Mugunth Kumar (MK)

CTO & Engineering Leader

I build AI-powered systems that scale. As CTO at Pink Cloud, I’m spearheading the Australian expansion of this evidence-based addiction recovery platform from California through strategic partnerships with University of Melbourne, Monash, and government health sectors.

I’ve spent two decades at the intersection of early-stage technology adoption and hands-on engineering — from pioneering iOS development in 2008 (authored internationally-translated programming books, spoke at conferences worldwide) to building modern RAG pipelines and ML-integrated platforms today.

I specialize in adopting emerging technologies that deliver business impact. I combine deep technical fluency (Python, AWS, iOS) with the ability to structure teams, mentor engineers, and drive strategy across startups and scaleups. I build systems and the teams that sustain them.

💼 Work Experience #

• Spearheading Australian expansion for Pink Cloud’s evidence-based addiction recovery platform (gopinkcloud.com)
• Building strategic partnerships with University of Melbourne, Monash University, and Turning Point (Australia’s leading addiction research centre)
• Liaising with government contacts and academic institutions to establish research collaborations and government partnerships
• Positioning Pink Cloud’s AI-integrated platform for enterprise and government health sector deployments across Australia

• Provided strategic and architectural guidance across the full technology stack for evidence-based addiction recovery platform
• Built Subscriptions Management Platform - Django-based multi-tenant subscription system with academic partner analytics dashboard
  • Designed secure subscription code generation system with 5M+ unique combinations and privacy-first architecture
  • Implemented Celery-powered background processing for large dataset exports and automated notifications
  • Built comprehensive analytics dashboard for research organizations tracking participant retention and recovery journey insights
  • Deployed on AWS ECS Fargate with Aurora Serverless v2, Docker containerization, and CI/CD via GitHub Actions
• Built Meeting Data Platform - Comprehensive ETL system for aggregating addiction recovery meeting data
  • Architected FastAPI-based REST API serving meeting data from DuckDB with sub-100ms query latency
  • Designed extensible Python scraper framework using aiohttp and BeautifulSoup4 for multi-source data extraction
  • Implemented monorepo architecture with Docker Compose orchestration, automated testing, and pre-commit hooks
  • Deployed scraper as scheduled ECS Fargate task and API as auto-scaling ECS service with ALB, reducing operational costs to ~$30/month
• Supported product and engineering leadership on technical decision-making, team structuring, and scaling architecture for growth

• Strategic short-term contract to evaluate and integrate advanced AI-powered search platforms into the mobile app experience.
• Worked across GraphQL, TypeScript, and Swift to build integration proof-of-concepts and evaluate developer experience, scalability, and latency impacts.

• Led 24 engineers across 5 cross-functional teams (3 local, 2 offshore)
• Restructured team structures within 90 days, coaching tech leads into people leaders and increasing delivery autonomy.
• Introduced Story Mapping to improve cross-functional alignment and reduce engineering/PM communication overhead.
• Implemented a formal incident management process and trained associate engineers to run production releases within 3 months.
• Achieved significant reduction in cycle times and improved delivery velocity.

• Promoted from Mobile Lead to Engineering Leader within 2 months, managing a cross-functional team of 14 (React.js, .NET, iOS).
• Expanded hiring internationally (New Zealand, Colombia) during COVID, improving team diversity and global delivery capabilities.
• Drove alignment across distributed teams working on complex, multi-platform features.

• Delivered Xero Me mobile app within one year.
• Led the migration from Objective-C to Swift using Branch by Abstraction and feature toggles, enabling safe, incremental rollout.
• Implemented A/B testing and phased rollouts, decoupling engineering delivery from product release schedules and reducing risk.

• Founded and scaled a boutique product engineering firm in Singapore, running it successfully for 7 years.
• Led hiring and team growth from 1 to 10 engineers, serving as the primary engineering team for RedMart (Singapore’s leading online grocery platform, later acquired by Alibaba for integration into Lazada).
• Designed and implemented a scalable, BFF-style architecture for iOS, Android, and React.js frontends that supported RedMart’s rapid growth.
• Created a structured hiring rubric aligned with capability frameworks for consistent, bias-free hiring.

