Venkata Akella

Lead a portfolio of products and programs spanning site reliability engineering, infrastructure modernization, incident investigation, and DevOps — supporting the systems that power Amazon's consumer businesses globally. Lead product vision and roadmap for next-generation infrastructure management, enabling autonomous management of mission-critical systems at global scale. Building agentic AI solutions to autonomously manage infrastructure operations, accelerate incident investigation, and drive DevOps automation. Grew and scaled a cross-functional team across the US, Ireland, India, and Costa Rica. Drive infrastructure modernization initiatives that improve reliability for hundreds of millions of customers worldwide.

Managed and mentored a team of 6 Technical Product Managers across AWS database migration products and programs. Drove product strategy for AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) — trusted by customers to migrate 1.5M+ databases with minimal downtime and zero data loss. Owned product vision for large-scale database migration programs, enabling enterprises to modernize from legacy on-premises databases to managed cloud services. Developed and executed enterprise discount frameworks and pricing strategies for large customers adopting AWS-native databases.

Spearheaded a large-scale Oracle to AWS-native database migration (2019–2020), leading the transition of thousands of services to AWS-native databases including Amazon DynamoDB. Authored whitepapers and made significant intellectual property contributions documenting migration patterns and architectural best practices. Defined and executed the product roadmap for AWS database migration tools supporting migrations across Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and other databases. Designed enterprise pricing frameworks for Fortune 500 and global enterprises migrating to DynamoDB, Aurora, RDS, and Redshift.

Early employee at Boomerang Commerce, which evolved into CommerceIQ — a unified AI platform for retail ecommerce now serving global brands including PepsiCo, P&G, Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, and Mondelez across 1,450+ retailers worldwide. Served as account owner for multiple enterprise engagements with Internet Retailer Top 10 companies. Managed global engineering and implementation teams delivering algorithmic pricing solutions that drove >2% revenue lifts on billions of dollars of managed annual revenue. Owned retention and growth goals for $1M+ in annual recurring revenue, contributing to the company's successful $12M Series B fundraise.

Drove product management and technical program delivery for an AI-based oil and gas production software platform serving major upstream E&P operators including BHP Billiton, Shell, Encana, and Continental Resources. Contributed to products managing 100,000+ wells and $40B+ in CAPEX across the industry. Led requirements gathering, functional specifications, and system architecture documentation for analytics products helping operators reduce costs in a volatile commodity price environment.

Delivered large-scale systems integration engagements for major refiners and petrochemical corporations across Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, spanning both greenfield and brownfield industrial projects. Led end-to-end systems integration from requirements gathering and architecture design through implementation and commissioning. Built strong cross-cultural stakeholder management and delivery execution skills working across Middle East, Europe, and Asia-Pacific client environments.

Implemented Advanced Process Control (APC) systems at RIL's Jamnagar refinery — one of the world's largest single-location refining facilities processing 72M+ tons of crude annually. Developed and deployed Model Predictive Control (MPC) and AI-based inferential models using multivariable control, fuzzy logic, and machine learning to optimize manufacturing yield, improve product quality, and reduce energy consumption. Reduced in-process variability and enabled refinery units to operate closer to constraints, improving throughput and profitability.

Concentrations in Finance and Emerging Technologies.

Five-year dual degree program (Bachelor's and Master's) in Chemical Engineering at one of India's premier technical institutions. Graduated 2007.