Akhilesh Sattenapalli, Project Manager in Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Akhilesh Sattenapalli

Bio

Akhilesh turns complex technology programs into measurable business results—on time, on budget, and built to last. With 11+ years of leading enterprise initiatives across insurance, retail, and logistics, he owns end-to-end delivery: from strategy and planning through execution and launch. Akhilesh brings hands-on experience building AI-powered tools and agents, with the technical depth to lead AI projects from concept to production.

Project Highlights

Expertise

  • AI Agents
  • Agile Software Development
  • Change Management
  • DevOps
  • Leadership
  • Scrum Master
  • Software Release Management
  • Technical Project Management

Work Experience

Project Manager | Scrum Master | Delivery Lead

2022 - PRESENT
WorkSafe BC
  • Owned the end-to-end delivery of a $2+ million project portfolio, leading 11+ cross-functional team members using SAFe and Agile methodologies.
  • Spearheaded a $1.7 million digital transformation initiative, automating legacy processes and improving operational efficiency.
  • Led the full project lifecycle from design and scope management to cost control and performance reporting.
  • Delivered mission-critical portals under aggressive timelines while maintaining high-quality standards.
  • Facilitated daily stand-ups and execution syncs, proactively removing blockers to meet sprint commitments.
  • Directed development teams to build scalable, high-performance software solutions.
  • Defined and implemented comprehensive test strategies and rollout plans for defect-free production releases.
  • Presented project health, KPIs, risks, and milestones to executive steering committees.
  • Led Scrum of Scrums and PI Planning, managing cross-team dependencies and mitigating delivery risks.
  • Drove resource planning, team coaching, and executive governance (SteerCo and go and no--go) to ensure alignment, accountability, and sustained delivery velocity.

Program Manager | Scrum Master | Delivery Lead

2021 - 2021
Cognizant
  • Led the delivery of high-quality enterprise solutions supporting global retail operations.
  • Directed the end-to-end delivery of core microservices powering eCommerce and in-store platforms.
  • Facilitated daily stand-ups and Agile ceremonies to ensure alignment with sprint goals.
  • Acted as the primary escalation point, proactively resolving blockers to protect team velocity.
  • Served as a delivery shield for engineering teams, minimizing disruptions and external dependencies.
  • Architected multi-year program roadmaps aligning business goals, security, and enterprise architecture.
  • Owned CapEx and OpEx financial governance, ensuring budget adherence and cost optimization.
  • Developed executive dashboards and reporting for real-time visibility into financials and delivery health.
  • Optimized product-engineering workflows to accelerate feature delivery and improve efficiency.
  • Collaborated with cross-functional stakeholders to drive strategic alignment and continuous improvement.

Program Manager | Delivery Lead

2021 - 2021
OneSpan
  • Orchestrated enterprise release governance for a global cloud-based e-signature platform, integrating QA, cloud operations, and product teams.
  • Improved release predictability by 25% by implementing standardized readiness frameworks and proactive risk controls.
  • Led executive go and no-go forums, ensuring compliance with security, regulatory, and architectural standards.

Software Project Manager

2019 - 2021
Videri
  • Led cross-functional delivery of Videri’s hardware–software digital display products by coordinating engineering, firmware, design, QA, and operations teams to meet release timelines.
  • Implemented Agile practices—facilitating sprint ceremonies, managing backlogs, and improving team velocity and delivery predictability.
  • Managed end-to-end project execution, including roadmap planning, risk mitigation, stakeholder communication, and release management for global client deployments.
  • Facilitated all sprint ceremonies (grooming, sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, mid-sprint checkpoints, sprint reviews, sprint retrospectives, release planning, and product demonstrations).

Project Manager

2016 - 2019
Purolator
  • Managed large-scale technology initiatives supporting Purolator’s logistics and delivery operations, ensuring projects met scope, timelines, and service-level expectations.
  • Facilitated Agile delivery across cross-functional teams by driving sprint ceremonies, backlog refinement, and continuous improvement practices.
  • Led stakeholder communication and risk management, ensuring alignment between business, operations, and technical teams while proactively removing delivery blockers.
  • Led complicated RFP's. Evaluated RFP responses. Organized vendor presentations, led contract negotiations, and awarded the contract to the vendor. Managed vendor and monitored vendor performance.
  • Drafted project documentation such as project charter, SOW, communication management plan, executive presentations, contracts, RAID logs, Gantt charts, WBS, and project schedule, business case, project proposal, and release and transition plans.

