Vijay Premkumar

Engineering Leader | Cloud Transformation | FinOps Strategy

LinkedIn

About

Accomplished Engineering Leader with over 20 years of experience driving strategic cloud transformation, FinOps, and service delivery initiatives, including managing a $100M annual budget. Expertly optimized public and private cloud infrastructures, achieving over $10M in cost savings and reducing time-to-market by 35% through automation and FinOps governance. Proven leader in product management, platform innovation, and high-velocity delivery, adept at building scalable, secure, and resilient cloud platforms aligned with strategic business goals.

Work Experience

Engineering Leader (Cloud Migration & FinOps Strategy)

American Airlines

Mar 2020 - Present

Led the FinOps and Product Management team, overseeing 15 distinct products and managing a $100M annual budget across multi-cloud environments (Azure, AWS, IBM Cloud).

  • Managed first-ever centralized OS for 5,000+ VMs across multiple data centers, ensuring unified and efficient cloud operations.
  • Reduced cloud migration time by 40% by implementing automated, self-service deployment pipelines, accelerating enterprise-wide cloud adoption.
  • Optimized cloud onboarding, decreasing time-to-market by 35% through the design and implementation of standardized Azure Landing Zones and robust governance frameworks.
  • Achieved over $10M in annual cloud cost savings by implementing advanced FinOps strategies and AI-driven workload optimizations, including right-sizing and spend transparency.
  • Led a 20+ member team of Product Managers, Architects, and Engineers, fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making and OKR-based cloud innovation.

Head of Service Delivery (Cloud Transformation)

IBM

Aug 2006 - Feb 2020

Directed high-quality, scalable IT infrastructure and support services for American Airlines Flight Operations, leading a 20+ member managed services team generating $15M in annual recurring revenue.

  • Recruited, trained, and mentored a 20+ member technical team, overseeing network/server infrastructure, databases, and enterprise applications.
  • Improved system stability and performance by implementing proactive monitoring and automated remediation tools.
  • Maintained a 99.99% uptime SLA through rigorous risk management, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning, ensuring critical system availability.
  • Successfully launched new applications and systems, sustaining a 40% operating margin through strategic process optimization.
  • Reduced year-over-year outages and incidents through automation, comprehensive documentation, root cause analysis, and support team enablement.

Manager

Priceline

Jun 2000 - Jul 2006

Managed the architecture, design, and implementation of scalable Middleware infrastructure, ensuring high performance and critical application uptime.

  • Architected, designed, and implemented a highly scalable Middleware infrastructure, enhancing system performance and reliability.
  • Administered and supported critical application uptime and code promotion processes in a complex production environment.

Education

Global Business

University of Dallas

Sep 1998 - May 2000

Engineering

Annamalai University

Sep 1994 - May 1998

Certificates

FinOps Certified Practitioner

FinOps Foundation

Jan 2022

Microsoft Azure Certified

Microsoft

Jan 2022

Wharton Operations Management

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Jan 2014

Skills

Cloud Technologies

  • Azure
  • AWS
  • IBM Cloud
  • Multi-cloud Environment

Cloud Management & FinOps

  • Cloud Migration & Adoption
  • FinOps
  • Cloud Governance
  • Cloud Security
  • Cloud Cost Optimization
  • FinOps Governance Model
  • Azure Landing Zones
  • Workload Optimization
  • Right-sizing
  • Spend Transparency
  • Chargeback Processes
  • Forecasting Accuracy

Product & Program Management

  • Product Management
  • Product Strategy
  • Product Roadmap Development
  • Product Taxonomy
  • Strategic Roadmaps
  • OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
  • Data-Driven Experiments
  • Innovation Hub Management
  • Program Management

Methodologies & Operations

  • Agile/DevOps Leadership
  • Service Delivery
  • Automation
  • Self-service Deployment
  • Release Management
  • Continuous Improvement
  • Risk Management
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Business Continuity Planning
  • Process Optimization
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Support Team Enablement
  • Middleware Infrastructure
  • Application Uptime
  • Code Promotion

Leadership & Strategy

  • Executive Stakeholder Engagement
  • Team Development
  • Team Leadership (20+ members)
  • Mentoring
  • Recruitment
  • Budget Management ($100M)
  • Financial Planning
  • Forecasting
  • Strategic Planning
  • Moonshot Thinking

Tools & Platforms

  • Intel Granulate
  • Lucidity
  • Edge Delta
  • Cloud Fix
  • VM Management