Senior Technology Leader with 20+ years across global banking and industrial enterprises, specializing in SRE, Observability, DevOps, and technical program/project delivery. Proven track record leading enterprise transformations, reliability maturity uplift, and budget/vendor governance for production-grade platforms. Currently Co-Founder & CTO of an early-stage EdTech venture, building an adaptive, AI-powered learning platform with Claude-based engineering workflows, strong security/observability discipline, and enterprise-grade CI/CD practices to ship and operate reliable software.

Gaurav Tapadkar

Senior Technology Leader with 20+ years across global banking and industrial enterprises, specializing in SRE, Observability, DevOps, and technical program/project delivery. Proven track record leading enterprise transformations, reliability maturity uplift, and budget/vendor governance for production-grade platforms. Currently Co-Founder & CTO of an early-stage EdTech venture, building an adaptive, AI-powered learning platform with Claude-based engineering workflows, strong security/observability discipline, and enterprise-grade CI/CD practices to ship and operate reliable software.

Available to hire

Senior Technology Leader with 20+ years across global banking and industrial enterprises, specializing in SRE, Observability, DevOps, and technical program/project delivery. Proven track record leading enterprise transformations, reliability maturity uplift, and budget/vendor governance for production-grade platforms.

Currently Co-Founder & CTO of an early-stage EdTech venture, building an adaptive, AI-powered learning platform with Claude-based engineering workflows, strong security/observability discipline, and enterprise-grade CI/CD practices to ship and operate reliable software.

