Hemchand Thalanchery

Engineering Leader | Product & Platform Leadership

Toronto, Canada - hemchand.t@gmail.com - +1. (647) 978 4128 - www.linkedin.com/in/hemchand

Engineering leader with 20+ years of experience delivering large-scale, cloud-native platforms across financial services, eCommerce, AdTech, and logistics. Proven track record leading multiple engineering squads, driving cross-team architectural decisions, and maturing engineering culture. Deep expertise in Azure, GCP, AWS, Kubernetes (GKE/EKS), microservices, event-driven systems, and React/Angular micro-frontend architectures. Experienced partnering with Product and Design to deliver best-in-class applications and align long-term technical strategy with business goals.


CORE EXPERTISE

·       Engineering Leadership & People Development

·       Cross-Functional Product Delivery

·       Technical Strategy & Architecture

·       Remote Team Management

·       System Design, Data Pipelines

·       Cloud-Native Architecture (Azure, GCP, AWS)

·       Continuous Improvement & Engineering Culture

·       Execution Under Ambiguity

·       Coaching, Mentorship, Career Growth

·       Micro-Front-End Architecture (React, Angular)

·       Large-Scale Financial & Regulatory Platforms

RECENT EXPERIENCE

Senior Technical Lead (Consultant) - Bank of Montreal, Toronto

May 2025 – Present

·       Drove modernization of branch architecture with a focus on reliability, scalability, and clear engineering ownership.

·       Implemented AI-driven document verification systems, improving operational efficiency and accuracy.

·       Partnered with business and engineering teams to streamline regulatory processes and reduce friction.

Managing Software Consultant - FD Technologies, Toronto

Mar 2017 – Apr 2025 (Multiple stints)

·       Architected and delivered a large-scale Azure-native regulatory and trade reporting platform for CIBC.

·       Led execution across 5+ cross-functional squads, improving delivery throughput by 20%.

·       Designed cloud-native microservices using Azure Functions, WebJobs, Service Bus, Elasticsearch, and orchestrated distributed workflows.

·       Reduced false positives in compliance workflows by 30% through domain-driven design and architecture improvements.

·       Partnered with Product, Compliance, and Engineering leadership to align technical strategy with regulatory missions.

·       Led Angular-based micro-front-end development for real-time energy management applications at IESO.

 

Engineering Manager - Alerzo, Nigeria (Remote Consulting)

Dec 2020 – Jan 2024

·       Built a fully cloud-native B2B eCommerce and logistics platform with infrastructure across GKE (Google Cloud) and AWS EKS.

·       Designed and scaled distributed microservices for payments, routing, inventory, and real-time tracking.

·       Delivered React-based mobile and web applications using micro-frontend-friendly patterns across squads.

·       Improved delivery time by 20% and reduced operational cost by 25% through architecture and process optimization.

·       Mentored EMs and senior engineers, introduced career frameworks, and strengthened engineering culture.

 

Engineering Head - Rype Online (Hybrid and later Remote)

Apr 2016 – Mar 2017

·       AdTech Startup Modernization

·       Modernized an ad-tech platform architecture, reducing operational and development costs.

·       Led migration from monolith to microservices using Kafka/Storm for scalable event processing.

·       Built CI/CD pipelines reducing deployment time from days to hours.

 

VP Engineering - Looksmart, Gurgaon

Sep 2013 – Apr 2016

·       Scaling an AdTech/Marketing SaaS Startup

·       Led a 30-member engineering org delivering ad servers, analytics tools, and social media products.

·       Integrated 30+ social networks, improving revenue and customer retention by 20%.

·       Drove cultural transformation: best practices, code quality, mentoring programs, team structures.

·       Migrated data pipelines to scalable systems (Python, Java, HBase, Elasticsearch)

·       Coached engineers and EMs through career progression, performance, and continuous improvement.

 

Senior Engineering Manager - Syncapse / Clickable

Jun 2010 – Aug 2013

·       Growth-Stage Startup (Marketing Analytics)

·       Delivered scalable big-data pipelines with Hadoop, Vertica, Tableau.

·       Built multi-region, cross-functional teams across India, UK, and Canada.

·       Led large migrations from .NET to Java/Python, improving system scalability and maintainability.

TECHNOLOGY & TOOLS

·       Cloud: Azure (CIBC), GCP (GKE), AWS (EKS)

·       Containerization & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (GKE & EKS)

·       Frontend: React (Alerzo, CIBC), Angular (IESO)

·       Micro-Front-End: Angular MFE (IESO), React-based distributed frontends (Alerzo, CIBC)

·       Backend: .NET, Node.js, Java, Python

·       Messaging & Streaming: Kafka, Azure Service Bus, GCP Pub/Sub (architecture patterns)

·       Data: ElasticSearch, Redis, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Hadoop, HBase.

·       DevOps: GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Technology, National Institute of Technology (NIT) Calicut (1998 – 2002)

CERTIFICATIONS

Designing and Building AI Products and Services, MIT xPro (2025)