About Me
Engineering Leader& AI Strategist
I'm Thooyavan Manivaasakar, an engineering leader with 14+ years building enterprise platforms and 4+ years leading AI-native product strategy. Currently at New Relic, I lead the AI strategy across intelligent observability and developer productivity — architecting agentic AI systems, multi-agent orchestration, and self-adaptive intelligence that ship into mission-critical, data-intensive products at scale. I also lead New Relic's AI Community of Practice, driving AI adoption and best practices across the organization.
I've been recognized by OpenAI for contributions to their Evals project, built the first gen AI-powered analytics platform in the XM space—beating Qualtrics, QuestionPro, and Medallia to market and winning Emirates Airlines, created foundational AI platform layers, and scaled engineering organizations from 8 to 35 members while transforming architectures to handle 100x load. I believe in learning in public, building with empathy, and sharing what works (and what doesn't).
Core expertise: Defining AI strategy and leading cross-functional teams through 0→1 AI product launches to scaling mature platforms. Skilled in turning complex AI capabilities — agentic systems, multi-agent orchestration, RAG, small language models — into products that enterprise customers depend on.
Key Achievements
Launched the first gen AI powered analytics platform across all XM products before Qualtrics, QuestionPro, and Medallia—resulting in winning and onboarding Emirates Airlines as an enterprise customer.
Recognized by OpenAI for contributions to their Evals project, helping improve AI model evaluation frameworks and testing methodologies.
Created the foundational AI platform layer at HappyFox and transformed Xebo's architecture to handle 100x scale while growing the engineering team from 8 to 35 members.
Proven track record as VP of Engineering and Engineering Manager, building high-performing teams, establishing engineering culture, and delivering market-leading innovations.
Areas of Expertise
- •LLM Application Development
- •RAG & Fine-tuning
- •RLHF & Model Evaluation
- •Multi-Agent Systems
- •LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex
- •Production AI/LLMOps
- •Microservices Architecture
- •Event-Driven Systems (Kafka)
- •AWS, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex
- •Docker & Kubernetes
- •Scalable System Design
- •Team Building & Mentorship
- •Technical Strategy
- •Agile/Scrum Methodologies
- •Cross-functional Collaboration
- •Engineering Culture Development
- •Python (Expert)
- •Django Framework
- •Golang & Rust
- •JavaScript & React
- •Database Design & Optimization
Values & Philosophy
These core principles guide my approach to engineering, leadership, and problem-solving.
Innovation First
Constantly exploring cutting-edge technologies and methodologies to solve complex problems.
Team Empowerment
Believing in building autonomous, high-performing teams through mentorship and trust.
Quality & Impact
Focusing on delivering solutions that create measurable business value and user delight.
Continuous Learning
Embracing a growth mindset and sharing knowledge through writing, speaking, and open source.
Professional Journey
Over 14 years of experience across various roles and companies