%.
•  Ecosystem Expansion: Pioneered the first-ever consumer-facing system outside the PhonePe app, architecting the web-based infrastructure to extend payment capabilities to the offline mass transit ecosystem.

 Platform Scaling & Retention (Smaran - Reminders 2.0)

•  High-Throughput Distributed Systems: Architected a multi-tenant, HBase-backed scheduling and delivery engine for 150M DAUs, scaling to 60M daily time-sensitive reminders.
•  Revenue & Growth Engine: Drove 30% of total transactions across supported categories; achieved a 175% increase in Water Tax and 100% boost in Gas/Postpaid/Electricity reminders powered transactions.
•  Product Turnaround: Rescued a stagnant product by optimising peak-hour stability, breaking a 11-month plateau to consistent ~10% MoM growth.
•  Operational Efficiency: Engineered NAAM (Automated Accounting Sign-off), reducing manual overhead and accelerating new category onboarding by two weeks.

 Reliability, Compliance & Transit

•  High Availability & BCP: Engineered the first Active-Active Multi-DC Disaster Recovery (DR) for Recharge and BillPay, ensuring 99.99% uptime for mission-critical revenue streams.
•  Observability & Performance: Leveraged deep architectural visibility to preempt outages ahead of automated monitoring during high-concurrency festive spikes and partner events.
•  Regulatory & Transit: Spearheaded the NCMC (One Nation, One Card) issuance for Metro transit (1k+ issuances in week one) and managed rigorous PPI/RBI compliance.

Software Engineer

•  Operator Development: Engineered custom Apache Apex operators for projection, filtering, and laggard management in a real-time streaming.
•  AWS Cloud Integration: Developed the integration suite for Amazon AWS, enabling seamless customer trials and cloud-native scaling.
•  Security Engineering: Secured distributed communication within the RTS platform through advanced SSL/Security protocol implementation.

Principal Member of Technical Staff - I

Project in Brief: High-Performance Database Load Balancer.

•  Core Tech: Kafka, Zookeeper, Python, CPU Isolation, Threading, Distributed Systems.
•  Performance: Redesigned thread distribution for a High-Performance DB Load Balancer to optimise CPU utilisation.
•  Distributed Ops: Implemented Kafka-based message queues for real-time data streaming and Zookeeper for cluster synchronisation.
•  Monitoring: Built an asynchronous Python Alerting Engine for complex event processing across multi-node environments.

Senior Software Engineer

•  High-Performance Analytics: Architected a high-speed web file extraction engine using Python, achieving significant throughput gains for large-scale security analytics platforms.
•  Threat Intelligence & Sandboxing: Engineered a malware detection and reporting pipeline that automated the detonation of unknown files in a sandbox environment for real-time threat analysis.
•  Security Interoperability: Developed remote notification integrations for enterprise SIEMs, including ArcSight and Syslog, ensuring seamless data flow across the security stack.
•  Network Visibility: Designed and prototyped a specialized HAR (HTTP Archive) viewer to visualize and analyze high-speed web flows and performance bottlenecks.

Sr. Principal Development Engineer

Services Company in Systems Software | Client: Solera Networks.

•  Linux Kernel Mainline: Refactored memory management across 100+ network drivers to implement uniform buffer allocation, improving kernel network drivers.
•  Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): Developed kernel-space PCAP parsing logic for proprietary high-speed forensic storage systems.
•  Security Engineering: Prototyped ultra-high-speed SSL decryption and integrated multi-factor authentication (2FA/Kerberos/LDAP) into network security appliances.
•  Cloud & Virtualization: Conducted technical prototyping for next-generation Virtualization and SaaS security products.

Independent Software Developer

Explored Entrepreneurial Experience & Technical Leadership.

•  Director of Tech (eArth Solutions): Led development of analytics engines for The Times of India & Hindustan Times.
•  Campaign Systems Architect: Built mass-mailing infrastructure and global campaign sites for UN-nominated and local MP candidates (Arun Bhatia).
•  Consulting & Portals: Executed technical assessments for iCrave.in and delivered SharePoint/OMS solutions for international and local clients (RGen Solutions, Café 1730).

Member of Technical Staff

Product in Brief: Policy-based Application Level Firewall/Network Security Appliance.

•  Identity Management: Achieved 10k auths/sec on MIPS64 Octeon processors via a custom multi-tier authentication interface for Cisco/Rohati.

System Software Engineer

Services Company in Linux System Software | Client: Marvell Technology (formerly NetXen).

•  Driver Development: Built 4G/10G Linux network device drivers from the ground up and managed the end-to-end linux kernel submission process.

EDUCATION

B.E., Computer Engineering