Narayan Gopinath

Narayan Gopinath

Staff Technical Program Manager · Walmart Global Tech India

About Me

With over a decade of experience shaping the technology landscape, I've built a career at the intersection of deep technical execution and strategic program leadership. My journey began with hands-on software development, building a strong foundation in system architecture and design that now informs my approach as a Staff Technical Program Manager. I thrive on bringing clarity to complexity, transforming ambitious business goals into tangible, high-impact results.

My passion is orchestrating large-scale, cross-functional programs that drive measurable value. As a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM), I specialize in leading globally distributed teams through Agile and SAFe frameworks. I excel at fostering alignment across all levels of an organization — from engineering and product teams to C-level executives — ensuring that communication is clear, risks are proactively managed, and delivery is predictable.

Experience

Walmart Global Tech India

Staff Technical Program Manager

March 2023 — Present (4 months)
  • Led successful delivery of a data processing application through project roadmaps, risk/dependency management and Agile development models, achieving 90% of planned milestones on time.
  • Owned end-to-end delivery of a datalake implementation project — from requirements and development to deployment and post-release monitoring — aligned to business KPIs and OKRs.
  • Built automated dashboards on critical engineering and operational metrics, improving delivery predictability and efficiency.
  • Drove cross-team collaboration with data scientists to deliver a General Ledger Anomaly Detection solution, identifying financial variances early and accelerating month-end closure.
  • Led implementation of an LLM trained on Walmart's finance datasets (Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Inventory), letting business users query data in natural language and surface actionable insights.
  • Managed trade-offs on a cloud cost optimization initiative with development and product teams, resulting in savings of $40,000/month.
  • Drove feature and epic prioritization using RICE and MoSCoW frameworks, aligning technical delivery with business value to accelerate time-to-market.
  • Created status reports for leadership on project status, risks and pending approvals, enabling faster decisions and full transparency.

FIS

Agile Project Manager

July 2021 — February 2023 (1 year 8 months)
  • Managed cross-functional teams across geo-located regions, implementing Agile and SAFe best practices.
  • Acted as Release Train Engineer (RTE) — facilitating Scrum of Scrums, quarterly planning, and aligning teams to deliver product features on schedule.
  • Led regular status reporting, risk and issue tracking, and produced mitigation plans to keep projects on track.
  • Built automated dashboards on engineering and operational excellence metrics.
  • Drove feature and epic prioritization using RICE and MoSCoW, aligning delivery with business value.

Capgemini

Senior Consultant — Lead Business Analyst

March 2021 — June 2021 (4 months)

Consultant — Business Analyst

April 2019 — March 2021 (2 years)
  • Coached teams in Agile practices and provided training to build a positive mindset toward Agile methodologies.
  • Collaborated with product owners, team members, technologists and other Scrum Masters to define solutions and drive progress across multiple Scrum teams.
  • Facilitated the full Scrum framework — sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily scrums, sprint reviews and retrospectives.
  • Anticipated delivery impediments early and worked with Product Owners and Development teams to resolve them.

Mphasis

Software Engineer

July 2014 — May 2018 (3 years 11 months)
  • Developed server-side applications for a data-modelling product using .NET Core, SQL Server and Perl.
  • Contributed to upgrading an underwriting application using Angular and Java, improving code reusability.
  • Implemented Test-Driven Development for a Microservices architecture using Cucumber JVM, lifting test coverage from 72% to 94%.
  • Designed (HLD/LLD) and developed across 6 projects of varied complexity using Angular, Java/Spring, .NET/MVC, and SQL Server.

Education

Anna University

Bachelor's degree, Computer Science

2010 — 2014

Expertise

Program Delivery

Agile / SAFeRICE & MoSCoW PrioritizationRTE FacilitationRisk ManagementOKR Alignment

Data & AI Programs

Datalake ImplementationAnomaly DetectionLLM on Finance DataBI Dashboards

Technical Foundation

Java.NET FrameworkMySQLAngularSpringMicroservicesTDD

Soft Skills

Executive CommunicationCross-functional LeadershipStakeholder ManagementMentoring

Certifications

  • Project Management Professional (PMP)
  • Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM)
  • Certified SAFe Agilist
  • Certified Associate Business Manager (CABM)

Interests

Cloud InfrastructureAI/ML Program DeliveryOperational Excellence