My passion is to bring customer empathy and partner focus to the core of product development. I love working with customers and partners to make them successful and bring their feedback back to the engineering teams to build better products.
All through my career, I have taken challenging projects and brought them to completion while caring for people involved. I firmly believe that to attract more customer, one needs to build the right product, and to build right product, one needs to ask the right (data-driven) questions.
Favorite Quote(s):
Change is the law, Growth is optional: Choose wisely. – By Dr. Kiran Bedi
Achievements
- Track record of high performance and growth: strong promotion history and Exceeded commitment ratings
- Launched 7 features in 6 months of joining Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Launched and Own AWS Database Blog, and broke the traffic records within the first 3 months of the launch of the blog
- Open sourced elastic database client libraries
- Windows tablets Certified through Mobile Operators networks: Nokia Lumia 2520 on AT&T, Verizon, and Rest of the world; Surface 2 on AT&T
- Windows phones Certified through Mobile Operator networks: All Windows phones released in 2014 through AT&T, Verizon, CMCC, CU, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and AMX.
- Products shipped: at Microsoft: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, RemoteFX, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 Update, Windows Phone 8.1, Visual Studio 2012, and Windows 10.
Work Experience
Advisory Board
University of San Francisco Oct 2024 - Present | Greater Seattle Area
- Strategic Artificial Intelligence Program
Technical Program Manager, Privacy
Meta Oct 2022 - Present | Greater Seattle Area
- Migrated 86% of privacy tasks at Meta to Federation Platform.
- Defined the Governance model for all privacy work sent across Meta. Adopted 100% of tasks in Federation Platform to Governed model.
- Drove Workstream Quality initiative for all Privacy work at Meta
- Platform improvements to prioritize and drive completion of the privacy federated work to align with Meta’s privacy priorities.
- Drove adoption of Federation Platform across Meta to bring 90%+ of the federated privacy work through a single platform
- Built governance model for all the privacy work distributed across Meta
- Scaled the program from distribution of privacy work across Meta to Regulatory Response Federation (aka Privacy, Security, Compliance)
- Established & drove TPM Knowledge Sharing Series across privacy organization.
Principal TPM Manager, Geo Expansion and Privacy
MICROSOFT July 2018 - Sept 2022 | Greater Seattle Area
- Owner of Data Residency Program, with the mission to help Microsoft and its customers meet the data residency requirements in the regions they do business in. This is the program I built from scratch, from vision to requirements to tracking progress and driving results.
- It involves defining the strategy, technical guidance, identifying gaps and driving the roadmap. Additionally, it involves communicating with Leadership on one side, and the customers and field team on the other side to communicate the status of various Azure products.
- Some of the example regions part of this program: Singapore, Brazil South, Hong Kong, EU Data Boundary (Schrems II)
- Ensure Azure services are compliant with data residency requirements in various Geo Political regions, and setup to deploy correctly in new regions with special data residency and resiliency criteria
- Lead the creation of tools for Geo Expansion and Data Residency programs
- Built Azure region decommission technology plan
- Lead Azure cross-region migration strategy, and launched Azure Resource Mover
- Worked with the Azure services to make cross-region migration and data replication as a key development tenant
- Drive Discovery, Assessment and Planning for the key Azure customersAuthored and Launched: Azure Cross-region Migration Guidance: https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Migration-Guidance
Sr. Product Manager in AWS RDS for PostgreSQL and Owner of AWS Database Blog
AMAZON WEB SERVICES July 2016 - July 2018 | Greater Seattle Area
Owner of RDS for PostgreSQL business.
- Own product roadmap and business (financial, and adoption) metrics
- Own Go-To-Market and business growth plans
- Gather and manage customer requirements, and incorporate them into the product roadmap
- Work closely with engineering teams to track the project progress, prioritize and address any roadblocks.
- Represent and evangelize RDS for PostgreSQL in different forums, like, EBCs, Customer meetings, Partner Summits, Conferences, and Internal Sales and account teams.
