Utsav Shah - Principal Technology Developer

About

I'm a Principal Technology Developer at Aviva, where I lead solution architecture for customer-facing insurance platforms serving 750,000+ users. My background is in Java, AWS and event-driven systems, with deep experience in identity, integration and cloud modernization.

I believe good engineering is minimal engineering: fewer services, clearer designs, lower costs. I measure my work by what it does for customers — reliable journeys, secure access, systems that just work. Along the way I coach engineers, champion AI-assisted development, and run community sessions on architecture and cloud practices.

Java Spring Boot AWS Kafka Kubernetes Python Microservices Event-driven architecture

Also: Redis, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Angular, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, IAM, Agile (Scrum/XP)

Experience

Jul 2026 - Present

Principal Technology Developer

Aviva · Birmingham, UK

Continuing solution architecture leadership across digital insurance platforms following Aviva's acquisition of Direct Line Group.

Feb 2024 - Jun 2026

Principal Engineer

Direct Line Group · Birmingham, UK

Solution architecture leadership across customer-facing insurance platforms serving 750,000+ users.
Led architecture and delivery of cross-platform integration initiatives — SSO, reusable integration patterns and unified customer access journeys.
Delivered ~£150k year-on-year AWS cost savings through environment consolidation and rationalizing 40 services down to 10.
Championed AI-assisted engineering across digital teams and embedded security controls (Dependabot, SonarCloud, signed commits) into CI/CD.
Consistently awarded the organization's highest performance rating: "Sets a New Standard".

Jan 2021 - Jan 2024

Lead Software Engineer

GlobalLogic · Pune, India & Krakow, Poland

Delivered Single Sign-On across enterprise products using Spring Boot and Kubernetes.
Cut user-migration processing time by 80% through batch transaction redesign.
Led release management across teams — deployment planning, rollback strategy and service readiness.

Feb 2017 - Apr 2020

Technical Lead

PTC Inc. · Pune, India

Led design and development of VM provisioning and order-processing microservices with Spring Boot, Hibernate and MySQL.
Built a user activity data warehouse microservice, improving query execution by ~90%.
Developed a Redis-backed license management service, improving login performance by 25%.

Jun 2014 - Feb 2017

Senior Software Engineer

Infosys · Pune, India

Led a team of five building an event-driven fleet management platform with live ship tracking, using Apache Kafka, Google Maps, Spring MVC and PostgreSQL.

Research

Arduino BLINK Blueprints

Packt Publishing · 2016

A hands-on book on developing creative LED-based projects with Arduino.

Speaking Hands

Idea Lab, Nirma University · 2013 - 2014

Converts sign language to speech using artificial neural networks and Google Text-to-Speech. Covered by YourStory and Ahmedabad Mirror.

Exploration

Predictive Maintenance using Intel Edison and Node.js with enableiot Cloud
Visual Jenkins build status using Arduino and Python
Low-cost 3D-printed prosthetic arm — active development contributor
AndroArm — Android app controlling a robotic arm over Bluetooth
Shadow Arm — robotic arm mirroring human hand movement via Leap Motion
Smart Learning System using Python and PHP on Raspberry Pi with Makey Makey
Gesture-Controlled Robotic Arm using image processing in MATLAB

I'm Utsav Shah