Jitesh Krishna Rao
Engineering × Product — systems engineer moving into forward deployed engineering and product management
Summary
I sit between the customer and the code — finding the problem that actually matters, then building and shipping what fixes it. I spent over two years as a System Engineer and Senior System Engineer at Urban Millets, moved into product as an Associate at Bristlecone, and worked on AI and strategy at AIKYA. I'm finishing an M.S. in Industrial & Systems Engineering at Rutgers (expected January 2027).
Target roles
- Forward Deployed Engineer
- Forward Deployed Product Manager
- Product Manager
- Technical Product Manager
- AI Product Manager
- Solutions Engineer
- Technical Program Manager
- AI Engineer / Applied AI Engineer
Experience
AI & Strategy Intern — AIKYA Business Solution Private Limited
Associate - Product — Bristlecone
Senior System Engineer — Urban Millets Pvt. Ltd.
System Engineer — Urban Millets Pvt. Ltd.
Education
Master of Science, Industrial and Systems Engineering — Rutgers University
- Systems modeling, process analysis, optimization and quantitative problem solving
- Statistical and analytical methods to evaluate system performance and support technical decisions
Certifications
- AI Systems Engineer — Concept Learning Certificate — RoleCamp, Oct 2026
- Foundry Aware — Palantir Technologies, Sep 2026
- Six Sigma Yellow Belt — Kennesaw State University (Coursera), Apr 2026
- IBM RAG and Agentic AI Professional Certificate — IBM (Coursera), Dec 2025
- IBM Data Science Professional Certificate — IBM (Coursera), Dec 2025
- IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate — IBM (Coursera), Nov 2025
Skills
- AI & Data
- Python, SQL, Jupyter, Data analysis and visualization, Machine learning fundamentals, Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), Agentic AI, LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, Prompt engineering and function calling, Palantir Foundry
- Systems & Platform
- Systems engineering, System architecture, Systems integration, Distributed systems, Platform engineering, Event-driven architecture, Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Docker, Kubernetes, Monitoring and observability, GitHub, AWS
- Reliability & Quality
- Reliability engineering, Reliability, load and failover testing, Verification and validation (V&V), Root cause analysis, FMEA, Six Sigma (Yellow Belt)
- Product & Delivery
- Requirements engineering, Technical program management, Cross-functional collaboration, Process optimization, Jira, Figma, Postman
How my background maps to these roles
Forward Deployed Engineer
- Two-plus years as a System Engineer and Senior System Engineer, plus systems integration, distributed systems and event-driven architecture (Kafka, Flink, Docker, Kubernetes)
- Palantir Foundry Aware certified — Foundry is the platform Palantir's forward deployed engineers build on
- Trained in building AI systems: RAG and agentic workflows (LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI) through IBM's RAG and Agentic AI certificate and RoleCamp's AI Systems Engineer certificate
- Reliability mindset for production deployments: root cause analysis, FMEA, verification and validation, load and failover testing
Forward Deployed Product Manager
- Product experience as Associate - Product at Bristlecone, plus AI & Strategy work at AIKYA
- Engineering depth to scope what is feasible inside a customer's environment, from systems integration to data pipelines
- Requirements engineering and technical program management to turn customer problems into shipped scope
- Data analysis (SQL, Python) to measure whether a deployment actually worked
Product Manager
- Product role at Bristlecone and strategy role at AIKYA
- Industrial & Systems Engineering training: process analysis, optimization and data-driven decisions
- Six Sigma Yellow Belt for process improvement and measurable outcomes
- Engineering background, so product decisions are grounded in what systems, data and AI can actually do
Adjacent roles (Solutions Engineer, TPM, AI Engineer)
- Solutions engineering: systems integration background plus customer-problem focus
- Technical program management: listed skill, plus requirements and V&V experience
- Applied AI engineering: IBM RAG and Agentic AI, IBM Data Science, AI Systems Engineer certificates