# Akila Balasubramanian > Principal Software Engineer | AI Technical Leader at Splunk Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/akila I’m a technical leader focused on building AI-powered observability and troubleshooting platforms that help engineering teams detect, investigate, and resolve production issues with greater speed and confidence. My work sits at the intersection of distributed systems, observability, applied AI, and product engineering. Over the years, I’ve led the design and delivery of platform capabilities spanning AI-directed troubleshooting, automated root cause analysis, real user monitoring for web and mobile applications, session replay, custom telemetry indexing, and full-stack investigation workflows. A common thread across these initiatives has been turning complex telemetry into actionable, evidence-backed experiences that reduce operational toil and improve decision-making during incidents. As a technical leader, I’m energized by ambiguous, high-impact problems that require both architectural depth and product judgment. I enjoy defining technical direction, driving cross-functional execution, and building extensible foundations that can scale across teams, customers, and use cases. My focus is not just on shipping features, but on creating durable platform capabilities—balancing technical rigor, usability, reliability, and long-term strategic value. I care deeply about building systems that engineers can trust. That means investing in clear reasoning, strong guardrails, explainability, and thoughtful workflow design—especially in areas where AI is used to support real production operations. I’m particularly interested in how intelligent systems can augment engineering workflows, accelerate troubleshooting, and make complex platforms easier to operate. I’m particularly motivated by opportunities to shape technical strategy, and build platform capabilities that have broad and lasting impact. ## Work Experience ### Principal Software Engineer @ Splunk Jan 2021 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area - Technical lead for AI-powered observability and digital experience monitoring initiatives across Splunk Observability Cloud. - Led the development of an agentic AI Assistant in Splunk Observability Cloud that executes evidence-backed troubleshooting workflows across metrics, logs, traces, and Kubernetes signals to accelerate root cause analysis and reduce incident resolution time. - Delivered alert-native AI-directed troubleshooting for Kubernetes and service alerts, producing evidence-backed probable root causes, problem-domain classification, and guided next steps with ~70% accuracy. - Architected an agentic orchestration layer (LangGraph-based) to execute deterministic, multi-step troubleshooting workflows with transparent step updates and robust fallbacks. - Led Web/Browser + Mobile RUM enhancements to capture real-user performance, errors, and session context across web, iOS, and Android, enabling faster UX and release-regression investigations. - Drove GA readiness and rollout for Session Replay, enabling teams to visually reproduce user journeys and correlate playback with performance telemetry; improved investigation turnaround by ~57% for user-reported issues. - Built customer-defined tagging and indexed analytics for RUM (custom span tags & MetricSets), including cardinality-aware guardrails; enabled higher-fidelity segmentation at scale (~850 million spans per minute). - Led cross-functional execution across backend, frontend, UX, and product; delivered private previews and hardening milestones with enterprise-grade reliability and governance. Patents: - Custom Indexed Tags - Concurrent Visualization of Session Data and Session Playback - Systems And Methods For Automated Generation Of Programming Code Through Deployment Of An Orchestration Agent ### Staff Software Engineer @ Edelman Financial Engines Jan 2015 – Jan 2021 - Led delivery of a unified prospect and client experience, consolidating fragmented workflows into a single, cohesive web application, improving key funnel completion by 48%. - Owned the GraphQL platform layer (schema + resolvers) and built supporting services and APIs using Java/Spring on AWS. - Established automated testing practices across unit and end-to-end coverage to improve release confidence and reduce regressions. - Drove secure integrations with external financial providers for account linking and document retrieval, including error handling and operational readiness. - Operationalized product analytics by rolling out Heap Analytics and enabling self-serve usage insights across engineering and product teams. - Led modernization of the frontend stack by driving adoption of Angular and defining a shared component and services strategy across multiple applications. - Introduced GraphQL/Apollo for standardized data access and caching across microservices, improving performance and simplifying feature delivery. - Built reusable data visualization components with D3.js to support interactive planning workflows. - Built rapid experimentation web apps to validate new product concepts in-market, partnering closely with product and design and iterating based on feedback; cut down experiment cycle time by 90%. - Led development of the company’s first mobile app using React Native, establishing core architecture patterns and reusable components for mobile delivery. ### Software Developer @ iRise Jan 2010 – Jan 2015 - Built and evolved a collaborative web-based prototyping platform used to accelerate product design and stakeholder alignment. - Delivered complex UI features and performance improvements across a JavaScript-heavy frontend stack. - Designed and implemented REST APIs using Java/Spring to support scalable collaboration workflows and integrations. ### Software Developer @ AdaptiBar Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 - Built adaptive learning and analytics features to improve study outcomes for bar exam preparation users; improved learner engagement by 83%. - Developed dashboards and diagnostic reports to track learner performance and streamline operational workflows. - Delivered full-stack features across ASP.NET/C#, JavaScript, and data visualizations. ### Software Engineer Intern @ Motorola Solutions Jan 2009 – Jan 2009 - Interned with the Advanced Technology and Research department. - Designed and developed a fully automated system to simulate high-volume network traffic scenarios. - Built the system using SWANS++ (Extensions to Scalable Wireless Ad-hoc Network Simulator). - Helped stress-test advanced wireless communication systems. ## Education ### Master of Science in Computer Science University of Illinois Chicago ### B.Tech in Information Technology PSG College of Technology ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/akilabalas --- Source: https://flows.cv/akila JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/akila/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12