Hello! I’m Damodaran and thank you for the opportunity! I’m a staff engineer working for eBay's presentation engineering experiences. I’m from the city of Chennai, in India. I initially was with eBay at its Bangalore office and then made my way to San Jose, to work at its head quarters.

I currently work for eBay at its Salt Lake City office. It has been a journey filled with travel, learning, exploration, and building relationships while delivering value. I am a recipient of the Critical Talent Award at eBay and was also recognized as Utah's Best of State for web development in 2024.

Being a staff engineer with eBay, I work mostly on its presentation engineering platforms, for different products and services. Within eBay, I have built its universal widget render & header platforms that collectively serve over a billion impressions in traffic.

Apart from that, I have also been involved with building eBay's SEO pages - one of the company's first exploits into the practice of Progressive HTML render technology. I’m also responsible for enhancing eBay’s in-house web bundler termed Lasso JS. I have also authored some of eBay's Collectibles platforms & Refurbished experiences.

eBay Inc. is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California that brokers customer to customer and retail sales through online marketplaces in 190 markets worldwide. eBay is valued at close to 40 billion dollars and has over 130 million active buyers and over 1 billion listings, empowering people and creating economic opportunity for all.

eBay is a pioneering and leading e-commerce company globally, specializing in providing marketplace platforms and solutions. It connects millions of buyers and sellers daily, offering a seamless trading experience that reduces friction and hassle while enhancing trust.

Thanks! First of all, I would like to congratulate all my fellow award winners. The TITAN Business Awards is truly a special honor for me. I did not expect to win in all the 14 categories that I was nominated for.

It delivers a lot of belief in terms of rewarding good work, validating industry impacting contributions and most importantly peer recognition among industry experts. Within eBay, this has led to doubling down on the value that the platform I built, delivers, in terms of launching site wide UX in weeks instead of months.

eBay has been a major part of my life and is fully responsible for anything I may have achieved. I’m happy to be playing a small part in giving back to eBay the much deserved spotlight.

So, winning an international award for the work done in eBay has been a nice way in me being able to give back to a company that has done so much and continues to better the lives of so many buyers and sellers worldwide. This also provided me with a first hand experience in being able to see the value one can deliver to both the company and its consumers.

Given the diverse expertise of the judges, it is crucial to be concise, clear, and articulate the value of your work in simplified terms. This allows judges from various fields to appreciate and recognize your contributions fully. While developing solutions for small to medium-sized companies can be more straightforward, creating them for a company of eBay's scale is significantly more challenging.

This particular solution had to support over 700 production applications within eBay while onboarding over 30 different partner teams. The additional complexities included managing various tech stacks, view frameworks, and release cycles, all while ensuring that eBay's core web vitals and business metrics remained unaffected.

Moreover, it involved coordinating with numerous stakeholders across the company, securing their buy-in, and honoring the commitment to deliver value. Once launched, the platform's intrinsic value drives the much-needed internal marketing, showcasing its effectiveness and impact.

I think it's important to address the root of a problem rather than drive at temporary solutions. I remember reading about a Venn diagram involving three qualities: good, cheap, and fast. You can only have two of them at any given time. While it may take time to build truly good solutions that address the root of the problem, it's totally worth the effort compared to attempting temporary band-aid solutions that may work well in the short term but fail in the long term.

Next, it's important to strip down a problem to its first principles and build a solution from the ground up. However, we are always answerable to numerous stakeholders within a company and constrained by time. Therefore, we need to break down the solution and deliver it incrementally. This way, the associated stakeholders can measure tangible results and appreciate the incremental impacts. This also reduces the feedback loop and helps address concerns immediately.

I am a firm believer in Simon Sinek's idea that if your employees are well taken care of, they will deliver great and impactful solutions that touch the lives of customers, making your customers the brand that drives your business. When the internals are taken care of, they impact and transform the externals.

It is hard to make an impact at a large company like eBay. I believe that besides thinking of a solution to an existing problem, the problem itself has to be significant enough to warrant solving. Next, the solution must be scalable to create a much larger impact.

For instance, while our initial problem statement was how to build widgets independent of host applications, we expanded it to how we could deliver any UX widgets anywhere on any eBay page. As the impact of your solution grows, it begins to transcend organizational barriers, contributing to your success. Additionally, always asking for and working on critical feedback is crucial. You must be thankful to those who offer critical feedback.

India is blessed with a huge startup ecosystem that continually pushes boundaries, drives new ideas and products, and provides opportunities for many engineers. Previously, there were not many companies in Chennai, so Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, was naturally the destination for us.

Now, I see many companies and startups in Chennai as well. I believe remote work has enabled many engineers and companies to expand to various locations. When I was with eBay at its Bangalore office, we had the opportunity to automate accessibility testing for eBay at scale, which helped us win the Quality Engineering Award for Excellence. This achievement helped me get noticed by seniors at eBay's headquarters in San Jose.

For eBay, since it doesn’t operate warehouses like Amazon and instead offers a marketplaces platform, shipping and logistics has been a challenge for the business. However, I think how one pivots their business in the midst of such challenging times, is what helps their survival and longevity.

Despite such challenges, eBay, for instance, pivoted back to its core strength - refurbished goods and branded itself once more as a pioneer for re-commerce.

Right now, I’m most excited about AI and its implications. While there is excitement, there is also a bit of fear regarding how it will impact or transform the job landscape. Generative AI, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics, Natural Language Processing, and Large Language Models are going to fundamentally transform the way we operate businesses and deliver services. Both scary and exciting times ahead!

It all starts with identifying a need and devising a service or solution aimed at filling that gap. Keeping abreast of developments and events in your areas of interest greatly assists in identifying potential opportunities and the resources required to develop a solution.

Therefore, maintaining a keen awareness, engaging with industry leaders and pioneers during meetup events, and actively participating in relevant communities can be very beneficial.

We are going to see businesses pivot towards Generative AI and other related technologies such as Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics, and more. A number of new companies will emerge around these technologies, and we may see older established companies either struggling or acquiring these new ventures. It’s a great time to be alive and to be developing products and services. Overall, this shift is expected to drive significant productivity and value, enabling businesses in numerous ways that were previously unimaginable.

I believe there is something inspiring about anyone, regardless of age, who has overcome significant challenges and achieved something remarkable.

Right now, my child is my greatest inspiration. However, my wife and parents have always been a strong pillar of support, helping me through tough times life throws our way. When it comes to public figures, I am an Elon Musk fan and find inspiration in his accomplishments. I also admire Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Jensen Huang, and Guillermo Rauch of Vercel.

I believe it’s important for us to first identify and believe in ourselves. Even with my success story, there have been numerous failures along the way. Therefore, having the determination to push forward during times of failure, maintaining persistence and perseverance, and, in general, never giving up, are crucial.