Short list of points

• Led the development (not at the same time) of all of Wells Fargo’s product offerings in the sales channel (Home Equity, Business and Consumer deposits/savings, Personal loans, Credit Cards, Retirement Accounts and Student Loans).
• Directed the successful delivery of up to 5 concurrent high-impact projects per release cycle, with budgets ranging from $10k-700k and duration spanning 3-9 months.
• Upgraded authentication layer used for platform, thus establishing a new standard practice for the platform (socket based mutual authentication for all SOAP interactions for the backend).
• Spearheaded hands-on third-party integrations (Visa, Amex, Discover), setting standard practice for integrations for the team/platform.
• Facilitated team expansion by onboarding and mentoring new developers, liaising with business product teams and managing transitions to offshore development expansion (Hyderabad/India team) and establishing the first unit if work transitioned to our Indian branch office.
• Navigated complex corporate structures, cross-domain, to drive issue resolution, fostering collaboration and accountability amongst stakeholders.
• Fostered professional growth through mentoring, code reviews, and leading knowledge/training sessions for both full-time and contract developers.
• Executed security audits, documenting findings and recommendations in detailed reports; findings led to immediate remediation actions that improved compliance with industry standards and reduced audit failures by 50%.
• Directed all phases of project lifecycle, ensuring effective resource allocation and management across three concurrent projects; enhanced team collaboration through weekly feedback sessions with cross-domain development teams, reducing development time and bug issues by 100%.
• Constructed a comprehensive analytics platform analyzing millions of entries of production data for on-the-fly monitoring, product market analysis, and 100% increased visibility to production health. The platform has become essential for generating timely business insights for product managers.

Reflections: Off the cuff, rambling, human edition.

One glaring reflection is that I should have journaled more consistently so that I am able to reflect upon the journey there, process it and learn from it. Learning happens in layers and each layer takes time to set, per se.

When I started at Wells, I was assigned to release management and builds. DevOps was not a thing then, we built every build by hand and it took hours, iteration also took hours. Development was done by iterating by code that was segmented by business domain.

I started at production support for the dev team, doing production fixes, monitoring, and also troubleshooting (as a junior developer, it was difficult without proper onboarding to existing code). There were issues that arose from production that were not major but needs to be addressed. We would schedule in a fix that was aligned with the theme of each release, so we can leverage QA and regression resources as these were costs covered by the department and not business lines. We also took on infrastructure projects and development tooling projects to help accelerate the dev team’s productivity. I wrote a lot of documentation during this period, I also picked up regression and load testing responsibilities as we downsized.

I moved to managing small projects (under 30k) per release - mostly for compliance adherence and small issues that were deferred till much later till they were sufficient to warrant the cost for a release. I took on several each release cycle and the multitasking was no mean feat. The coordination required for each of these projects and the oversight took as much energy as a regular or large project but there was little negotiation on requirements or the product teams as the changes were expected and standard.

One of the things we started doing often then was decompile java code, there were so many instances where the issue could not be found until you decompiled the bytecode to see what it was actually doing. I don’t think any modern developer quite does that - I heard that it became illegal to do as it violated security protocols.

I started taking on a mentorship role at this point. We were exploring offshoring some work to the Hydrabad office, one of the responsibilities was the maintenance development that happened every release cycle. I was working with the Indian team to do this transition, which meant my work during the day and meeting with them in the evening to review their work and trained them on the dev process we have set up.

I started taking on medium and larger projects at this juncture, a mixture of projects, whatever my manager could secure for his team (there was quite a bit of politics involved, and my manager was one of the kindest, calmest ones there). I had developers assigned to my projects that I would manage, I negotiated requirements with the product team (started months before a project started), clarified requirements, did project architecture and design, hosted review sessions and knowledge transfer sessions, did code reviews, managed the defect queue with QA, made QA plans for QA (guidance) and coordinated integration (builds and test account creation and whatever the project needed) testing, along with load testing if needed.

One of my favorite ones was a platform migration with no requirements, we had to reverse engineer the entire product (backend had no requirements on their end that they could share, they did not know what their code was doing). Implementation was easy but the reverse engineering took a while, to make sure we did not break revenue for the product line when we went live, it included a security feature that was new to the platform (socket based mutual authentication). It was around then that we merged with Wachovia and a few of the dev guys got assigned to me for training. I was managing 5 teams, with different projects at the same time at this point, as well as managing a group of 120 parents for a school my son was at (fundraising and event planning). I learnt a lot about communication then, how communication flows downwards, how it is perceived (can be perceived), how long it takes for everyone downstream to absorb and then act on it.

Life has a way of testing us in unexpected ways, and my journey at Wells Fargo was no exception. While I thrived professionally, I encountered profound personal challenges that shaped who I am today—both as a professional and as a person.

During my tenure, my mother passed away, and I was diagnosed with pre-leukemia, a life-altering condition that required intensive treatment, including chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. At the time, my chances of survival were s lim—less than 5%, according to my doctors. Faced with this daunting reality, I chose to approach my health challenges the same way I tackled technical problems at work: by breaking them down into manageable components, identifying choke points, and addressing risks systematically. I isolated myself socially to minimize infection risks, prioritized my health, and made difficult decisions to ensure I could move forward with treatment. Every step was deliberate, and every decision was made with the hope of creating the best possible outcome.

This experience taught me the value of meticulous planning, adaptability, and perseverance. It also gave me clarity about what truly matters in life. I realized that the strength we draw from our relationships—whether at work, at home, or within ourselves—is what helps us overcome the toughest challenges.

While undergoing treatment, I took time to reflect on my priorities. I focused on creating meaningful moments with my sons, who were young at the time. I found joy in the simplest things: helping them with their schoolwork, watching them play, and being fully present in their lives. These experiences reinforced my belief that the love and support we show others can become an infinite source of resilience. It’s a lesson I carry with me in every aspect of my life, from mentoring my team to collaborating with colleagues.

When I returned to work, I was eager to prove that I was still capable of contributing at a high level, but I quickly realized that my body wasn’t the same after the transplant. It took time to rebuild my stamina and adapt to my new normal. However, this period of adjustment also taught me patience—with myself and with others. I leaned into the opportunity to learn and grow, asking my manager to place me in roles that would challenge me and expand my skill set. This mindset allowed me to step into production support, a role that required deep domain knowledge and the ability to troubleshoot complex, real-time issues. What once seemed intimidating became a source of excitement and energy.

My manager did want me back, and I went back and told him I am back to learn, to train me in a manner where I can step into any role that is required of a team. He put me in production support, where we mitigated an ongoing, infinite pool of issues that arose from production at any given timeline. It took me a good 6 months to pick up and make progress. We often knew what was wrong with our platform production support team did. I represented the department in meetings and war rooms that required a representative to for our team of 40-60 (including contractors), avenues in which the team was able to offer resources and support to fix an issue (inpromptu or not) and I managed the queue where issues were reported but no one knew if it was an issue or it belonged. I sat in on team meetings as an advisory role on standards for dev teams, or prepare for what is queued for the next release. It was a role that I could not have done previously as it required deep domain knowledge. What was previously intimidating about stepping into the unknown everyday became a source of excitement and energy. It also required on-call rotations late into the night as the devops production team who does the deploys usually requires development presence to clear/clarify or help troubleshoot issues that arise - which I was quite happy to have because it meant a longer day gave me an opportunity to present a stress-free afternoon when I picked up my sons, or do something special for them that week.

One of the last things I was doing there was setting up a product-assigned dashboard with live production metrics (that is customizable) so that the product managers and management (C-Suite) can see where the dropoff chokepoints were for each product line - why consumers would give up midway in an application and not proceed to finish it. We wanted to drill down and see if there was any possible way we could improve or close gaps in that flow. My manager has tried to tackle this issue for a while now and the logging was finally to the point where we could do data analytics and try to figure this out. We also tracked the response times in all pages during an application for a product and optimized our site for speed. It was then that I realized I had become the sort of report that he would just come out and tell me what he was thinking and, I was able to take it to the end with no checkpoints or guidance. I did initiate reviews to ensure I was going in the right direction with what he had in mind but he really didn’t need to do much.

AI Summary:

Leadership Reflections: Guiding Teams, Driving Impact, and Navigating Challenges

One reflection I’ve had over the years is the importance of documenting and processing professional experiences. Journaling would have allowed me to better reflect on the journey, extract lessons, and apply them more intentionally. Leadership, like learning, happens in layers, and each layer requires time to set and mature.

When I started at Wells Fargo, I was assigned to release management and builds. At the time, DevOps as a formalized discipline didn’t exist, and we built every software release manually—a process that took hours and required close attention to detail. Development was segmented by business domain, and iteration cycles were long and labor-intensive. These early experiences taught me the importance of process efficiency and team coordination as foundational elements of success.

From Troubleshooting to Leadership: Building Expertise and Mentoring Others

My first major responsibility was in production support for the development team. As a junior developer, I was tasked with resolving production issues, monitoring systems, and troubleshooting problems. Without proper onboarding to the existing codebase, this was a challenging initiation, but it forced me to quickly learn how to navigate ambiguity and collaborate with senior team members to uncover solutions.

In this role, I began to understand the interplay between technical fixes and organizational priorities. For example, we aligned production fixes with the themes of each release to leverage QA and regression resources efficiently— a decision that not only optimized costs but also minimized disruption for business lines. Beyond fixes, I also contributed to infrastructure projects and development tooling, which accelerated productivity across the dev team. These contributions helped me see the broader impact of technical improvements on team performance, laying the groundwork for future leadership.

As our team downsized, I took on additional responsibilities, such as regression testing, load testing, and writing extensive documentation to ensure knowledge transfer and continuity. These experiences taught me how to adapt to shifting team dynamics and step into roles that needed leadership, even when they were outside my initial scope.

Leading Projects: From Small Initiatives to Complex Deliverables

Over time, I transitioned from production support to managing small projects (under $30k) per release cycle. These projects, often focused on compliance updates or deferred issues, required significant coordination, even if their scope was smaller. I led several projects per cycle, managing requirements, timelines, and resources. The multitasking demanded by these efforts honed my ability to prioritize effectively, allocate resources, and communicate clearly with cross-functional teams.

As I gained experience, I began to take on medium and larger projects, often managing multiple developers and collaborating with product teams to clarify requirements, architect solutions, and oversee the full project lifecycle. My role included:

• Negotiating requirements with product stakeholders months in advance.
• Designing project architecture and hosting review sessions to align teams.
• Leading knowledge transfer sessions and mentoring developers on best practices.
• Managing QA plans, defect queues, and integration testing to ensure smooth delivery.

One particularly memorable project involved a platform migration with no existing documentation or requirements. I led the effort to reverse-engineer the backend system, working closely with my team to ensure that we preserved revenue streams during the transition. I also introduced a new security feature—socket-based mutual authentication—which became a standard practice for the platform. This project demonstrated my ability to guide teams through complex, high-stakes initiatives while maintaining focus on both technical and business outcomes.

Mentoring and Team Building: Expanding Through Collaboration

Leadership is not just about delivering projects; it’s also about building teams and empowering others. When our work expanded to include offshore development in Hyderabad, I played a key role in onboarding and mentoring the new team.

This involved:

• Training developers on our processes and standards.
• Reviewing their work in the evenings to ensure quality and alignment.
• Guiding them through the maintenance development cycle, which was critical to our release schedule.
• This experience taught me the importance of cross-cultural collaboration and how to adapt my communication and
• mentoring style to meet the needs of a diverse team. By fostering trust and providing clear guidance, I helped
• establish a foundation for successful offshore operations, ensuring that productivity and quality were maintained during the transition.

Scaling Leadership: Managing Teams and Communication

At the peak of my responsibilities, I was managing up to five teams across different projects, in addition to handling personal responsibilities like managing a group of 120 parents for my son’s school fundraising efforts. This period taught me invaluable lessons about communication flow, both within teams and across organizational hierarchies:

• I learned how to tailor messaging to different audiences, ensuring that stakeholders understood the context and priorities of each project.
• I became adept at managing downstream communication, understanding how long it takes for directives to be absorbed and acted upon, and ensuring alignment across teams.
• I honed the ability to write clear, concise, and actionable emails, making it easy for recipients to quickly understand the message, respond effectively, and, where needed, say “yes” with minimal additional effort. This skill streamlined collaboration and accelerated decision-making processes.

These experiences reinforced the importance of clarity, empathy, and alignment in leadership, enabling me to manage complexity while empowering teams to succeed. Whether it was guiding developers through a project or coordinating with parents for an event, I focused on creating an environment where everyone felt supported and empowered to contribute.

Driving Innovation: Analytics and Production Metrics

One of the final projects I led at Wells Fargo involved developing a customizable dashboard for live production metrics. This tool allowed product managers and C-suite executives to visualize drop-off points in real time, identifying where customers abandoned applications mid-process. By analyzing these chokepoints, we were able to propose targeted improvements to streamline workflows and optimize the user experience.

This dashboard was the culmination of years of effort to improve logging and analytics capabilities, and it provided unprecedented visibility into production health. It also showcased my ability to translate technical insights into actionable business intelligence, a skill that has become increasingly critical in modern organizations.

My manager trusted me to take this project from concept to completion with minimal oversight, which was a testament to the trust I had built over the years. I initiated review sessions to ensure alignment with his vision, but I was largely able to operate independently, demonstrating my ability to lead with confidence and deliver results.