Shekhar K.-CTO | Non-Executive Director | Board Advisor | Chief AI Officer | Driving AI, Technology Strategy & Digital Transformation for G
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Experience
Founder & CTO
Turiya Digital
- Founded a strategic technology advisory firm specializing in AI strategy, Data & AI governance, digital transformation, and board-level advisory services for organizations modernizing their technology and AI capabilities.
- Advise boards, founders, and executive leadership teams on enterprise AI adoption, AI governance, cloud transformation, technology operating models, and digital strategies aligned with business growth and regulatory requirements.
- Provide Fractional CTO and Chief AI Officer (CAIO) leadership, enabling organizations to strengthen technology operations, modernize platforms, improve operational resilience, and accelerate AI-driven innovation.
- Partner with clients to define enterprise architecture, technology roadmaps, DevSecOps transformation, AI/ML operationalization (MLOps), and technology investment strategies that deliver measurable business value.
- Support technology due diligence, fundraising readiness, M&A technology assessments, and executive decision-making for high-growth startups and scale-ups across FinTech, SaaS, AI, and digital platforms.
- Non-Executive Director (Technology) | AVAARA (AI-Native Restaurant Platform)
- Provide independent board-level oversight on AI strategy, technology innovation, product roadmap, governance, and platform scalability to support sustainable business growth and European expansion
- Advise the founders on engineering leadership, AI governance, GDPR/EU AI Act compliance, fundraising readiness, and technology due diligence to strengthen investor confidence and long-term value creation.
- Board Advisor (Technology) | NuQuant BV (AI-Driven Investment Management Firm)
- Advise the CEO and executive leadership on AI strategy, technology roadmap, platform scalability, cybersecurity, and technology governance to support business growth, investor readiness, and effective decision-making.
- Leverage an international network to facilitate strategic partnerships, investor introductions, and market expansion opportunities while representing the company within the global fintech and AI ecosystem.
Chief Technology Officer, Worldline Global Online Pay
Worldline
- Directed a 350-member team at Worldline GoPay, managing a €26M budget to align with business objectives and product strategy.
- Led cross-functional efforts to innovate GoPay, a leading eCommerce full-service payments platform in collaboration with product, go-to-market (GTM), and customer operations teams.
- Enabled a 30% faster time-to-market and increased platform transactional capacity by 200% by transforming the Ogone platform to micro-services and cloud infrastructure, reducing costs by 15%.
- Integrated AI for Fraud Prevention as a Service (FPaaS), benefiting over 2,000 new merchants.
- Implemented DevSecOps, cutting deployment times by 98% and incidents by 45%, saving €2.3M annually.
- Scaled team by 200+ FTEs per CPO plan, enhancing roles across engineering, product, data, and AI functions.
- Created a sourcing strategy for on-shore, near-shore, and offshore resources, saving €5M annually.
- Established MLOps practices, reducing platform incidents by over 90%.
- Led digital transformation initiatives, including value streams and big room planning through quarterly agile planning and room of rooms for roadmap prioritization, resulting in a 60% increase in on-time delivery predictability.
- Modernized GoPay platform by implementing micro-services architecture, containerization, and cloud-ready infrastructure enabling 30% faster time-to-market.
DevOps Director
Worldline
- Held P&L responsibility for the vertical organization, including labor and operating costs of running the platform and managing an R&D budget of €15M.
- Scaled engineering teams from 60 to 140 members, ensuring cohesive workflows and improving project delivery timelines by 30% for UXT, cards & acquiring, fraud prevention, and APM tribes for the Global Collect platform.
- Amplified the Global Collect platform's transactional capacity by 900% by implementing a micro-services architecture.
- Reduced deployment times by 98%, saving €2.3M annually.
- Applied agile methodologies including DevSecOps across R&D and product teams, increasing product release cycles by 40% and improving team efficiency by 50%.
- Executed DevOps transformation across 30 squads, enhancing operational efficiency by 120%.
