Ravi Naarla
Chief Technologist
Strategic CTO driving business growth through GenAI, AI/ML, cloud solutions, and digital transformation, delivering measurable impact and innovation.
Key Strengths
Driving revenue growth through AI-enabled platforms and cloud-based solutions, with proven results of 15% growth and $5M additional annual revenue.
Formulating and executing strategic sales initiatives in collaboration with D and C-Suite executives, building trusted relationships and articulating compelling value propositions.
Strong experience leading GenAI, Cloud, AI/ML, data and SRE initiatives at F500 customers, aligning technical strategy with measurable business outcomes.
Career Highlights
Co-developed an AI strategy and OKRs with executives—leveraging GenAI, 15+ tech evaluations, and three investments—to increase developer productivity 35%, system efficiency 25%, business automation 33%, and feature delivery speed 50%. Upskilled 30K+ engineers in GenAI-driven engineering efficiency and productivity through targeted learning programs.
Deployed multi-cloud LLMs across 50+ data centers, managing 1PB+ of healthcare data across clouds and data center improving predictive analytics accuracy by 30% at Elevance Health.
Architected large-scale AI and data management platforms across cloud, including an enterprise-scale cloud PaaS serving over 200M requests per day, driving $60M in annual savings and a 7.5% EBITDA margin growth at Elevance Health used by over 100K engineers and 200 apps.
Spearheaded connected car solutions, generating $270M in annual revenue and increasing market share by 25% for automotive clients such as General Motors and Ford.
Improved peak hour network performance by 15% and OTA completion rates by 25% through RAN latency optimization using reinforcement learning.
Reduced operational downtime by 30% and saved $10M annually by launching AI-driven Cloud Predictive Maintenance (PdM) SaaS.
Frequent publisher of articles and thought leader in AI and Cloud technologies, contributing to industry events, white papers, and best practices.
Professional Experience
Client CTO - Telco
Cognizant (Senior Director - Projects) | AI, Analytics, SRE
• Engaged with executive leaders and technical stakeholders to resolve technical roadblocks, aligning business objectives with cutting-edge cloud and AI technologies.
• Boosted developer productivity by over 35% and satisfaction by 25% through AI-driven workflows, including GenAI-infused Value Streams, Reliability and Operations.
• Architected observability for complex distributed tracing across 30 systems, reducing traceability time by 250%.
• Reduced MTTR by 40% and operational costs by 20% by implementing SRE best practices and monitoring golden signals.
Principal AI Architect
Elevance Health (Senior Director) | AI, Analytics, SRE
• Led COEs for Cloud, Data, AI, and DevOps, impacting 10K+ engineers and improving engineering efficiency by 20%.
• Architected and led distributed ML ecosystems across GCP, Azure, AWS, and IBM Cloud, integrating LLM Mesh, Data Lakes, and HPC infrastructure.
• Designed advanced CI/CD/CT/CM pipelines with integrations for SAST, DAST, and HA/DR testing.
• Advised CTO/CAIO/CTO on Technology strategies and OKR definitions, increasing operations and system efficiency by 25%.
Principal Cloud Architect
Deloitte (Senior Manager) | Cloud, AI/ML & IIOT
• Advised executives on technology strategies for App. Modernization & Digital Transformation initiatives.
• Architected and led the deployment of an AI-driven Cloud Predictive Maintenance (PdM) SaaS, resulting in a 27% improvement in OEE and ~$6M in annual savings.
• Implemented a cloud-native architecture using the 5Rs strategy, reducing TCO by 25% and boosting ROI by 40%.
Principal Enterprise Architect
Fortune 500 Clients
• Architected and led the global rollout of connected car features, generating $270M YoY revenue.
• Spearheaded RAN latency optimization using Reinforcement Learning, improving peak hour performance by 15%.
• Architected and modernized the connected vehicle ecosystem with microservices and Hyper Scale Data processing.
• Led the development of integration gateways at a Telecom provider, increasing daily transactions by 500%.
Skills & Expertise
- Generative AI & LLMs
- Deep Learning
- MLOps & LLMOps
- TensorFlow, PyTorch
- Reinforcement Learning
- AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM Cloud
- Multi-cloud Architectures
- Cloud Migration
- Serverless Computing
- Platform Engineering
- High Performance Computing
- Systems Design
- Data Engineering
- IoT/IIoT
- Big Data Processing
Certifications & Education
Professional Certifications
- ✓
Professional Architect – AWS, Azure, GCP
- ✓
Machine Learning – Stanford University, Google
- ✓
Site Reliability, Big Data, TensorFlow, LLMOps – Google
- ✓
MLOps/Agentic AI – Deeplearning.ai
- ✓
Strategy, Leading, Coaching – Harvard University
- ✓
Interpersonal Communication – Rice University
Education & Publications
Education
Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical), Bangalore University