Gangadharan S. Kuruvath

Xfinity Connect Android app enables customers of Comcast Corp. to handle emails, voicemails, SMS, call history, caller-id, and make VoIP/video calls. The app has a 4+ play store rating with 99% crash-free sessions, 400,000 concurrent users, and 1 million monthly users. The development team had a peak team size of 17 members (onsite + offshore).

The app is data-intensive and heavy on notifications and synchronizations. It supported real-time features like voice and video calling, caller-id notifications, and SMS. It also supported offline data mode which translated to the need for strong data management in the app.

Responsibilities:
- Architect and lead developer
- Designed and developed app-specific frameworks for REST calls, service handling with implicit session recovery, image handling, VoIP-video call stack management (WebRTC, SIP), DB management, analytics.
- Stakeholder management
- Defining the technical road map for the app based on market analytics, Android releases, and client enhancements.
- Defining MOPs for code review, triage, release packaging, analytics.

Duration: 6 years (Based in Philadelphia, USA)
Team Size: 17 (peak)
Platform: Android, Java, React-Native, SQLite, Localytics, WebRTC, IMAP, Splunk

Xfinity Share was an innovative app that enabled Comcast customers to stream/share videos directly to the TV set-top box or between apps.

The app had a rating of 4+ in the Google Play Store. However, due to product re-prioritization, the app has been discontinued.

Responsibilities:
- Architect and lead developer
- Designed and developed app-specific frameworks like having a robust error handling mechanism, implicit session recovery, DB management, analytics, media upload/download with offline support
- Stakeholder management

Duration: 2 years (Based in Philadelphia, USA, and Chennai, India)
Role: Architect and lead developer
Platform: Android, Java, SQLite

Altice Optimum app allows an Altice Cable subscriber to view the TV guide, play live tv, give recommendations, DVR, and also use as a remote.

I was a consultant for the project for mainly performance tuning the app. Some major areas which I addressed was a progressive guide download (400 channels * 48 programs * 3 days) by using a producer-consumer pattern, using Kotlin Coroutines for simultaneous REST API calls for downloading info, recommendation, related videos, etc, UI performance improvement by ways like UI flattening, lazy loading.

Platform: Kotlin, Android, Java, SQLite
Tenure: 6 months

I have been part of a number of product specification initiatives in Comcast, many of which are currently in the market, and some I have even been involved E2E.

The main responsibilities were
- Meeting with stakeholders (product, engineering, care, operations, legal) for initiation, requirement gathering, consensus buildup
- Market, and technical analysis for product viability, vendor viability, competition analysis, subscriber interest
- Preparing the Product Requirement Document (PRD), use cases. Present, incorporate review feedback, move the specifications from draft to baseline
- Give product support to all stakeholders for the business requirements

Some notable PRDs that I was involved in are Comcast IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) Voice transformation, Comcast Text Messaging SMS, Comcast Universal Caller Id (UCID).

Texas Instrument (TI) is a global semiconductor component manufacturing company.

I was contracted for maintaining and performance tuning the PERL scripts for TI inventory management systems.

Main responsibilities included
- Maintenance of the jobs/scripts involved in inventory planner, demand forecast planner Texas Instruments
- Performance tuning (Some scripts had to handle data exceeding 10 million tuples)
- Involved in impact analysis, effort estimation, troubleshooting, development

Role: Lead developer (based out of Chennai, India)
Duration: 1 year
Platforms: PERL, Solaris
Team Size: 4 (peak)

The PEW and NFM-TH systems were a part of the Service Assurance domain in BT. PEW is a system for planning engineering works on the BT network whereas NFM-TH is used for managing network trouble tickets.

I was the lead developer and responsible for developing the PEW system from scratch.

Responsibilities:
- Solution design. authoring DDD and TDD (detailed/technical design document)
- Estimation
- Development and troubleshooting
- Team mentoring

Role: Lead developer (based out of Ipswich, UK)
Duration: 3 years
Platforms: Amdocs CRM, Oracle, Tuxedo, Solaris
Team Size: 11 (peak)