- Enforced strategies that reduced annual operational costs by €7.3M.
- Saved 15% of the IT budget in outsourcing during COVID-19 without impacting outsourced headcount.
- Served as Head of IT Tribe for PPS & UXT from October 2016 to March 2019, defining IT strategy and roadmap together with the Tribe Architect.
- Achieved a 30% improvement in product delivery speed by adopting the Spotify model for organizational transformation.
- Established relationships with strategic partners together with local and Worldline Group procurement.
Director, R&D - Unified Billing, CRM, Application and Integration
Redknee
- Led a multinational, multicultural R&D team of 400+ FTE with a €46M R&D budget across Europe, APAC, and North America responsible for product development and sustaining in several areas.
- Managed Redknee Unified, a real-time monetization platform catering to telecom, utilities, and retail vertical markets including billing, CRM, analytics, real-time campaign management, and enterprise service integration.
- Oversaw fully convergent billing, CRM, charging, and rating solutions for smart utility, transportation/eMobility, energy, M2M, and IoT markets.
- Delivered carrier solutions such as WiFi offload, location-based services/advertising, and subscriber data/experience management.
- Developed convergent mediation solutions (c@o mediate and MY TIME inBill).
- Streamlined flexible rating and billing processes, improving client satisfaction with Stratus by 30%.
Head, Prepaid Engineering, BSS
Nokia Siemens Networks
TECHNOLOGY STACK:
Frameworks and Languages: Java, .Net, Spring Framework, Oracle, Javascript, MS Dynamic CRM
Dev Tools: JUnit , Postman, OAuth 2.0, SonarQube, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Docker, OpenSSL
Infrastructure: Red Had Linux, VMWare
Collaboration Tools: Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow
AGILE METHODOLOGIES: Scrum, Kanban
Team Size: 300+
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES:
Leading a multisite, multi-cultural global team responsible and working for, Product R&D and Project Development for the NSN BSS Prepaid Engineering IN platform commercially known as c@o select, c@o Premium and IN@vantage; Railways IN Projects fulfilling EIRENE standards
Execution & Delivery Head
Mascon Global Limited
Team Size: 150+
Roles & Responsibilities: As a Delivery Head responsible for the following;
Involved in design and implementation of a wide range of custom software solutions in the areas of GSM Roaming Solutions, High Availability, NMS, InMemory Database, VoIP, etc
Contributed to the recognition of ~ US$3 million in Revenue.
Integrated Operations across all MGL centers as Forum Leader for MGL Integration Council for - - Continuous Improvement (MICCI) Operations Forum (MGL Corporate Initiative)
Institutionalized Program and Project Management Processes for TL9000 and CMMi initiatives as PM - Process Area Owner in SEPG
Improved GM by 15% across all accounts in spite of Rupee/Dollar appreciation
Served as First level of escalation to internal/external customer
Achieved 40% Revenue Growth in Roamware Account
Encouraged project managers to resolve their own issues, reducing senior management intervention
Programmer Analyst
Raj Consultants Inc (Consulting for AT&T & Lucent Technologies)
Key Projects Handled: Client: IBM-AT&T, Middletown, NJ Title: Service Availability Location Tool (SALT) Duration: Mar 2001 – Oct 2001 Scope: SALT is a web-based sales-support tool which determines access capabilities and service availability for customer locations across the AT&T Data and IP Services (ADIS) portfolio. It enables to enter locations into simple front-end application, links multiple back-end systems and generates a report detailing by customer location the available data transport services and associated access options. Responsibilities: Designing software architecture of SALT using Java, C/C++, XML, HTML, and Perl. Development of Logon, User Info, Cust Info, Report Generation and Retrieval and Audit Log Modules. Design and development of web server backend logic and business logic.
