Santhosh CK

I have led this change from the inside

For 17 years at Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent I led R&D for broadband network-management software deployed by more than 300 telecom operators worldwide. My last role was Senior Director and Head of R&D Transformation & Operations, where I led a global organisation of 200+ people and sat on the Nokia Chennai GCC leadership team.

Most recently that meant taking AI into everyday engineering: the enterprise rollout of GitHub Copilot and Cursor with guidelines, guardrails and training, and building AI agents for test design, debugging and more.

Before that I led Agile and DevOps adoption, took regression test automation past 80%, built an engineering-metrics data platform with Power BI dashboards, and unified ways of working across two business units after a merger. So I know where transformations stall, and why.

Where the rigour comes from

I started my career in 1988 at the BARC Training School and spent eight years as a Scientific Officer with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India — an environment where engineering discipline is not optional. I then worked on payment systems at VeriFone, at Motorola, and for seven years with Lucent Technologies in New York and India, where I became General Manager.

Between Avaya and Nokia I worked as an independent consultant and Agile coach for organisations including Infosys, Novell and Hexaware.

Training and speaking

I work with universities and industry forums on trainings and engineering education, including a faculty development programme with Puducherry Technological University, and talks at IEEE Kochi and IDFC TechXpresso.

Education

• Senior Management Programme, IIM Calcutta
• B.Tech, Electrical Engineering, University of Calicut
• BARC Training School, Department of Atomic Energy