Vijay Premkumar

Engineering Leader | Cloud Transformation | FinOps Strategy
Dallas, US.

About

Accomplished Engineering Leader with over 20 years of experience driving strategic cloud transformation, FinOps, and service delivery initiatives, including managing a $100M annual budget. Expertly optimized public and private cloud infrastructures, achieving over $10M in cost savings and reducing time-to-market by 35% through automation and FinOps governance. Proven leader in product management, platform innovation, and high-velocity delivery, adept at building scalable, secure, and resilient cloud platforms aligned with strategic business goals.

Work

American Airlines
|

Engineering Leader (Cloud Migration & FinOps Strategy)

Summary

Led the FinOps and Product Management team, overseeing 15 distinct products and managing a $100M annual budget across multi-cloud environments (Azure, AWS, IBM Cloud).

Highlights

Managed first-ever centralized OS for 5,000+ VMs across multiple data centers, ensuring unified and efficient cloud operations.

Reduced cloud migration time by 40% by implementing automated, self-service deployment pipelines, accelerating enterprise-wide cloud adoption.

Optimized cloud onboarding, decreasing time-to-market by 35% through the design and implementation of standardized Azure Landing Zones and robust governance frameworks.

Achieved over $10M in annual cloud cost savings by implementing advanced FinOps strategies and AI-driven workload optimizations, including right-sizing and spend transparency.

Led a 20+ member team of Product Managers, Architects, and Engineers, fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making and OKR-based cloud innovation.

IBM
|

Head of Service Delivery (Cloud Transformation)

Summary

Directed high-quality, scalable IT infrastructure and support services for American Airlines Flight Operations, leading a 20+ member managed services team generating $15M in annual recurring revenue.

Highlights

Recruited, trained, and mentored a 20+ member technical team, overseeing network/server infrastructure, databases, and enterprise applications.

Improved system stability and performance by implementing proactive monitoring and automated remediation tools.

Maintained a 99.99% uptime SLA through rigorous risk management, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning, ensuring critical system availability.

Successfully launched new applications and systems, sustaining a 40% operating margin through strategic process optimization.

Reduced year-over-year outages and incidents through automation, comprehensive documentation, root cause analysis, and support team enablement.

Priceline
|

Manager

Summary

Managed the architecture, design, and implementation of scalable Middleware infrastructure, ensuring high performance and critical application uptime.

Highlights

Architected, designed, and implemented a highly scalable Middleware infrastructure, enhancing system performance and reliability.

Administered and supported critical application uptime and code promotion processes in a complex production environment.

Education

University of Dallas

MBA

Global Business

Annamalai University

BS

Engineering

Certificates

FinOps Certified Practitioner

Issued By

FinOps Foundation

Microsoft Azure Certified

Issued By

Microsoft

Wharton Operations Management

Issued By

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Skills

Cloud Technologies

Azure, AWS, IBM Cloud, Multi-cloud Environment.

Cloud Management & FinOps

Cloud Migration & Adoption, FinOps, Cloud Governance, Cloud Security, Cloud Cost Optimization, FinOps Governance Model, Azure Landing Zones, Workload Optimization, Right-sizing, Spend Transparency, Chargeback Processes, Forecasting Accuracy.

Product & Program Management

Product Management, Product Strategy, Product Roadmap Development, Product Taxonomy, Strategic Roadmaps, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), Data-Driven Experiments, Innovation Hub Management, Program Management.

Methodologies & Operations

Agile/DevOps Leadership, Service Delivery, Automation, Self-service Deployment, Release Management, Continuous Improvement, Risk Management, Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity Planning, Process Optimization, Root Cause Analysis, Support Team Enablement, Middleware Infrastructure, Application Uptime, Code Promotion.

Leadership & Strategy

Executive Stakeholder Engagement, Team Development, Team Leadership (20+ members), Mentoring, Recruitment, Budget Management ($100M), Financial Planning, Forecasting, Strategic Planning, Moonshot Thinking.

Tools & Platforms

Intel Granulate, Lucidity, Edge Delta, Cloud Fix, VM Management.