- Support Business Development, Sales, and Account teams, and ecosystem partners in selling-in opportunities
- Manage relationship with PostgreSQL community, from community contributions to local and global events
- Own customer communication through forums, blog posts, emails and social media.
- Launched features: Support for new minor versions, 9.6.1, Logical Replication, and Amazon RDS PostgreSQL as a source for AWS DMS, RDS PostgreSQL HIPAA and FedRAMP compliance.
Owner of AWS Database Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/
- Launched the blog: Defined the vision and goals for the blog; defined and executed the Got to Market plan for the blog
- Participate in the Strategic planning with the Database Systems Leadership team, understand the business goals, and execute programs to build content to achieve those.
- Manage the blog pipeline for all the incoming contributions
- Define and manage the blog metrics, share the insights with key stakeholders on weekly basis, and adapt the business strategies accordingly
- Manage an Editorial Board to ensure a consistent quality for all the blogs published
- Build and document the processes for the authors of the blog
Senior Program Manager in Azure SQL Database Elastic Tools
MICROSOFT March 2015 - June 2016 | Redmond, WA
Elastic Scale is the set of technologies used for scaling the database needs to meet the flexible customer needs. As part of this team:
- Retired the SQL Federations features. Worked with last ~500 customers to help them migrate their applications from SQL Federations to our new solutions.
- Open sourced elastic scale solutions. We were the very first in launching our library as open source in SQL Azure organization. As part of this project, I worked ground up with our management, legal, and engineering teams, starting from a dream to plan, and from plan to launch of open source project in the market.
- Customer Engagement: Organizer of MVP Show & Tell for Database Systems team, and represent at multiple forums like TechReady, SQL Pass, SQL Saturday, SSGAS 2016, ISV Data Camps and many more.
Blogs:
- Elastic database client library is open sourced! (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/elastic-database-client-library-is-now-open-sourced/)
- Conversion of Sharded database setup to use Elastic Database client library (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/conversion-of-sharding-database-setup-to-use-elastic-database-client-library/)
Microsoft Virtual Academy Video Recordings: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/elastic-database-capabilities-with-azure-sql-db-16554?l=lWyQhF1fC_6306218965
Speaker at SSGAS 2016: http://bit.ly/silviadoomra-ssgas2016
Speaker at 24 Hour of PASS, and SQL Saturdays.
Program Manager II in Windows Partner and Customer Engagement Team
MICROSOFT Jan 2013 - March 2015 | Redmond, WA
As part of Program Management role in Windows Ecosystem team, managed the certification process for Windows and Windows Phone devices on Mobile Operator networks globally.
- Managed a team of five to produce compliance responses for key mobile operators and capability statements for rest of the world.
- Manage triage and escalation processes for all incoming Technical acceptance issues
- Drove integration of Microsoft Devices Group (ex-Nokia) blockers within Operating System Group plans
- Own the engineering agenda to create efficiencies in Mobile Operator commercialization process
- Own On-boarding of Top 100 apps on Windows platform for new feature introductions
- Depth Engagement manager for Reliance Jio
- Device Certified through Mobile Operators networks: Nokia Lumia 2520 on AT&T, Verizon, and Rest of the world, and Surface 2 on AT&T network
Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) II in Visual Studio Fundamentals
MICROSOFT Sept 2012 - Jan 2013 | Redmond, WA
The VS Fundamentals organization is responsible for core, cross-divisional technologies, processes, and activities. VS Fundaments serves as organizational metronome, driving division-wide releases of Visual Studio, including project management, release management, VS Update & servicing, and broad tenets and product fundamentals. As part of this team, project I owned:
- Ecosystem Tenet
- VSIP (Visual Studio Integrated Partners) Program
Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) II in Visual Studio Pro Extensibility
MICROSOFT April 2011 - Sept 2012
Visual Studio Extensibility involves features that help customers and partners to make Visual Studio extensible. Apart from the automation for the features assigned like Visual Studio for Extension SDK, VS Update, and VSXray, I also had an opportunity to accomplish the following:
- VS Pro Stress Driver – This task involves managing a virtual team of 12 people: 6 in China and 6 in Redmond. My responsibilities included:
- Managing the team and making sure that Stress tests are executed on weekly basis
- Gathering and reporting weekly results to top management
- Improving the automated system to reduce the time taken in weekly executions
- Conducted trainings of China team to keep them up-to-date with the tools used in Redmond
- Designed and Implemented Reporting tool to make analysis efficient
- Drove Test Cleanup of the existing test bed which resulted in removal of 50% tests
- ZRB Driver for the Extensibility
- Designing automation code for new framework from scratch
- Worked with Resharper (third-party extension to Visual Studio) in driving performance, and memory improvements
Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) in Remote Desktop Licensing
MICROSOFT June 2008 - April 2011 | Hyderabad
RD Licensing is a feature for the issuance and tracking of licenses required for accessing any RDS feature. Achievements:
- Automation for features in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows8.
