Hemchand Thalanchery

Engineering Manager | Distributed Systems & Commerce Platforms

Engineering Manager with 20+ years of experience leading and scaling engineering organizations across fintech, e-commerce, and edtech - from 0→1 through to enterprise scale. Proven track record of growing and mentoring high-performing teams, driving end-to-end product delivery, and achieving measurable outcomes across multi-squad organizations. Deep technical depth in distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, and AI/LLM integration, combined with strong people leadership, stakeholder alignment, and OKR-driven roadmap ownership. Passionate about building engineering cultures where teams do their best work.

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 (GKE), AWS (EKS)
Continuous Improvement & Engineering Culture
Coaching, Mentorship & Career Growth
AI/LLM Integration & Generative AI Products
Organizational Scaling, Career Frameworks & OKR-Driven Roadmaps

RECENT EXPERIENCE

Senior Technical Lead - Bank of Montreal, Toronto

May 2025 – Present

Managing and aligning multiple product engineering teams on the modernization of BMO’s branch platform architecture, supporting high-volume customer onboarding and servicing workflows across retail banking operations.
Partnering with Product, business, and engineering teams to streamline processes and improve customer onboarding and servicing efficiency.
Delivered AI-driven document verification capabilities, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy in high-volume workflows.
Driving clearer engineering ownership, system reliability, and execution standards across teams.

Managing Software Consultant - FD Technologies, Toronto
Clients: CIBC and IESO

Mar 2017 – Apr 2025 (Multiple stints)

Owned architecture and delivery of a large-scale Azure-native trade reporting platform processing millions of financial transactions with strict reliability and audit requirements.
Worked with stakeholders and coordinated delivery across 5+ cross-functional squads, improving delivery throughput by 20% and restored delivery reliability.
Reduced false positives in compliance workflows by 30% through domain-driven design and architecture improvements.
Led Angular-based micro-front-end development and Enterprise Java backend services for real-time energy management applications at IESO.
Partnered with Product, Compliance, Architecture forum and Engineering leadership to align technical strategy with regulatory missions.

VP of Engineering - Alerzo, Nigeria (Remote)

Dec 2020 – Jan 2024

Built and led engineering for a 0→1 B2B commerce platform serving 60K+ retailers across Nigeria, processing 15K+ daily orders and improving fulfillment speed by 20% - scaling the engineering organization to 40 people across multiple product squads.
Delivered mobile (React Native) and web (React) apps using micro-frontend friendly patterns across squads with infrastructure across GKE (Google Cloud) and AWS EKS.
Owned the delivery road-map of the products working closely with the product team and business partners.
Improved overall delivery time by 20% and reduced operational cost by 25% through architecture redesign and process optimization across the engineering organization.
Mentored EMs and senior engineers, introduced career frameworks, and strengthened engineering culture.

Head of Engineering - Zenius (Hybrid / Remote)

Sep 2019 – Dec 2020

Led engineering for a scaling edtech platform, owning end-to-end delivery of product features across web and mobile.
Accountable for product delivery, reliability, and business outcomes across acquisition and learning workflows.
Partnered closely with Product and Design to build an experimentation-driven platform, enabling rapid A/B testing of content formats and user journeys scaling to 1M+ successful signups at peak volume.
Drove data-informed iteration across acquisition, engagement, and subscription funnels for a growing user base, improving retention and conversion through continuous experimentation.
Established scalable architecture and engineering practices to support fast, reliable product delivery in a high-growth environment.

VP Engineering - Looksmart, Gurgaon

Sep 2013 – Apr 2016

Built and led a 30-person engineering organization delivering 5 products across AdTech and Marketing SaaS, with direct accountability for team performance, hiring, and technical strategy.
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%.
Migrated data pipelines to scalable systems using Java, Python, HBase & Elasticsearch.
Coached engineers and EMs on career progression, performance and improvement.

Senior Engineering Manager - Syncapse / Clickable

Jun 2010 – Aug 2013

Led cross-functional engineering teams of 20+ across India, UK, and Canada delivering data & analytics and social media products for global brands including Coca-Cola, Diageo, and Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Delivered scalable big-data pipelines with Hadoop, Vertica, Tableau.
Built multi-region, cross-functional teams across India, UK, and Canada.
Led large-scale data pipelines and backend services using Java (core services), Python, Hadoop, Vertica, and Tableau, improving system scalability and maintainability.

TECHNOLOGY & TOOLS

Containerization & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (GKE & EKS)
Frontend: React (Alerzo, CIBC), Angular (IESO)
Micro-Front-End: Angular (IESO), React-based frontends (Zenius, Alerzo and CIBC)
Backend: Java (core services), J2EE, .NET, Node.js, Python
Messaging & Streaming: Kafka, Service Bus, GCP Pub/Sub
Data: ElasticSearch, Redis, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, Hadoop, HBase.
DevOps: GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps