Saikumar Thota

I build and scale engineering organizations that ship global technology solutions, platforms, and AI at production scale. Over 24 years at Amazon, Ticketmaster, Collectors, FTD, and ADP, I've led orgs of 100 to 400+ engineers, owned platforms processing trillion(s) requests a year, and delivered enterprise AI strategy and AI transformation programs with direct P&L impact. AI that ships. At Collectors I defined and led enterprise AI strategy end to end: agentic AI, LLMs, RAG, computer vision, and predictive ML, delivering 10x accuracy gains in digital grading and 300% higher user engagement. I built the company's AI platform (LLM serving, vector search, evaluation, deployment guardrails) so teams can take GenAI to production safely, and led an AI transformation of the SDLC using copilots and coding agents that tripled engineering throughput and cut regression escapes by 76%. Scale. As Head of Engineering at Amazon, I owned Tier-1 ecommerce platforms supporting Amazon’s global cart, checkout, fulfillment, and supply chain optimization systems serving NxTrillion+ annual requests (150M RPM at peak) during a period when Amazon's revenue grew by Nx$10B, and capped AWS compute cost growth at $75M against a $150M projection while traffic tripled. At Ticketmaster, I modernized the commerce platform behind $4B+ in annual transactions. Organizations. I grew Collectors' engineering org by 800%, doubled a 100+ person Amazon org in six months, and ran a 400 person, $25M-budget global division at FTD across the US, Europe, and Asia. I hire and develop VPs, Directors, Principal Engineers, and Architects, and I own budgets, OKRs, multi-year roadmaps, and board reporting. Transformation. I led digital, AI, and cloud transformations at global scale. I have re-platformed 100+ legacy systems into microservices on AWS and GCP, delivered 70% faster time to market and 65% lower infrastructure cost, and led M&A technology integration in regulated, high-availability environments. I do my best work where technology strategy and business outcomes have to line up, partnering with CEOs, CTOs, CPOs, CFOs, and boards to turn engineering into growth. Specialties: Chief Technology Officer (CTO) | VP of Engineering | SVP Engineering | Head of AI | Enterprise AI Strategy | AI Platform | AI Transformation | Agentic AI | Generative AI | LLMs | RAG | MLOps | AI/ML |Cloud Platforms | Platform Engineering | Marketplace | Developer Experience | Distributed Systems | Ecommerce | AWS | GCP | Azure US citizen, based in California, open to relocation.