Surya Prakash

Technical Co-founder / CTO

surya@suryaelite.com +971 54 501 4005 Dubai, United Arab Emirates linkedin.com/in/suryaelite suryaelite.com

I build and run whole technology functions, personally rather than through a layer of managers: the servers, the product, the mobile apps, the call centre and the ad campaigns that fill them. 15+ years, from system administrator to VP Technology, and still shipping. If you need one person who can stand up the infrastructure, ship the product and buy the first customers, that is the job I have been doing.

Experience

Vice President Technology

July 2023 - Present

The Lending Tree, MVP Real Estate & Next Reality, Dubai, UAE

  • Built the proposal system: automated mortgage proposal generation with live bank rate feeds, producing client-ready PDFs. Turnaround fell from 60 minutes to 5, returning over 1,200 hours a year to the team.
  • Built the unified portal: iOS and Android from one React Native codebase, plus a web portal. Serves 42 partner companies and their 272 users, 50 staff, and over 1,000 client accounts. Portal logins rose 35% after launch.
  • Ran Google Ads and Meta lead generation, email marketing, and the landing pages behind them. Web traffic up 40%, cost per acquisition down 25%.
  • Rolled out Zoho CRM across 50 users, with the process changes to make it stick.
  • Managed more than 10 vendor relationships, with the budget and contract work attached.

Head of IT & Security

December 2018 - June 2023

DSSC Tech Ltd., Dubai, UAE

  • Ran the AWS infrastructure and security under core banking platforms built for financial institutions. Four and a half years on systems where a failure moves money.
  • Operated more than 40 C# microservices in production.
  • Held PCI DSS compliance across the estate, clearing 98% of findings between the first and the final scan.
  • Built the monitoring and incident response on Zabbix, Graylog and the ELK stack.

Lead DevOps Engineer

December 2017 - August 2018

Econet Wireless Limited, Dubai, UAE

  • Built and ran AWS infrastructure to PCI DSS standards.
  • Managed Linux estates across Ubuntu, RedHat and CentOS, with PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Java, Apache and NGINX.

Sr. Data Engineer / DevOps

February 2014 - December 2017

Ogilvy & Mather (neo@Ogilvy), Gurugram, India

  • Architected and ran a Cloudera big-data platform on HBase, HDFS, Hive and Impala, behind campaign analytics, with a MySQL NDB cluster underneath it.
  • Managed an estate of more than 50 AWS servers, working with the agency’s New York office.
  • Built enterprise applications on CakePHP, MongoDB and Redis.

Web Manager

December 2012 - February 2014

Juvalia & You (Smile Group), Gurugram, India

  • Ran Magento e-commerce end to end: product catalogues, pricing rules and user roles, integrated with SugarCRM, Unicom and Microsoft Navision.
  • Built the inventory, invoicing and shipment workflows behind it.
  • Set up the servers and deployed a full VoIP call centre on FreePBX and Asterisk, then wrote and maintained the call detail reporting panel.

Sr. System Admin / DevOps

March 2012 - October 2012

Teck Freaks, Lucknow, India

  • Built website and CRM systems, and integrated the payment gateways behind them.

System Admin / DevOps

February 2011 - February 2012

Elite Business Media, Lucknow, India

  • Ran the web infrastructure and hosting.

Skills

Infrastructure and Security: AWS, Google Cloud, Ubuntu, RedHat, CentOS, PCI DSS, OWASP, SonarQube, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, SaltStack, Jenkins, GitLab CI, Zabbix, Graylog, ELK, Nagios, DataDog, PagerDuty, Python, Bash, Groovy. Data: Cloudera, HBase, HDFS, Hive, Impala, MySQL NDB Cluster, MemSQL, MongoDB, Redis. Product and Web Platforms: TypeScript, PHP, Magento, Zoho CRM, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics, VoIP and IVR. Mobile: React Native, TypeScript, iOS, Android. Commerce and Payments: Magento, SugarCRM, Microsoft Navision, Unicom, Payment gateways, Order and inventory workflows. Voice and Call Centre: FreePBX, Asterisk, VoIP server setup, IVR, Call detail reporting. Teams and Vendors: Cross-functional teams, Vendor negotiation, Budget ownership, C-suite reporting. Growth: Google Ads, Meta lead generation, Landing pages, Email marketing, Analytics and reporting.

Industry Experience

Mortgage
The Lending Tree. Proposal automation against live lender rates, and the broker workflow around it.
Real Estate
MVP Real Estate and Next Reality. Lead generation, CRM and web.
Marketing
Google Ads, Meta and email marketing run in-house, with the landing pages behind them.
Banking
DSSC Tech. Infrastructure under core banking platforms, four and a half years under PCI DSS.
Ad Tech
Ogilvy & Mather, the WPP advertising network. Ad verification, and the Cloudera platform behind campaign analytics at global agency scale.
E-commerce
Juvalia & You. Magento with catalogues, pricing and fulfilment, integrated with SugarCRM, Unicom and Microsoft Navision.

Education

Bachelor in Computer Application

2009

Institute of Advanced Studies in Education University, Rajasthan, India

First Division. Artificial Intelligence taken as a final-semester paper.

Certifications and Awards

2021
DIAT Certified Information Assurance. Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Pune, in association with DRDO, Ministry of Defence, India.
2020
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Amazon Web Services.
2014
Making Sense of Data. Google.
2011
Reported a security vulnerability in the Uttar Pradesh Police recruitment system. Disclosed it to the department rather than acting on it. Recognised by the police department, and covered in print and broadcast media.
2004
National Cadet Corps ‘A’ Certificate