- Drove Test Improvements which resulted in reduction for execution time of jobs from 2.5 days to 1.25 days.
- WTT Job migration to Redmond from IDC
- Drove Stress framework automation
- Customer Focus
- Author of MSDN blogs (http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/tags/Author_3A00_+Silvia+Doomra/default.aspx)
- Driving TechNet and Newsgroup
- Author of ‘Direct from Source’ for CAL Forwarding deprecation
- POC for the feedback and issues received from customers in public forums and incorporating them to improve the feature
- Drove the project for: ‘Increasing traffic on MSDN blog site’ from scratch
Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) in Remote Desktop Service AppCompat (RDS AppCompat)
MICROSOFT April 2010 - Aug 2010 | Hyderabad
RDS AppCompat handles all the application compatibility related issues in Remote Desktop Services Environment. In this short span, I was responsible for driving the testing of application analyzer tools, RDS Compatibility website and virtual lab. Also, I am author of MSDN blogs for ‘RDS Application Compatibility’ and have been POC for MVPs (Microsoft Valued Partners) for getting feedback for this project.
Volunteer
Panelist at Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), University of Washington
March 3, 2018 | Women in Technology
Panelist for the session ‘Navigating the Balancing Act of Priorities and Time’ at Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), University of Washington
TEALS Teacher at Quincy High School
August 2015 - June 2016 (11 months) | Education
Taught Intro CS at Quincy High School.
In News
- http://qvpr.com/qhs-microsoft-partner-up-in-the-classroom-through-unique-program/
- https://www.tealsk12.org/2016/05/14/computer-science-volunteer-opens-opportunities-for-rural-teens/
Featured Videos:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE3STSnj2cU
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocq2V800w2g
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STSJ3eiFdoI
Mentor & Sponsor at Global Give Back Circle in collaboration with Magic Bus
January 2016 | Education
Mentored and Sponsored a girl in India for her higher education.
Teacher at ILP (Indian Literacy Project), Hyderabad
May 2010 - July 2010 (3 months) | Education
Organized summer camps for rural kids and taught them Mathematics and English.
Judge for Imagine Cup at Microsoft
April 2013 | Science and Technology
www.imaginecup.com
Vice President of Marketing at Network of Indian Professionals – Seattle Chapter
June 2011 - November 2011 (6 months) | Arts and Culture
Responsibilities:
- Weekly Newsletters
- Facebook profile and website
- PR – event profiles in newspapers and sites like seattleindians.com, yelp
- Events like: Monthly mixer, Yatch Party, End of summer bar-b-q, Diwali Gala (Fashion Show, location, menu, logistics) and many partner events.
Independent Coursework
- Cross Group Collaborations
- Interpersonal Skills
- Dale Carnegie Course: Skills for Success
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA) – Project Management from University of Phoenix
2012 - 2014
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) – Information Technology from Punjab Engineering College
2004 - 2008
Recommendations
Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services
By Melanie Henry, Senior Technical Editor at Amazon Web Services November 4, 2017, Melanie worked with Silvia in different groups
“I’ve partnered with Silvia on the AWS Database Blog since its inception as the blog’s main editor.
