Ankur Kakroo

Next-gen hiring (OKR #1): Leading a cross-organization effort to redefine hiring for AI-first developers, working directly with the CEO. This initiative requires upgrades to all core products and platform capabilities. It involves aligning multiple teams on plans, dependencies, and outcomes. This work has already helped in revenue expansion of around $3M which continues to grow.

Platform Engineering: Leading the platform charter across API, Web, and AI platforms with a goal to help teams deliver fast and safely. Focus has been on making the AI platform self-serve and scalable. On the web platform, frontend apps were upgraded and modernized, CI/CD and test runs made faster, and starter kits created so teams can build quickly.

AI Interviewer (0 to 1): An end to end product that automates coding rounds. I led early product direction and launched the MVP. I now lead engineering for the team and am working towards the next set of releases.

Certified Assessments: Drove a critical initiative to GA. Revamped the core experience and APIs to be scalable. Coordinated cross-team delivery and set a steady rhythm within the team.

Performance improvements: Improved performance of core APIs by around 80%. Tuned key backend APIs, fixed slow queries, and addressed frontend performance issues, resulting in a much better product experience for customers.

Execution and operational excellence: Raised shipping cadence with clear planning and tighter feedback loops. Kept releases predictable. Strengthened incident response and runbooks; kept the quality bar high.

Quality Engineering: Led an org-wide initiative to set clear quality standards. Wrote the strategy on what was not working and what to change. Published guides for effective unit, integration, and browser testing.

Accessibility: Built the accessibility function and audited and published an internal VPAT for the first time. This was well received by customers and improved how we build accessible products.

Engineering culture: Streamlined how the team built and tested, making delivery steadier and cleaner.

Documentation: Imbibed a documentation culture so decisions, patterns, and guidelines were written and easy to use.

Cross-functional collaboration: Worked closely with product and engineering to keep priorities clear and momentum steady.

Platform and architecture: Designed and led web platforms for high-scale brands (banking, retail, travel). Built micro-frontend architectures, design systems, and shared tooling that supported independent deployments and faster delivery.

Execution and reliability: Set up CI/CD and testing foundations across hundreds of repos. Drove automation, observability, and performance practices to keep releases predictable and resilient.

Product and UX: Partnered with product, business, and design across geographies. Improved checkout flows, loyalty experiences, and core web performance with a focus on clean interaction patterns.

Team leadership: Led platform teams; coached engineers and tech leads; contributed heavily to hiring, learning, and community. Implemented an OKR framework adopted by a ~1000-member community.