Client: Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, NJ Title: 7R/E Trunk Access Gateway Duration: May’98 to Feb’01 Scope: TAG provides a gateway between a Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) network and an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) packet network through Synchronous-to-Asynchronous (SAC) technology. TAG uses SONET/SDH, VoIP, SS7 technologies. TAG is designed based upon ATM, SONET/SDH, and VoIP technologies in real time environment of pSOS operating system using C/C++ Responsibilities: As Member of Technical Staff was responsible for development and testing of various subsystems Involved in development and implementation of Performance Monitoring, CLI, 105 test, announcements, Overload control features of TAG Participated in code inspections and software architecture of various sub-systems for software releases of 7R/E TAG Coordinated development work within the development team with other teams including Product management, Systems Engineering, Hardware, ITG, STG, Quality and Field Support teams. Designed and developed Automation Quality Test tool using C++, Expect, Perl, Shell scripts on UNIX platform for voice quality measurement of 7R/E TAG. I developed UNIX device drivers for the same. This tool helped to reduce integration interval considerably. Also developed automation tools like media download script and stability check point automation using C++, SNMP, Tcl/Tk, and Expect. The media download tool eased the PVG software download for customers who used manual procedures before.
Title: Electronic Access Ordering Role: Programmer Analyst Client: AT&T Middletown, NJ Duration: Aug’97 to May’98 Responsibilities: Responsible for Hands-on development of Regression Automation Testing (RAT) tool, which automates the integration for each build of EAO. C++, CGI, Perl, DSET toolkit, and HTML were used for development of RAT module for EAO on SUN-Ultra2. Additionally, involved in coding, implementation, code reviews and unit test of EAO builds. Scope: Electronic Access Ordering (EAO) is a Gateway that provides Electronic Communications of Access Pre-Ordering Data between AT&T OSS and various Access Providers. EAO is Gateway for pre-ordering of new telephone connections. EAO is designed to automate the current batch process of ordering.
Title: Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)-FT2000 Role: Programmer Analyst
- Client: Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, NJ Duration: Oct’96 to Aug’97
- Responsibilities:
- Responsible for software architecture of the Alarm and Security subsystem. Design, hand-on development and documentation of the object Security and Session Director (SECSESSDIR) for FT-2000 LCT-R 3.0.
- I developed the modules using Green Hills C++ compiler and CASE tool Object Preprocessor (OPP). HTE (Host Test Environment) was used to simulate Real Time Operating System pSOS. Coding and implementation of CLI object and Unit test of the Object on pSOS
- Scope: The R3.0 FT-2000 Four Fiber Add/Drop Open/Closed Ring System resides on FT-2000 Large Capacity Terminal (LCT). The object ALARMDIR keeps track of all active autonomous indications in the system reported by the several top-level objects of other subsystems and integrates them into alarms if applicable. Multiple status points and/or alarms may exist at the same time.
Scientist/Engineer
Indian Space Research Organization Satellite Center
- Title: Data Acquisition and Control System for Satellite Test Facilities
- Role: Scientist/Engineer SC Duration: Sep’93 to Oct’96
- Scope: The system was designed to provide centralized analysis of the space-craft subsystems and supplies sophisticated analytical capabilities, precision in a wide variety of DSP functions such as FFT, power spectrum and waveform processing. VISULA (Recal/Redac) and Matlab was used to simulate the digital systems designed
- Responsibilites:
- Participated in software architecture, development and implementation of Data Acquisition and Control System for Satellite Test Facilities.
- Responsible for design and development of Fuzzification and Defuzzification software routines, Inference Engine design using C for application “Computerized Fuzzy Logic Controller for Thermo vacuum Testing of Solar Panels of Spacecraft series INSAT and IRS”.
- Maintained software design standards, performed software design reviews, defined project requirements, risks, resources and schedules · Responsible for the development of DSP routines, Data Acquisition routines, Control algorithm and Digital Output module. In addition, I documented the system, designed the software architecture and was responsible for the integration of the system. The application was developed using C++ on UNIX platform using OMT.
