6.7 years of experience architecting distributed systems, microservices, and high-scale data platforms at PayPal, Altezasys, and Cognizant.
I'm a Senior Backend Engineer with 6.7 years of experience building distributed systems and microservices that process millions of records daily. Currently at PayPal, I architect backend platforms that support 5,000+ services and handle 500K+ requests/day.
My core expertise lies in Java, Spring Boot, and Python — designing RESTful APIs, data pipelines, and caching strategies using JUNOdb, Kafka, and BigQuery. I'm equally comfortable with containerized deployments using Docker and CI/CD pipelines.
I'm passionate about system design, test-driven development, and building resilient backend architectures. When I'm not coding, you'll find me exploring new technologies or contributing to internal platforms that make engineers' lives easier.
Large-scale backend data platform evaluating ~5M records daily to compute reliability scores for 5,000+ PayPal services, enabling data-driven prioritization by senior leadership.
Backend platform handling 7K-10K internal queries/day, automating incident analysis, dependency tracing, and knowledge retrieval across support channels using agentic AI systems.
Observability-driven system detecting missing merchant report deliveries across ~1M daily reports, ensuring SLA compliance for critical financial operations.
Led 50+ chaos gamedays across PayPal domains, validating resiliency, uncovering hidden dependencies, and strengthening production readiness through controlled failure injection.
Built automated inter-zone deployment pipelines between PayPal and Azure infrastructure, dramatically reducing deployment time and lowering downtime for critical systems.
Automated multiple SAP operational workflows using Python, processing 150+ tickets/day and eliminating multi-day manual effort for enterprise clients.
Surya is an exceptional software engineer who consistently delivers elite technical outcomes. Having managed him, I can confidently say he is a premier go-to developer for complex engineering challenges. Surya doesn't just write great code he pushes architectural boundaries while strictly adhering to robust engineering conventions. He is a fiercely result-oriented professional, highly committed, and fully capable of driving projects from conception to production with minimal guidance. Any engineering organization would be incredibly fortunate to have Surya on their team.
I had the opportunity to manage Surya Teja during his time in our SRE organization, where he consistently demonstrated strong technical depth, ownership, and a problem-solving mindset. What stood out about Surya was his ability to operate effectively across both Site Reliability Engineering and Full Stack Development. He contributed significantly to application development and automation initiatives that improved developer and customer experience. Surya is dependable, proactive, and eager to learn.
I had the opportunity to work closely with Surya in my team and found him to be highly dedicated, hardworking, and technically strong. He has strong expertise in full-stack development, especially Java, Python, and AI, SRE principles and is always open to learning new technologies quickly. Surya takes strong ownership of his work — you can confidently assign a task knowing it will be completed.
I had the opportunity to work closely with Surya on multiple initiatives related to SRE tools development. He consistently demonstrated deep technical expertise, strong problem-solving skills, and a solid understanding of system reliability. Whether it was designing scalable solutions, troubleshooting complex issues, or improving existing tooling, he always approached challenges with ownership and attention to detail.
I had the pleasure of working closely with Surya Teja at PayPal. He stands out as one of the most technically strong and ownership-driven engineers I've had the privilege of guiding. Surya has a rare combination of deep technical expertise and sharp problem-solving instincts. He didn't just solve problems — he understood why they existed and made sure they stayed solved. Any team would be fortunate to have Surya.
It's been a great pleasure working with you Surya. You consistently bring strong technical expertise and a problem-solving mindset to the team. One thing I really appreciate is how quickly you debug issues and come up with practical, effective solutions. Your contributions to the PayPal Status Page and tech debt improvements had a meaningful impact on the team and the product.
I've had the pleasure of working with Surya Teja and have consistently been impressed by his strong backend engineering and problem-solving skills. He has solid expertise in Java, Spring Boot, system design, and cloud/deployment automation. What sets Teja apart is his ownership mindset and ability to work across both application development and operational challenges.
Surya is High Velocity Engineer and Very accountable guy. Worked with him on few projects for couple of years. He is pleasure to work with and always pushes the team for more. Very easy candidate to lead as well for execution of projects seamlessly.
I'm always open to discussing backend engineering opportunities, system design challenges, or just connecting with fellow engineers. Feel free to reach out!