Mugunth Kumar (MK)

Engineering Manager & Principal Engineer

About Me #

I’m Mugunth Kumar (MK), an engineering leader with nearly 20 years of experience in software architecture, design, and development. Originally from India, I moved to Singapore for my higher education and a decade later, relocated to Melbourne, Australia, restarting my career, and moved up to a Principal Engineer. I’m always confident of starting again from scratch. I bring a global perspective to technology leadership, having built and led successful teams across Asia-Pacific. For the last decade, I’ve been managing software engineering teams, alternating between a people management role and a hands-on role to keep myself up to date on technology while building, nurturing, and mentoring high-performance cross-functional teams. I’ve authored programming books and spoken at international conferences, demonstrating my expertise and leadership in the field.

What drives me:

• Open-mindedness: Embracing diverse perspectives and innovative solutions
• Continuous Growth: Committed to personal and team development
• Data-Driven Leadership: Making decisions based on metrics and measurable outcomes
• Empathy: Understanding that technical excellence and human connection go hand in hand
• Environmental Ethics: Advocating for sustainable technology practices
• Equality: Building inclusive teams where everyone has a voice

Professional Experience #

Principal Engineer • PaperCut Software #

Aug 2023 to Aug 2024

• Spearheaded the creation of a mobile guild to cultivate mobile development expertise
• Mentored and coached engineers in mobile technologies, enabling internal talent development
• Built and optimized CI/CD pipeline using Bitrise, improving build reliability by 60%
• Led the rebuilding of native mobile apps, successfully migrating from React Native

Engineering Manager • Education Horizons #

July 2022 - July 2023

• Led five teams (24 direct reports) across Australia and India
• Implemented team topology reorganization that significantly improved autonomy and delivery performance
• Introduced formal incident management processes and story mapping techniques
• Transformed the payment processor to an event-driven architecture using Google Pub/Sub
• Increased women engineers representation from 5% to over 30% through inclusive hiring practices

Engineering Leader • Openpay #

Sep 2021 to July 2022

• Managed a cross-functional team of 14 engineers across Australia, New Zealand, and Colombia
• Successfully expanded team capabilities through international recruitment during COVID-19
• Reduced attrition rates from over 30% to under 5%
• Led development of consumer-facing products with distributed teams

Senior Consultant • Xero #

Oct 2019 to Sep 2021

• Delivered the Xero Me app within one year
• Implemented feature toggles and A/B testing for risk-free deployments
• Led successful migration from Objective-C to Swift using Branch By Abstraction
• Introduced phased rollouts and efficient code migration strategies

Technical Expertise #

Core Technologies #

• Mobile Development: Swift, SwiftUI, Objective-C, Kotlin, Kotlin Multiplatform
• Backend: Python, Django, C# .NET, Node.js
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, Infrastructure as Code
• Architecture: Microservices, Event-Driven Systems, Backend for Frontend (BFF)

Leadership Competencies #

• Team Building & Mentoring
• Cross-Functional Communication
• Remote Team Leadership
• Inclusive Hiring Practices

Publications & Speaking #

I’m an author of programming books and have spoken at international conferences. Here are some of my works:

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.