- Provided detailed program and system analysis acting as senior technical consultation proactively providing solutions to system development problems.
- Responsible for preparing the design document, scheduling the development activities, system architecture of the application and fixing the program bugs.
Electronics Engineer
Garware Plastics and Polyester Ltd
- Electronics Engineer for Plastics and Polyester Plant
- Maintenance of process control instrumentation of plant control systems
Industry experience
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Experienced in Telecommunication, Information Technology, Banking and Finance, Retail, Utilities, and Aerospace and Defense.
Business area experience
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Experienced in Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management, Operations, Customer Service, and Strategy.
Summary
I bring 30+ years of experience in executive leadership, technology and product strategy, product development, FinTech, SaaS and DevSecOps. I advise boards and executive teams on AI strategy and governance, cloud transformation, enterprise architecture, technology operating models and digital transformation, with a focus on measurable business value and regulatory requirements.
I have led international teams of 400+ and managed budgets above €50M across Europe, the Americas and APAC. My hands-on expertise includes microservices, cloud infrastructure, MLOps, cybersecurity and x-shore delivery. I have helped improve time-to-market, platform capacity, deployment speed and operational efficiency across payments, telecom, utilities, retail and digital platforms.
Skills
- Executive Leadership
- Ai/Ml & Cloud Strategy
- Data Driven Leadership
- Digital Transformation
- Product Management
- M&A / Due Diligence
- Agile & Devsecops
- Emerging Technologies
- Real-Time Billing, Crm, Analytics
- Real-Time Campaign Management
- Enterprise Service Integration
- Customer-Centric Approach
- Cybersecurity
- Regulatory Compliance
- People Management
- Strategic Leadership
- Operational Excellence
- Innovation & R&D
- High-Performance Teams
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Agile Product Delivery
- Execution & Delivery
Languages
Education
T.A. Pai Management Institute
MBA, Marketing, Finance, General Management · Marketing, Finance, General Management · Bengaluru, India
Columbia University
Advanced IT Management · Information Technology · New York, United States
JNEC, Doctor Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University
Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunication · Electronics and Telecommunication · Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, India
Certifications & licenses
Certified Board Advisor
Connectd Academy
Certified Chief AI Officer
World AI University & Professional Development Institute
Statistics
Experience
Global experience
Expertise
Qualifications
Frequently asked questions
Have questions? Find more information here.
Shekhar is based in Haarlem, Netherlands and can operate in on-site, hybrid, and remote work models.
Shekhar speaks the following languages: Hindi (Native), English (Advanced).
Shekhar has at least 35 years of experience. During this time, Shekhar has worked in at least 9 different roles and for 8 different companies. The average length of individual experience is 4 years and 10 months. Note that Shekhar may not have shared all experience and actually has more experience.
Based on recent experience, Shekhar would be well-suited for roles such as: Founder & CTO, Chief Technology Officer, Worldline Global Online Pay, DevOps Director.
Shekhar's most recent position is Founder & CTO at Turiya Digital.
In recent years, Shekhar has worked for Turiya Digital and Worldline.
Shekhar is most experienced in industries like Telecommunication, Information Technology, and Banking and Finance. Shekhar also has some experience in Retail, Utilities, and Aerospace and Defense.
Shekhar is most experienced in business areas like Information Technology, Product Development, and Project Management. Shekhar also has some experience in Customer Service, Operations, and Strategy.
Shekhar has recently worked in industries like Banking and Finance, Information Technology, and Food and Beverage.
Shekhar has recently worked in business areas like Information Technology, Product Development, and Operations.
Shekhar holds a Master in Marketing, Finance, General Management from T.A. Pai Management Institute, a Master in Information Technology from Columbia University and a Bachelor in Electronics and Telecommunication from JNEC, Doctor Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University.
Shekhar has 2 certificates. These include: Certified Board Advisor and Certified Chief AI Officer.
Shekhar is immediately available full-time for suitable projects.
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Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 6 Nov 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
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