Jul 06, 2025

My Corporate Work History

Here, I share my corporate journey across HR and People Technology.

My career aim

My nine-year corporate journey has been driven by a singular purpose: to actively improve the employee experience through technology and product innovation. It’s been a continual exploration of how people, technology, and strategy intersect to shape meaningful employee experiences.

Over the past nine years, I’ve navigated varied teams and roles spanning talent acquisition, HR business partnership, HR operations, enablement and automation, product management, and technology architecture.

Each shift, promotion and role change has been driven by me actively defining my career, backing up my curiosity with a clear track record, and the resolve to deliver impactful, empathetic solutions at scale.

From discovery to implementation, I have led agile HR and technical teams in strategizing and executing solutions that improve people's careers and lives.

My experience cuts across HR strategy and product leadership, navigating high-velocity environments to transform how organizations manage their most valuable asset: people. My focus remains on crafting meaningful, delightful, and connected employee lifecycle journeys through strategic tech and collaborative execution.

I lean on an agile mindset and customer empathy to build solutions that resonate with users.

These days, I focus on identifying connections within Avalara’s digital employee ecosystem to amplify value. Each week involves thoughtful collaboration, strategic design reviews, and practical problem-solving that enhances the capabilities and effectiveness of global teams.

Quick overview on my journey

My corporate experience has been at Avalara since April 2016. But each year has been like joining a new company. Avalara is a global SaaS FinTech leader in indirect tax compliance, with 5,500+ employees across 4 continents.

Throughout my tenure at Avalara, certain values have anchored my approach: frugality to optimize resources, urgency to drive timely outcomes, adaptability in the face of rapid change, resiliency through org changes, and humility to continuously learn and grow.

In less than 4 years, I progressed from being a recruitment intern for a 150-member office to the Lead of HR owning Operations for India for 1,300+ employees through periods of rapid hiring and transformation.

I then switched career from functional owner in HR vertical to a technology team member under Engineering vertical.

In less than 3 years, I progressed from a new team member in a new career stream to the business unit's architecture and people manager, having delivered national and global projects including system upgrades, platform migrations and capability introductions.

If you want a more traditional resume-style narrative, read below.

HR Product Management - Employee Lifecycle Experience, Operations, Business Partnership, Employer Branding, Talent Acquisition, Glocal Scaling, Lean Team, Agile, Empathy, Program Optimization, Change Management, Relationship Building, Career Pathing, Talent Management, Mentorship.

People Technology - Workday, Simpplr on Salesforce, ServiceNow, Kainos, iCIMS, Jobvite, Enboarder, Atlassian, IT Suite, Technology Adoption, Process Automation, User Experience.

Manager, People Technology Architecture and Releases at Avalara | Aug 2024 - Present

My aim here is to increase business capabilities. The workforce industry is moving so fast in so many different ways. I find the thread in the things we do and their value. Hence, the focus on architecture.
My director leader was very helpful and supportive in getting me to this role.

Building a global group of Business Systems Analysts and Engineers towards a state of high performance and efficiency, increased business value and enhanced quality of solutions.
Working with multiple executives and leadership chains to accelerate roadmap deliveries and buy/build decisions.
Collaborating with teams for people technology and employee experience ecosystem analysis.
Providing strategic guidance to senior leaders and executives to envision, introduce and consolidate people technology capabilities through architecture review.
Learning and ideating enterprise architecture roadmap in People Technology suite.
Having add-on responsibilities as a technical lead in Workday HCM and continuing to enhance customer efficiency at story/epic level.
Technical owner configuring enhancements in Workday, global intranet on Salesforce and transversal systems.

Senior Business Systems Analyst at Avalara | Jul 2023 – Jul 2024

This was a promotion supported by everyone as I was delivering by utilizing my HR knowledge while maintaining multiple enterprise platforms.
My director leader continued to give me space to explore and prototype new efficiencies and business value. Learnings from him continued to direct me to seeking the right questions.

Took ownership of Workday HCM, Business Processes, global intranet and enterprise applications in People Technology suite and improved team trust and collaborations with senior stakeholders.
Created and launched the business unit’s wiki home by crafting the team vision, processes and procedures.
Saved 1,000+ hours of HR Operations team by building document automation for India. Poised to save 5,000+ hours with global scope along with added benefits of secure auto-management of documents.
Reduced $90,000 in budget spend by proposing and architecting time-sensitive global automation projects such as employee onboarding and completely decommissioning CRM system and processes.
Advised a cross-functional operational team from HR, Payroll, and IT to deliver a critical and complex absence management and time-tracking system in Workday for India, ensuring completion on time and within budget.
Built successful proofs-of-concept for solving strategic challenges through skills and competency frameworks, enhanced contextual feedback, machine-learning-driven talent marketplace and learning management system.
Presented and secured a spot for talent management on the HR Leadership Council’s strategic roadmap by pitching an innovative custom roadmap of a suite of workforce solutions and demonstrating over 150 domains.

Business Systems Analyst at Avalara | Sep 2021 – Jun 2023

I switched my role from human resources to people technology because I wanted to experience platform automation and work under an incredible director leader. It's been an interesting learning experience in some ways as it allowed me to research how platforms are being used in industries.