Project History

Enterprise-wide Implementation of SAP Ariba

Launched organization-wide SAP Ariba. Trained over 100 users and digitalized contract management and RFP processes.

Documented current end-to-end process. Conducted requirement gathering sessions with business stakeholders and data mapping sessions to identify customized fields. Collaborated with the SAP team to customize the tool as per business requirements. Deployed the pilot version of the Ariba tool in partnership with the procurement department. Collaborated with 200 vendors to create Ariba profiles and digitalized the RFP and contract management process.

Spearheaded IT RFP to Identify Qualified Vendor to Develop Web Application

Awarded contract to the vendor. Secured savings of $500,000. Acted as a primary liaison between the vendor and business team, managed all dependencies, identified risks, and avoided scope creep proactively.

Collaborated with a business team of 14 stakeholders to elicit, analyze, and document different kinds of requirements such as functional, security, load and performance, warranties, service level agreements, user interface, scalability, configuration, data maintenance, audit log, and support requirements.

Worked with legal to prepare and consolidate RFP documentation (terms and conditions, timelines) and draft contract.

Categorized requirements into mandatory, rated requirements and proposed an evaluation strategy to business teams

Led end-to-end RFP, answered all vendor questions, organized oral demonstrations with vendors, evaluated proposals, negotiated and awarded the contract to vendor.

Acted as the primary contact between business and vendor during project execution and monitored vendor performance against contractually agreed SLA’s.

Online Services Portal | Provincial Government

Stakeholder Alignment Across Parallel Workstreams: Managing a large group of executive stakeholders across legal, operations, and IT—while coordinating multiple cross-functional tech teams working in parallel—created significant dependency conflicts, competing priorities, and decision bottlenecks that threatened delivery timelines.

Established a structured governance model with regular executive steering committee meetings, clear RACI frameworks, and dependency tracking across all parallel workstreams—ensuring alignment at every level without slowing execution.

Successfully delivered a $3 million complex, multi-team program with zero scope derailment, maintaining executive confidence and cross-team momentum throughout delivery.

Levi's Core Microservices Platform

Breaking apart a legacy monolith into componentized microservices—while coordinating multiple development teams building interdependent services in parallel—created significant architectural complexity, integration risks, and dependency conflicts across three major platforms simultaneously.

Established clear service boundaries, standardized integration contracts between teams, and implemented structured Agile delivery across parallel workstreams—ensuring teams could build independently without breaking interdependencies.

Delivered secure, componentized microservices powering Levi’s eCommerce, retail, and distribution center platforms—eliminating downtime and enabling a clean, scalable architecture across all customer-facing operations.

Native Mobile CRM Application

Building fully native iOS and Android applications simultaneously—while maintaining a consistent user experience, shared business logic, and seamless CRM integration across both platforms—created significant technical and coordination complexity throughout delivery.

Coordinated cross-functional mobile development teams across both platforms, enforced consistent UX standards, and managed parallel workstreams with clear integration checkpoints to ensure parity and quality across iOS and Android.

Successfully delivered native iOS and Android CRM applications on time—putting real-time customer and operational data in the hands of field teams across both platforms.

AI Agents Suite | Chatbot | Project Report Generator | Document Summarizer

Technical Complexity of Building Production-ready AI Agents: Integrating RAG architecture, VectorDB, and LangChain into reliable, production-ready agents—each serving a different use case—required deep technical problem-solving with no established blueprint, significant prompt engineering iteration, and careful orchestration of multiple AI components working together.

Designed and built three specialized AI agents from concept to production—a customer-facing chatbot, an audience-aware project status report generator, and a document summarizer—applying hands-on expertise in LangChain, RAG, and VectorDB to deliver consistent, reliable outputs across all three.

Significantly reducing manual effort across customer support, status reporting, and document review, while demonstrating end-to-end technical depth to lead AI projects from concept to production.