🚀 Side Projects #

• Building Nool - An AI-powered reading companion and literary discovery platform that predicts your next read based on your highlights, reviews, and reading patterns
• Technology Stack: Django-based web application with PostgreSQL and Redis for backend; native iOS (Swift/SwiftUI) and Android (Kotlin) mobile apps
• Wagtail CMS integration for marketing website with markdown-first content authoring
• KOReader integration - Built plugin for automatic highlight synchronization from e-readers
• Monorepo architecture with automated CI/CD via GitHub Actions, Docker containerization, and comprehensive test coverage
• Demonstrates full-stack product development from concept to deployment, managing infrastructure, development, and product decisions independently

Technical Focus Areas #

AI/ML & Backend Development #

• Build production-grade, AI-integrated system using FastAPI for high-performance APIs and scikit-learn for ML workloads.
• Architect cross-platform AI systems integrating RAG pipelines, and XPC Services for macOS-native workload isolation.
• Experience with AWS Bedrock for scalable, cloud-based generative AI workflows.

Technical Leadership & Team Building #

• Built new technical capabilities from scratch (e.g., mobile guild at PaperCut).
• Reorganized underperforming teams to boost delivery and autonomy (Education Horizons).
• Scaled teams from seed-stage (1 engineer at RedMart) to 10+, balancing quality with speed.
• Coached engineers through tech transitions and career growth milestones. Impact: Reduced attrition from 30% to under 5%; improved gender diversity from 5% to 30% through objective, bias-free hiring practices.

System Architecture & Scalability #

• Designed event-driven architectures, Backend for Frontend (BFF) layers, and microservices for complex product ecosystems.
• Implemented Google Pub/Sub for horizontally scalable payment processing.
• Built Redis-based optimization layers and deployed Celery/Django Q2 for background workloads and distributed tasks.
• Delivered safe deployment strategies via feature toggle systems and progressive rollouts. Technologies: Event-driven systems, BFF, Redis, Celery, Django Q2, microservices.

Cloud Infrastructure & DevOps #

• Built AWS cloud infrastructure using CDK (TypeScript) with production-grade VPC, Fargate, RDS, and ElastiCache.
• Enabled observability with CloudWatch dashboards, structured logs, and real-time alerts.
• Automated CI/CD pipelines (e.g., with Bitrise) to support frequent releases by junior engineers. Technologies: AWS CDK, Docker, Fargate, RDS, ElastiCache, CloudWatch, Bitrise

Cross-functional Collaboration & Process #

• Drove Agile maturity via Story Mapping, DORA metrics, and structured incident management.
• Coordinated globally distributed teams across time zones and technical stacks.
• Designed capability frameworks, technical guilds, and objective hiring rubrics to scale knowledge and team capacity. Methodologies: Agile, Story Mapping, DORA metrics, ADRs, Feature Toggles

🧰 Technologies I Work With #

Primary Expertise #

• Python – Backend & AI/ML systems with FastAPI, Django, and scikit-learn
• Swift/SwiftUI & Objective-C – iOS development since 2008, including large-scale apps and platform migrations
• AWS – Infrastructure-as-code with CDK; services include Fargate, RDS, ElastiCache, and CloudWatch
• Golang – Microservices and Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) design for mobile-facing APIs
• Docker – Containerization and local dev automation
• Redis – High-throughput caching, job queues, and message brokering

Additional Proficiency #

• Kotlin & Kotlin Multiplatform – Cross-platform mobile development
• React.js & Node.js – Full-stack JavaScript for web platforms
• Kubernetes – Container orchestration for scalable deployments
• C# .NET, Java, PHP – Enterprise backend systems and service layers
• Scala – Data processing and analytical workloads

📘 Publications #

h-index: 35

• iOS Programming: Pushing the Limits (Wiley) A trilogy of advanced programming books covering iOS 5, 6, and 7, widely adopted by professional developers and universities.

  • Translated into Spanish, French, and Chinese
  • Used as a course textbook at the University of Portland
  • Demonstrating significant influence in the iOS development community

📚 Author Page on Amazon

🎯 Philosophy #

I believe in Kaizen (continuous improvement) and occasional Kaikaku (radical change) when needed. My leadership style focuses on transparency, data-driven decisions, and fostering an environment where both technical excellence and human connections thrive.

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