Leadership Journey @ Appian

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• Head of Agentic Artificial Intelligence Group | Director | Feb 2025 - Present
• Head of Site Reliability Group | Director | Jan 2024 - Feb 2025
• Head of Cloud Services Platform Group | Director | Feb 2022 - December 2023
• Team Lead for Platform Infrastructure Squad | Senior Cloud Engineering Manager | April 2018 - Feb 2022

Head of Agentic Artificial Intelligence Group | Director | Feb 2025 - Present

I am the Director and Group Lead for Agentic AI at Appian. I led all teams that built and shipped Agent Studio — Appian's enterprise AI Agents platform that enables organizations to automate complex, goal-driven processes through AI reasoning, data fabric integration, and workflow orchestration. Agent Studio was our most popular beta program in history (148 organizations) and is now generally available with Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration for secure interoperability with external enterprise systems.

I identified critical architectural gaps in the inherited Agent Studio design and applied Team Topologies to restructure 4 teams for fast flow — establishing stream-aligned, enabling, platform, and complicated-subsystem teams with an API-first architecture. This enabled parallel development across Appian products (Composer, Process Mining, RPA) and eliminated cross-team bottlenecks.

I personally built the infrastructure, services, and best practices for AI-assisted software development at scale using Amazon Q Developer and Kiro. In 6 months, I took the program from prototype to full rollout across 800 engineers — building the Terraform/AWS infrastructure, MARS CI/CD pipeline, cost management, adoption tracking, and user deactivation systems. Delivered 3 company-wide Appian Talks driving adoption, culminating in the "Context is King" workshop that gave every team their own custom AI assistant — directly accelerating Agent Studio and Composer delivery timelines. 5-40% productivity gains by team.

Key projects and accomplishments:

• Agent Studio: Led all teams from concept to GA. Restructured architecture using Team Topologies for API-first fast flow. 80%+ team excitement about new direction. Modular services enabling cross-product AI capabilities.
• AI-Assisted Development: Personally built Terraform/AWS infrastructure, MARS CI/CD pipeline, cost management ($19/user tracking), and adoption dashboards. Rolled out to 800 engineers in 6 months. Delivered 3 Appian Talks ("Releasing Amazon Q", "Make Boring Less Boring with Q", "Context is King: Build Your Own Custom Assistant").
• Engineering Department Impact Award 2025 — presented by Engineering Department Head for cross-organizational AI adoption and enablement.
• Rated "Exceptional" (top 15%) 2024-2026.

Head of Site Reliability Group | Director | Jan 2024 - Feb 2025

Placed by CTO to lead reliability turnaround when top enterprise customers questioned production-grade reliability. I was the Director and Group Lead for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at Appian, responsible for product security, performance, reliability, and availability. My group consisted of 5 autonomous teams, totaling 43 direct reports, 5 managers, and a group of 46 members.

Key accomplishments:

• Stabilized production reliability for Appian's enterprise cloud platform serving Fortune 500 customers.
• Transformed teams into R&D SRE powerhouse -- enabled >50% capacity dedicated to software automation.
• Delivered: Automated CVE remediation, incident artifact automation, Designer/Records reliability ownership.
• Created Site Reliability Academy -- 3-week hands-on onboarding program.
• Reorganized the group to address imbalances and reduce burnout. Zero regretted attrition.
• Led external monitoring vendor selection (BetterStack, Datadog, New Relic).
• Established SDLC maturity standards across all SRE teams.
• Managed 19 direct reports temporarily with zero attrition.
• Maintained 4.0 GPA in MS program while leading full-time.

Head of Cloud Services Platform Group | Director | Feb 2022 - December 2023

I was the Director and Group Software Development Lead for Cloud Services at Appian, responsible for all development of our cloud infrastructure. Almost all of Appian's production workloads were managed and run by my group of engineers. I managed, supported, and aligned 5 autonomous squads (45 direct reports) within Cloud to ensure effort was focused on positive outcomes for our customers, Appian, and our engineers. From 2022-2023, I led the delivery and migration of our Cloud offering from a monolithic/hub-spoke Cloud architecture to a Cloud Native architecture.

Key accomplishments:

• Stratus cloud-native migration: Led the architecture and delivery of Appian's next-generation cloud platform, eliminating 7 categories of outages through architectural improvements.
• HITRUST compliance: Achieved certification in 2 weeks through streamlined processes and automation.
• FedRAMP authorization: Led preparation for FedRAMP Moderate, High, and DoD IL5 compliance.
• Global expansion: Expanded Appian Cloud to 21 global regions to serve enterprise customers worldwide.
• Managed, supported, and aligned 5 autonomous squads (45 direct reports) focused on positive outcomes for customers and engineers.

Team Lead for Platform Infrastructure Squad | Senior Cloud Engineering Manager | April 2018 - Feb 2022

Led a team of 12 engineers and managed 6 direct reports. Managed the team's vision, growth, and roadmap prioritization. Served as the principal recruitment lead and point of contact to manage the team's talent acquisition across all levels. Provided technical leadership on key projects, coached team members, and supported their career development. Completed Appian MBA -- an invite-only senior leadership development program for rising managers at Appian.

Appian Corporation, Tysons, VA

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