Cliams Tracking Online Portal

  • $500,000 — Annual Savings

Client legacy intake processes relied on manual, paper-based, and vendor-dependent workflows that created friction for customers, slowed claims adjudication, and limited the organization’s ability to scale digital service delivery to its provincial user base.

I led end-to-end delivery of a $3+ million portal program from initial roadmap through go-live, coordinating 11+ cross-functional contributors across engineering, legal, security, and external vendors. I drove SAFe-based delivery cadence, chaired SteerCo and Go/No-Go governance forums, and led go-live planning, deployment coordination, and post-launch stabilization to ensure the platform was production-ready on day one.

The portal processed 9,000 regulated form submissions in its first year of operation, establishing a scalable digital channel that replaced manual intake workflows and meaningfully improved customer experience

Education

2025 - 2025

Certification in Management Essentials

Harvard Business School Online - Vancouver

2013 - 2015

Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering

Concordia University - Montreal, Canada

2009 - 2013

Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering

SRM University - Chennai, India

Certifications

MARCH 2025 - PRESENT

Management Essentials

Harvard Business School Online

APRIL 2022 - PRESENT

SAFe Scrum Master

Scaled Agile

MAY 2019 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Master

Scrum Alliance

FEBRUARY 2018 - PRESENT

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

AUGUST 2017 - PRESENT

Black Belt (Six Sigma Lean)

Management and Strategy Institute

Skills

Tools

Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Excel, GitHub, Slack, Office 365, Artifactory, Visio, Excel 2016, Word 2016, Microsoft PowerPoint, Asana, SQL

Paradigms

Six Sigma, Lean, Continuous Integration (CI), Requirements Analysis, Agile Project Management, Agile, AI Project Management, DevOps, Agile Software Development, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Change Management, Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), Team Development, Kanban, Scrum

Platforms

Monday.com, Azure, SAP Ariba, SharePoint

Industry Expertise

High-tech Startups, Software, Supply Chain Management (SCM)

Other

Smartsheet, Lucidchart, Project Management, Process Improvement, IT Program Management, Scrum Master, Project Planning, Product Roadmaps, Release Management, Stakeholder Management, Backlog Management, Design Sprints, User Stories, Project Timelines, Requirements, Requirements & Specifications, Technical Requirements, Requirement Traceability Matrices, Business Requirements, Functional Requirements, Project Discovery, Sprint Planning, Process Analysis, Budget Management, Project Budget Management, Startups, Technical Project Management, Project Delivery, Project Scoping, ServiceNow, Agile Program Management, Program Management, Deployment, Leadership, Ownership, Enterprise Project Management, Operations Management, Roadmaps, Product Launch, Websites, Delivery Management, Customer Support, Data Management, PDF to Excel, Project Coordination, Technical Program Management, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Digital Project Management, Data Integration, Automation, Manufacturing, Data Security, SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM), Supply Chain, Mobile Applications, Process Optimization, eCommerce, Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Prompts, DocuSign, IT Business Analysis, C++, HTML5, CSS3, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Design, Project Management Professional (PMP), Software Release Management, IT Project Management, Jira Administrator, Story Mapping, User Journeys, User Personas, User Flows, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Sprint Ceremonies, Project Tracking, Project Closure, Project Support, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Gantt Chart, Scope Management, Communication, Workflow, Mobile/Web Project Management, Procurement, RFQ, Request for Information (RFI), Vendor Management, IT Contracts, Contract Management, Contract Negotiation, Evaluation, Contract Drafting, Contract Review, System Requirements, Service-level Agreements (SLAs), Data Analysis, SAP, Pareto Diagrams, Resource Allocation, SOP Development, System Migration, Data Migration, Risk Management, Resource Management, Enterprise SaaS, SaaS Product Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Mobile Apps, QA Testing, IT Deployments, IT Support, Relational Data Mapping, Business Proposals, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Interviews, Documentation, Planview, Agile Coaching, IT Projects, Request for Proposal (RFP), Software Development, Production Support, Product Management, Process Management, Team Management, Performance Management, People Management, AI Agents, PMO Governance, LangChain, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Vector Databases, Compliance, Financials, Delivery, Node.js, .NET, Agentic AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Notion

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