Her work is stellar–she is incredibly well-organized and she knows how to push, but she also gives a sense of calm and centeredness that makes her a pleasure to work with and really supports getting things done. She’s in control, but not controlling—she gives each person the space to do their job.
She’s constantly exploring and trying new practices, including different ways of setting up and running the blog, “disruptive” in a good way but not one that slows down the work.
She delivers results, is great at rounding up and negotiating with stakeholders, and is a great example for me of an effective leader.”
Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services
By Wendy Neu, Senior Consultant at Amazon November 2, 2017, Wendy worked with Silvia in different groups
“I really enjoy working with Silvia as a writer for the Database Blog she manages. She consistently following through on her commitments to blog contributors, taking time to understand the writer’s perspective and listening thoughtfully before commenting. Sylvia thinks about the blog beyond just promoting content and driving readership. She actively solicits content in support of helping customers solve their real business problems using AWS database solutions. She would like customers to look to the blog for thought leadership as well as technology leadership.”
Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services
By Mandakini Saroop, Senior Product Manaager at Amazon October 30, 2017, Silvia worked with Mandakini in the same group
“Silvia joined as the product manager for RDS PostgreSQL, taking over from me as I transitioned to a different role. She ramped up within 2 weeks, and was autonomously running the RDS PostgreSQL business seamlessly, with no disruption to launches, customers or team relations. She is very technical and very passionate about the database space; as a result, she was able to dive deep into issues, build trust quickly with the engineering team, and be really focused on the customers’ needs (which she understood very well).”
Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services
By Clinton Ford, Senior Product Manager at Amazon March 1, 2017, Clinton worked with Silvia in different groups
“Collaborative process innovator is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about Silvia. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Silvia for 8 months, during which time we have worked together on the launch of the AWS Database Blog and sourcing a wide variety of content to help customers deploy and manage cloud databases. Above all, I am impressed with Silvia’s ability to create an effective process for AWS Database teams to source and publish high-quality content that makes a real and immediate impact for our customers. And, of course, her friendly and out-going nature. Silvia would be a true asset for any teams requiring well-orchestrated project management and consistent performance reporting to accomplish their vision.”
Senior Program Manager in SQL Azure at Microsoft
By Jared Moore, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft February 6, 2017, Silvia worked with Jared in the same group
“Silvia was a wonderful PM to work with. She is highly dedicated to understanding customers’ problems and taking action to solve them – whether by quickly and accurately answering forum questions, or by working with engineering to deliver new technical solutions. We worked together on open-sourcing the elastic database tools, and Silvia very effectively sought out key influencers across the company and determined how to make the project politically, technically, and legally successfully.”
Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) II in Visual Studio Fundamentals at Microsoft
By Jim Warner, Software Engineer at Microsoft December 21, 2013, Jim managed Silvia at Microsoft
“Silvia is driven, well organized, and a great collaborator! Before transitioning to a program management role full time in the Windows organization, she did an awesome job as a test engineer in the Visual Studio organization working with program management to help lay the groundwork for the VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partners) program for the Visual Studio 2013 product release; this program is used to collaborate with Microsoft external partners who build the vast array of extensions for the Visual Studio product. It was really great working with Silvia and it would be great to work with her again.”
Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) in Remote Desktop Licensing at Microsoft
By Harish Shanmugam, Software Development Engineer 2 at Microsoft June 22, 2012, Harish managed Silvia indirectly at Microsoft
“Silvia joined our team right out of college but ramped up to her role very quickly. During the 10 months that we worked together, Silivia clearly came across as an extremely passionate and dedicated professional.”
Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) in Remote Desktop Service AppCompat (RDS AppCompat) at Microsoft
By Bhaskar Swarna, Principle PM Manager at Microsoft July 13, 2012, Bhaskar managed Silvia indirectly at Microsoft
“Silvia helped drive setting up, testing and adoption of the Remote Desktop Session Host application compatibility community website for our team. Silvia is a go getter and operates in a very structured, detail oriented and deligent manner. You can be assured that anything passing through her would be of high quality.”