Tejas Kokje

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Tejas Kokje, Head of Engineering

About Me

Tejas Kokje

I'm Tejas Kokje, an engineering leader with 20+ years of experience building and scaling technology across Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Infrastructure, Observability, and Full-Stack development. My passion lies in driving innovation through clear strategy, technical depth, and strong team leadership.

Currently, I lead engineering at Middleware (YC W23), where we're building next-generation AI-powered observability platforms for cloud-native environments. I focus on aligning vision with execution, creating efficient processes, and mentoring engineers to grow into impactful leaders.

Mentorship is core to my approach—I’ve conducted over 50 mentoring sessions through PlatoHQ and received a perfect 10/10 rating from mentees, ranging from individual contributors to engineering managers.

My strength lies at the intersection of deep technical expertise and strategic leadership—turning complex challenges into scalable, impactful products.

Work Experience

Head of Engineering

Middleware Lab Inc (YC W23)

June 2023 - May 2025

  • Building and leading an engineering organization of 35 engineers to develop AI-enabled observability platform
  • Driving strategy, vision, and execution to build next-generation AI-powered observability platform for cloud-native workloads
  • Player-Coach & Hands-on working with engineers to drive engineering best practices for producing high-quality products
  • Presenting at industry events like ClickHouse meetups on petabyte-scale observability

Senior Software Engineer

Netflix

April 2019 - May 2023

  • Improved Netflix viewing experience by optimizing cloud network infrastructure
  • Worked on AWS Security, VPC, Network Insight, DNS, Cloud Infrastructure Abstraction, and Kubernetes
  • Developed scalable solutions for Netflix's global streaming platform
  • Contributed to the reliability and performance of Netflix's cloud infrastructure

Staff Software Engineer

DigitalOcean

July 2016 - April 2019

  • Led team of engineers to design and implement scalable cloud load balancer service
  • Utilized Go programming (Golang), Open vSwitch, KVM, libvirt, Docker, Kubernetes, and Ansible
  • Contributed to DigitalOcean's cloud computing products before their IPO in March 2021
  • Implemented performance optimizations for cloud services

Staff Software Engineer

A10 Networks

March 2013 - July 2016
  • Worked on overlay tunneling features to support A10's SDN solution
  • Developed Multi-Device Load Balancer SCALE-OUT architecture for elastic scaling
  • Designed and developed efficient Trie-based policy lookup algorithm for Stateful Data Center Firewall
  • Integrated Firewall with other features like L4/L7 Server Load Balancing & NAT

Software Engineer

Cisco Systems Inc

August 2006 - February 2013
  • Designed and developed Virtual LAN (802.1Q), Private Virtual LAN (PVLAN) & Switched Virtual Interface (SVI) features for Cisco Nexus 7000 series switches
  • Extended features to support technologies like Ethernet Virtual Circuit (EVC), Layer 2 VPN, FabricPath, and Virtual Port Channels
  • Enhanced Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) protocol for supporting hitless software upgrades on MDS 9500 fibre channel storage switch
  • Filed multiple patents on Fibre Channel Routing

Software Engineer

Blue Coat Systems Inc

June 2005 - August 2006
  • Developed new features in HTTP, ICAP, and FTP kernel modules in C++ for proxy appliances
  • Integrated ICAP protocol with FTP for content filtering and virus scanning
  • Implemented logging features in ICAP and FTP protocols

Skills & Expertise

Areas of Expertise

Engineering Leadership
Mentorship
Product Vision & Strategy
Artificial Intelligence
Cloud-Native Applications
Observability Engineering
Cloud Infrastructure
Scalable Systems Design

Technologies & Frameworks

AWS
Kubernetes & Helm
Docker
Observability
ClickHouse
OpenTelemetry
Microservices
SDN

Programming Languages

Go (Golang)
Python
C/C++

Articles & Presentations

February 25, 2025

How can you enhance user satisfaction with RUM?

Exploring how Real User Monitoring can improve user experience and satisfaction by providing insights into user behavior and identifying pain points.

Real User Monitoring User Experience Performance
Read Article
January 24, 2024

ClickHouse Monitoring: 6 Key Metrics To Keep An Eye On

A detailed guide on the essential metrics to monitor for optimal ClickHouse database performance and reliability.

ClickHouse Database Monitoring Performance Metrics
Read Article
March 4, 2024

Middleware's Path to Petabyte-Scale Observability using ClickHouse

Presentation at ClickHouse Meetup in San Francisco discussing how Middleware achieves petabyte-scale observability using ClickHouse.

Observability ClickHouse Scalable Systems
Watch Presentation

Education & Patents

Master of Science in Computer Science

University of Southern California

2003 - 2005

Activities: Graduate Research Assistant at USC Information Sciences Institute, Treasurer at USC Linux User Group

Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology

Gujarat University

1999 - 2003

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Technology (SVIT, Vasad)

Patents

Less Loss In-Order Delivery Protocol for Fibre Connection Architecture

Reducing Packet Drops in Networks Guaranteeing In-Order Delivery

Hop cost as secondary metric for equal cost multi-paths

Overlay Transport Virtualization Scaling Using Site Virtual MAC Addresses

Get In Touch

Location

San Francisco Bay Area, California

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