# Palav Desai

> Engineering @ Tesla

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/palav

▪ I build and lead backend systems where correctness isn't optional — billing, contracts, payments, order management, and the infrastructure that ties them together.
▪ At Tesla, I lead backend engineering across the full residential energy customer lifecycle: from order placement through financing, contract and document management, and post-ownership systems. The work involves distributed microservices, cross-functional program delivery, and keeping complex financial and regulatory flows reliable at scale.
▪ I operate as both technical authority and people leader — architecting solutions, leading engineering teams, and driving cross-functional delivery across product, QA, DevOps, and partner teams.
▪ I'm drawn to companies where the backend is the product — fintech, energy tech, insurance, or any domain where billing, contracts, and payments demand precision engineering.

## Work Experience
### Staff Software Engineer @ Tesla
Jan 2019 – Present | Fremont, California
▪ Technical lead for Tesla's Residential Energy Core team, responsible for backend systems spanning Order, Fulfillment, Contracts & Document Management, and Post-Ownership.
▪ Architect and deliver complex, cross-functional backend initiatives spanning billing, financing, contracts, document generation, and customer lifecycle management — coordinating across multiple internal teams from design through production.
▪ Lead and grow engineering teams — run sprint planning, design reviews, and cross-team alignment while staying hands-on in architecture and code.
▪ Drive platform reliability and observability — own monitoring, alerting, and operational practices across multiple service domains.
▪ Introduced AI agent integrations that reduced manual operational toil for internal teams.
▪ Established engineering standards and delivery patterns adopted across the broader Energy Core Services org.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Xero
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco, California
▪ Full-stack engineer on the Payroll platform. Owned Direct Deposit integration end-to-end — C# REST service, Knockout.js onboarding UI, and React/Node.js/GraphQL BFF — shipped to production across all Xero Payroll markets.
▪ Designed payroll archival infrastructure on DynamoDB + Lambda + SQS. Configured CI/CD pipelines via TeamCity and Terraform.
▪ Won 1st place at company-wide Hackathon — built CSV Checker, a React app that validates and auto-fixes bank statement files.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Verisk – insurance solutions
Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area
▪Backend engineer on a C# SOAP/REST driver and vehicle risk data platform. Re-architected the service onto a new WSO2 SOA infrastructure — improved throughput via parallelized API calls, led technical documentation, mentored junior developers through the full migration.


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/palav
- Portfolio: http://www.hotelsathome.com
- Portfolio: http://www.mindjet.com

---
Source: https://flows.cv/palav
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/palav/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-12