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Experience Level

Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert

Work Experience

Co-Founder & CTO at Rao Academy | VRD Institute LLP
June 1, 2026 - Present
Co-founded Rao Academy (EdTech product with POC/build phase) and serve as CTO owning product vision, technology strategy, architecture, security, and observability for an adaptive AI-powered mathematics learning platform for K-12. Built the platform content engine to standardize question UI/quality/relevance and to generate grade-appropriate learning paths and parent progress reports. Uses Claude and Claude Code as core engineering approach, defining engineering guardrails and review standards, and managing CI/CD automation to ship production features with banking-grade reliability and governance discipline.
IS Manager (Observability) at ABB
January 1, 2026 - May 31, 2026
Owned ABB’s end-to-end global observability strategy, platform, and operations, leading a ~15-person team and the annual observability budget (licenses, infrastructure, internal/external resources, vendor services). Led the transformation from an outsourced observability model to an in-house build-and-run operating model by consolidating server/network/infrastructure monitoring into a single-pane-of-glass platform supporting future hosting/network models. Drove vendor governance and roadmap across Checkmk, Dynatrace, Moogsoft (AIOps), Grafana, OpenTelemetry, SolarWinds, ThousandEyes, and Snowflake across multi-cloud environments. Built data-driven dashboards for real-time reporting and embedded Agile delivery and cost optimization across teams.
IS Manager (Observability) | Global IS Service Owner, Observability at ABB
January 1, 2026 - May 1, 2026
Owned ABB’s end-to-end global observability strategy, platform, and operations. Led a ~15-person team and the full observability annual budget covering tools/infrastructure/resources and L2/L3 support. Drove transformation from fully outsourced monitoring to an in-house build-and-run operating model, consolidating infrastructure/server/network monitoring into a unified single-pane-of-glass platform supporting ABB’s Future Hosting/Network models. Managed vendor governance and roadmap across Checkmk, Dynatrace, Moogsoft (AIOps), Grafana, OpenTelemetry, SolarWinds, ThousandEyes, and Snowflake across multi-cloud environments, including dashboarding for risk-based program reporting and cost optimization.
Senior IT Project Manager at Standard Chartered Bank
December 1, 2024 - October 31, 2025
Led execution of a bank-wide enterprise software cost-optimization program under the Fit for Growth (FFG) initiative. Replaced a paid enterprise tool with an open-source alternative across Consumer Banking, Commercial Banking, and Enterprise Technology, delivering multi-year recurring cost savings by eliminating vendor license renewals. Owned programme delivery across thousands of servers and tens of thousands of endpoints, performing technical compatibility assessments and rollout sequencing to avoid business disruption. Built and managed programme structure in Azure DevOps (epics/initiatives/stories/tasks/tags) with real-time dashboards for senior management and the FFG committee (progress, risks, milestones, budget, resources, forecasts, RAID). Ran governance cadences, managed escalations, and produced executive-level reporting.
Vice President | Senior IT Project Manager at Standard Chartered Bank
December 1, 2024 - October 1, 2025
Led execution of a bank-wide enterprise software cost-optimisation program under Fit for Growth (FFG). Replaced a paid enterprise tool with an open-source alternative across multiple domains, delivering multi-year savings by eliminating recurring vendor license renewals. Owned programme structure and delivery in Azure DevOps with executive-level reporting, milestone/RAID tracking, and sequencing of thousands of servers/tens of thousands of endpoints while minimizing business disruption. Also directed SRE/DevOps and observability maturity roadmap in ITSM (ServiceNow), integrating proactive failure prediction approaches and chairing governance forums for systematic RCA and remediation.
Lead Enterprise Monitoring Engineer, SRE Transformation at Standard Chartered Bank
June 1, 2023 - December 1, 2024
Directed the SRE/DevOps and Observability maturity roadmap for applications in the ITSM domain (ServiceNow). Set technical direction for monitoring coverage, tooling standards, reliability practices, and embedded governance/continuous improvement. Integrated AI-driven tooling (AppDynamics, Prometheus) to support proactive failure prediction, improving time-to-detect and time-to-respond while raising uptime. Chaired weekly IPC governance forums to drive systematic root-cause analysis and remediation follow-through.
Vice President | Lead Enterprise Monitoring Engineer, SRE Transformation at Standard Chartered Bank
June 1, 2023 - December 1, 2024
Directed the SRE/DevOps and Observability maturity uplift for applications within the ITSM domain (ServiceNow). Established technical direction for monitoring coverage, tooling standards, and reliability practices across the enterprise estate. Integrated AI-driven tooling for proactive failure prediction to improve incident response time and uptime. Chaired weekly IPC governance forums to drive root-cause analysis and systematic prevention of recurrence.
Head SRE / Chapter Lead, SRE Transformation at Standard Chartered Bank
July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2023
Hands-on SRE leadership across critical banking applications: performed application assessments, mapped customer-experience metrics to business transactions, defined thresholds, and established SLI/SLO frameworks with enforced error budgets. Built and scaled the bank’s SRE chapter, mentoring engineers and embedding SRE culture (observability, CI/CD, automation) across multiple application teams. Led SRE/DevOps maturity assessments and created uplift roadmaps aligned to enterprise maturity frameworks. Managed incidents and postmortems, facilitated RCA, and implemented custom automation utilities to reduce toil and prevent recurrence.
Vice President | Head SRE / Chapter Lead, SRE Transformation at Standard Chartered Bank
July 1, 2021 - June 1, 2023
Led hands-on SRE implementation for critical banking applications, mapping customer experience metrics to business transactions and setting SLI/SLO frameworks with enforced error budgets. Built and scaled the bank’s SRE chapter through mentoring and embedding SRE culture, tooling, and automation/observability/CI-CD practices across multiple teams. Conducted SRE/DevOps maturity assessments and delivered uplift roadmaps aligned to enterprise maturity frameworks, including incident troubleshooting, postmortems, RCA remediation, and automation to reduce toil.
Senior Manager - DevOps Engineering at Teradata
May 1, 2021 - July 1, 2021
Led and mentored a CI/CD and automation engineering team, including hiring, performance reviews, and skills development. Owned the end-to-end lifecycle for CI/CD transformation initiatives: scoping, planning, SOW development, and risk assessment in partnership with engineering, release architecture, and PM teams to deliver fully automated CI/CD pipelines across planned releases.
Infrastructure Developer (SRE) at J.P. Morgan Chase
May 1, 2019 - May 1, 2021
Partnered with product teams to define and implement SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets aligned to the firm’s SRE maturity model, improving uptime and reliability. Served as SME for enterprise development tooling and defined toil-reduction criteria and self-healing/auto-remediation patterns. Delivered firm-wide SRE bootcamps and knowledge-sharing workshops to scale best practices.
Assistant Vice President, Technical Specialist at Deutsche Bank
December 1, 2013 - May 1, 2019
Led infrastructure and cross-functional engineering projects in a highly regulated environment. Spearheaded DevOps, CI/CD, and automation tooling adoption, including tool upgrades, performance/root-cause analysis, and disaster recovery programmes. Automated release and demand-management processes and administered the enterprise toolchain (Jira, Confluence, Jenkins, Ansible).
IT Analyst, Release Manager & Web Developer at Tata Consultancy Services (Clients: General Electric, CNBC/NBC Universal)
January 1, 2006 - November 30, 2013
Led onsite/offshore/nearshore teams across international assignments delivering 24/7 production support and end-to-end release management across PMO, QA, Dev, and Infrastructure stakeholders. Developed web modules for SupportCentral using J2EE technologies and implemented automated server housekeeping, log retention, and deployment tasks to improve operational efficiency.
IT Analyst, Release Manager & Web Developer at Tata Consultancy Services
January 1, 2006 - November 1, 2013
Led onsite/offshore/nearshore teams across international assignments delivering 24/7 production support and end-to-end release management across PMO, QA, Dev, and infrastructure stakeholders. Developed web modules for GE’s SupportCentral platform using J2EE frameworks and implemented automated server housekeeping, log retention, and deployment tasks.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Technology at Nagpur University
January 1, 2005 - August 26, 2026
Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Technology) at Nagpur University
January 1, 2005 - January 1, 2005
Bachelors of Engineering, Computer Technology at Nagpur University
January 1, 2005 - January 1, 2005

Qualifications

AI: Anthropic Claude Code 101
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
Claude Platform 101
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
Claude 101
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
AWS Certified AI Practitioner
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
Oracle Certified Foundations Associate (OCI)
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
Gremlin Certified Chaos Engineering Professional, Associate (GCCEPro)
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
Red Hat Certificate of Expertise in Platform-as-a-Service
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
SAFe 5 Practitioner
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
SAFe 4 DevOps Practitioner
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026
AppDynamics University Certificates (APM)
January 11, 2030 - August 26, 2026

Industry Experience

Financial Services, Software & Internet, Education