Handled global scope for Workday HCM, Business Processes and enterprise applications.
Introduced to IT under Engineering organization and underwent substantial role change.
Learned administration of Workday and other enterprise systems from scratch.
Increased efficiencies by delivering Remote I-9, self-service remote working requests, custom objects and multiple improvements to business process automation and user experiences.
Introduced Kainos for automation testing and owned this partnership for successful ROI.
Took over ownership of the technology platform of the global corporate intranet, built on Salesforce, and delivered multiple upgrades and enhancements like federated search capabilities.
Improved business deliveries by helping business teams through business requirements refinement, negotiating through alternative approaches and influencing through change management.

Lead HR at Avalara | Apr 2020 – Aug 2021

Surprisingly, I found this role to be less busy than my earlier one. Having to slow down when I wanted to accelerate was the main challenge I had to learn to navigate.

Accountable for HR Operations of India and played a role in miscellaneous advisory practices for other geographies such as EMEA.
Managed 1-member India’s HR Operations team for 1300+ employees in India and increased team productivity with no increase in team size throughout intense hiring and acquisitions.
Supervised onboarding to exit processes from 400+ hires to 100+ exits.
Ensured worker data integrity through audits, role corrections and change management.
Finalized and submitted quarterly and annual compliances for offices.
Expanded the salary framework and single-handedly managed ad hoc and annual letters creation, document distributions and communications in India in record time by working closely with HR-VP.
Played HR product owner for introduction, architecture and maintenance of multiple people systems, including selection of payroll and leaves vendor.
Led multiple operations team programs, reduced escalations and enhanced systems through rapid incident resolutions, workflow tweaks and change management.
Owned all HR inputs to payroll teams (average monthly OTP volume of 8 million INR and 55+ hires).
Represented India HR in Finance’s Internal Audit meetings on all operational processes.
Resolved complex salary incidents of varied large groups of employees through root cause analysis, data corrections, corrective payroll inputs and conducting group communications.
Analyzed impacts of local interconnected unstandardized people processes in multiple business units and guided global teams with recommendations at critical Go/No-Go times.
Led Workday HRIS data preparation for India and EMEA offices & ensured a successful GoLive during the pandemic lockdown.
Played the product owner role for India’s connected time, absence, compensation and benefits automation by explaining requirements to Workday Architects and leading testing over 3 months.
Delivered complex large data conversion from multiple legacy systems to Workday EIBs.
Led promotional activities with India’s engineering leadership to reinforce employee engagement through knowledge-sharing initiatives such as Know Your Neighbor.

HROps and HRBP Generalist at Avalara | Jan 2017 – Mar 2020

As in most small-to-medium orgs, I delivered many improvements by starting and improving processes by being very proactive. A regret is that I did not adequately list the amount of work I was doing in performance reviews, resulting in my role change being delayed.

Played a hybrid role of HR business partner and operations for Pune offices.
Reviewed people framework and advised site heads, managers and HR team on personal, financial and reporting decisions.
Spearheaded the mapping of 700+ employees in India offices under a new job profile architecture through discussions with business unit leaders.
Streamlined critical employee data and headcount reporting processes for the EMEA region.
Performed critical responsibility as sole HR analyst of India entity in two annual performance evaluation cycles of 500+ employees across 30 different teams.
Redesigned policies and revamped the India handbook, ensuring all stakeholder approvals and providing ongoing education.
Strategized employer branding and built multiple pipelines by self-learning media production and social media marketing.
Started several communities of practice like women’s ERG, sports cell and CSR committee.
Drove a successful project for evaluating and identifying new online learning platforms for India through collaborations with teams and leadership chains.
Produced multiple engagement and branding programs, including single-handedly creating annual offsite videos, social media administration and increased activity engagement and follower count.
Owned and delivered a first-time Great Place to Work certification for India entity.
Delivered a 5x increase in monthly membership of Pune Tech Talks, Avalara India’s meetup group, at zero cost over six months by working closely with leadership for revamping meetups and campaigns. Managed multiple meetups, increased awareness and participation and created multi-media for high-quality employer branding.

Recruiter at Avalara | Apr 2016 - Dec 2016

Joining as an intern in an unknown organization filled with hardworking employees was fun. Every week had new challenges to be faced and I delivered many improvements.

Brought aboard as second recruiter in Avalara India, facing challenges such as little market presence.
Delivered targets by hiring experienced subject matter experts and engineers in emerging and niche roles and technologies like SRE, AEM, SDET, Landed Costs and indirect tax researchers.
Standardized processes by creating JD templates, hiring policies and leading change management.
Worked with senior leaders to craft and finalize go-to-market strategy.
Conducted several hiring drives over weekends by high quality candidate marketing and experiences.
Started practice of automation pipelines in Jobvite ATS through localized workflow tweaks.
Introduced employer branding programs and brought executive buy-ins and participation.

Corporate Recognition

(although I have done higher impact work after 2021)

4 Annual Awards - 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018.
2 Spot Awards - 2020 | 2018.
2 Quarterly awards - 2018 | 2016.

These awards were for delivering work across talent acquisition, business partnership, branding, operations and pretty much taking on new stuff and independently delivering projects with appreciated quality.