Annual AWS savings
Hands-On Engineering Leader
Maulik Shah
A hands-on engineering leader with 15+ years of software engineering experience, including 8+ years in leadership roles — blending platform architecture, cloud governance, and team leadership to deliver scalable SaaS systems, measurable cost savings, and high-performing engineering organizations.
Monthly active users
Platform uptime
Years of engineering experience
About
Leadership philosophy and career arc
I'm a technical engineering leader with two decades of experience building and operating cloud-native platforms, then guiding globally distributed teams through complex product and infrastructure transformations. Over 18 years at Kaplan, I moved from Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead, building RESTful APIs and admin/student-facing systems, to Director and then Executive Director of Engineering — leading enterprise platform architecture and cloud strategy while intentionally staying close to the code, the architecture, and the team.
Along the way I've built and led globally distributed engineering organizations across the United States and India, architected the migration path from a monolithic LMS to a multi-tenant AWS SaaS platform, and driven enterprise-wide adoption of agentic AI tooling — all while keeping a hand in the implementation details that make leadership credible to the engineers doing the work.
My approach is grounded in clear system boundaries, cost-aware governance, and engineering practices that make teams more autonomous. I coach directly, align incentives across product and operations, and make technical tradeoffs visible so decisions hold up under scrutiny — from the executive team down to the engineer implementing the service boundary.
For hiring managers and recruiters, I focus on proof-backed outcomes: revenue growth, uptime, cost savings, and team scale. For technical peers and interviewers, I go one layer deeper — the architecture decisions, tradeoffs, and hands-on execution behind those numbers.
Case Studies
Outcome-focused leadership and technical delivery
Platform Engineering
Monolith → multi-tenant AWS SaaS migration
Context: Kaplan's legacy monolithic LMS needed a modern, multi-tenant foundation capable of supporting multiple business units and assessment products at once.
My Role: Personally architected and hands-on built the core migration path from the monolith to a multi-tenant AWS SaaS platform on distributed microservices, designing the key service boundaries and data models myself.
Approach: Phased migration with reusable service boundaries and a common scalable foundation, enabling new financial and engineering offerings to onboard onto the unified platform.
Outcome: Enabled multiple business units and assessment products to run on a shared platform, contributing to 20% revenue growth from newly onboarded offerings.
Reflection: I'd introduce feature flagging and incremental data migration earlier to de-risk cutover for future large-scale migrations.
Cloud Governance & FinOps
Cloud Center of Excellence & agentic AI cost automation
Context: AWS spend across 20 accounts lacked consistent governance, tagging, and budget visibility.
My Role: Led the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE), defining governance standards, asset tagging, CMDB integration, Cloud Aware visibility, and ServiceNow inventory management. In parallel, implemented agentic AI, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and Python workflow automation to further improve cloud governance.
Approach: Combined FinOps best practices with automation-first tooling so governance scaled without adding manual review overhead.
Outcome: Delivered roughly $1.1M in combined annual AWS savings — about $600K from CCOE governance and $500K from agentic AI/automation.
Reflection: Next step is more proactive anomaly detection with policy-as-code, rather than relying on periodic review cycles.
Product Impact
Unified educator experience at scale
Context: Institutional partners and Kaplan administrators needed a unified, reliable reporting and portal experience across a growing, multi-brand LMS platform.
My Role: Led development of a unified Educator Portal and reporting suite (Angular, React, .NET Web API, Node.js), while directing the broader platform reliability and scalability work behind it.
Approach: Modernized reporting architecture and strengthened security and resilience while scaling the platform to support continued business growth.
Outcome: Increased NPS from 38 to 64, while scaling the platform to ~300,000 monthly active users, 1.5M+ monthly sessions, and 99.96% uptime.
Reflection: I'd invest earlier in production experimentation to validate reporting changes with real institutional partners before full rollout.
Engineering Team Management
Building global teams & enterprise AI adoption
Context: Kaplan needed both a scaled, globally distributed engineering organization and a consistent path to enterprise AI adoption across every team.
My Role: Built and led a 50-person global engineering organization across the U.S. and India spanning six teams, and separately led the organization-wide rollout of GitHub Copilot, Claude, and Gemini.
Approach: Paired performance management, succession planning, and mentoring with hands-on AI tooling adoption plans for engineering managers and their teams.
Outcome: Six teams contributed to $40M in business growth, while AI adoption reduced software delivery timelines and improved developer productivity org-wide.
Reflection: I'd add a more formal feedback loop to measure tooling ROI sooner rather than relying on qualitative signals.
Skills & Tech Stack
Technical and leadership strengths
Cloud / Infrastructure
- AWS Deep
- Multi-account governance & FinOps Deep
- ServiceNow / CMDB integration Deep
- Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform Working
- Azure Working
Platform / Architecture
- Multi-tenant SaaS design Deep
- Microservices & API strategy Deep
- Distributed systems Deep
- Observability (Dynatrace, LogRocket) Working
AI / Automation
- Agentic AI & agentic workflows Deep
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) Deep
- GitHub Copilot, Claude, Gemini adoption Deep
- Python automation & orchestration Deep
- RAG, LLM architecture, prompt engineering Working
Languages / Frameworks
- C#, .NET / .NET Core Deep
- Go, Python, Node.js Deep
- Angular, React, TypeScript Working
- MongoDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server Working
Leadership / Process
- Globally distributed team building & mentoring
- Performance management, succession planning, compensation
- Stakeholder communication & executive collaboration
- Vendor management & cross-functional delivery
- Agile delivery, technical roadmaps, code & design reviews
Recognition
Awards, certifications, and credibility signals
Kaplan Way — Continuous Transformation Award
2015 · Recognized for driving measurable transformation in engineering delivery and platform modernization.
Kaplan Hackathon Grand Prize
2013 · Awarded for engineering innovation and practical execution in a cross-functional hackathon.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate
2021 · Validated cloud architecture expertise across distributed, multi-account AWS environments.
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
2021 · Foundational certification in AWS cloud concepts and services.
Nike — Offshore Delivery Recognition
2006 · Recognized by Nike program leadership for effective offshore coordination and delivering ahead of schedule.
Broward County Certificate of Appreciation
2005 · Recognized for delivering a county-wide Client Service Management System connecting residents to social and emergency services.
Resume
Download the current resume
The link below downloads my current, role-tailored resume as a PDF. Reach out via the contact section below if you'd like a version tailored to a specific role.
Download Resume (PDF)Contact
Connect for opportunities or feedback
Email: maulik33@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maulikshah33
Based in Cumming, Georgia. Open to Director and Senior Director of Engineering, and Engineering Manager conversations. I'm happy to provide a tailored resume version or walk through any of the case studies above in more depth.