Screen — /depthL1
Principal Product / Program Manager

Santhosh Thiruchendru

Raleigh, NC · 20 years across automotive embedded systems, ADAS, and enterprise data platforms
Product and program leader with 20 years spanning embedded automotive systems, ADAS platform strategy, and enterprise data and AI platforms — starting in C and Simulink at Caterpillar, leading Harman's pivot off an unproven lidar bet into a funded Edge-AI platform, then owning $7.9M and $1M+ revenue-impact platforms at Xperi. Strongest at taking ambiguous 0-to-1 mandates to production: ADAS architecture, ML metadata pipelines, and Salesforce revenue systems all started as a blank roadmap. Currently running Straventis Advisory Group, where a governance rebuild turned an at-risk program into a $3M contract.
Straventis Advisory Group2025 – Present
Founder & Principal Consultant — Particleblack / Ascension DFD
  • Founded Straventis Advisory Group and took on program leadership for a 4-vendor Digital Front Door initiative serving 140K associates.
  • Restored an at-risk program to a 6-week delivery cadence, hitting 95% on-time content delivery.
  • Built a 4-layer governance operating model that extended the engagement into a $3M contract.
Straventis Advisory Group2025 – Present
Founder & Principal Consultant — ContentIQ
  • Built a content analytics pipeline from scratch, with defensive parsing that automatically handles multiple export formats after the source platform changed without warning.
  • Shipped a working dashboard, not a mockup: KPI cards, engagement by category, account-wide timeline, and per-post growth pages with date-range filtering.
  • Took it from private tool to public product: landing page, About/roadmap, working signup flow, and a deliberate real-vs-relative metrics tradeoff for public data.
Xperi (TiVo) Corporation2024
Senior Technical Product Manager — Xperi LumApps DFD
  • Deployed LumApps as Xperi's Digital Front Door, replacing a fragmented legacy SharePoint intranet with one centralized entry point for all employees.
  • Integrated existing systems into a single dashboard rather than replacing them, preserving their ROI while unifying the employee experience.
  • Delivered the full build, integration, and handover in 6 months, then transitioned ownership and governance to the Marketing team.
Xperi (TiVo) Corporation2024 – 2025
Senior Technical Product Manager — Salesforce Q2C & AWS Control Tower
  • Owned the Salesforce Global Certification Hub, recovering ~$1M/year in revenue leakage and hitting 92% first-time-right SDK delivery.
  • Led AWS Control Tower implementation, governing ~90 AWS accounts with automated, Terraform-based provisioning.
  • Cut Q2C workflow errors 70% and processing time 50% through CPQ/Billing automation and an anonymized lab routing engine.
Xperi (TiVo) Corporation2022 – 2025
Senior Technical Program/Product Manager — Enterprise Data Platform (OnePipeline)
  • Owned OnePipeline, replacing a monolithic metadata pipeline with an ML-driven platform processing 240M records/month for TiVo's search, recommendations, and ad products.
  • Delivered ~$7.9M modeled net benefit and ~$11M legacy cost avoidance, cutting processing time from 25+ hours to ~30 minutes.
  • Rescued a stalled VOD migration and decoupled the Ad Platform launch, protecting a projected $500K in at-risk revenue.
Harman International Industries2021 – 2022
Platform Product Manager — AI Perception on Edge Compute
  • Pivoted Harman's ADAS roadmap away from a $1,000+ lidar investment to a camera-first Edge-AI platform, securing $3.2M in internal funding.
  • Proved a camera-only fallback variant, securing $700–900/vehicle BOM savings and hedging lidar supply chain risk.
  • Launched the first committed L2+ production line, driving 2–2.5x revenue uplift through multi-line vehicle reuse.
Harman International Industries2019 – 2020
Customer Technical Program Manager → Platform Product Manager — Project Argus
  • Closed out the Ford infotainment program cleanly while launching early lidar/computer vision proof-of-concept work for Harman's new ADAS effort.
  • Defined a scalable L2+ to L4 autonomous driving architecture on TI Jacinto processors, targeting ≥70% software reuse across autonomy tiers.
  • Architected object-level sensor fusion and HD map localization to unlock highway-pilot-class features.
Harman International Industries2016 – 2019
Customer Technical Program Manager — Ford Global Infotainment Program
  • Led Ford's $36M global infotainment program across 3 international factories, delivering 100% on-time launch and $224M+ in lifetime sales.
  • Managed a major mid-program scope realignment (US/Mexico to EU/APAC) and a USB-A to USB-C spec change without missing launch commitments.
  • Cut BOM cost 22% through VA/VE while holding compliance and OEM warranty commitments.
Caterpillar Inc.2011 – 2016
Senior Engineer → Engineering Program Manager — CAT 785C DGB — Large Mining Truck Program
  • Built automated HIL validation frameworks for embedded engine controls, cutting manual testing effort ~40%.
  • Led a 5-person embedded validation team and served as Scrum Master, bringing Agile cadence to engine control software delivery.
  • Drove cross-functional integration and root-cause investigation across systems, controls, and calibration engineering.
Caterpillar Inc.2008 – 2010
Senior Engineer — Engine Platform Controls System Optimization
  • Shifted into Technical Program Management, synchronizing hardware, software, and test teams on a major engine controls launch.
  • Built telemetry and data logging infrastructure for field-deployed fleets, cutting root-cause analysis time ~40%.
  • Built automated simulation environments to validate control algorithms ahead of hardware availability.
Eagle RTEC LLC2005 – 2007
Application Engineer — Honda-Yazaki Instrument Cluster Integration
  • Built systems integration and HIL testing foundation for automotive instrument cluster electronics, cutting integration failures through early validation.
  • Developed embedded firmware and control logic, establishing deterministic execution patterns for safety-critical functions.
  • Migrated legacy control software onto a standardized platform, cutting development cycle times for later product lines.

Areas of expertise

AI/ML Platform Ownership0-to-1 Product Launch ADAS & ISO 26262Salesforce CPQ & Revenue Cloud AWS Control Tower & TerraformHIL Validation & Embedded Systems Data Pipeline ArchitectureMulti-Vendor Program Governance
M.S. Entrepreneurship — Indiana University, 2026 M.B.A. Strategic Management — Indiana University, 2024 M.S. Electrical Engineering — Bradley University, 2005 PMP — PMI, 2024 Six Sigma DMAIC/DMEDI Black Belt — Caterpillar era
See all 11 projects in full context → /depthL2