About & Engineering Leadership
I am Ajay Agrawal — Senior Technical Lead — Java · Kafka · Search Architect with 21+ years of software engineering experience (including 11+ years in architecture and technical lead roles) designing and scaling Java / Spring Boot microservices, Apache Kafka event-driven middleware, high-scale Lucene search platforms, and AI/ML Agentic RAG systems.
🏆 Industry Certifications
Core Engineering Specializations
1. Java & Spring Boot Microservices
Architecting enterprise microservices, high-throughput REST/GraphQL APIs, and resilient distributed backends handling multi-million dollar transaction volumes across catalogs of 350,000+ SKUs.
2. Apache Kafka & Event-Driven Middleware
Designing real-time integration middleware connecting SAP S/4HANA, ERP, and PIM systems with sub-20ms CDC event streaming, custom tracing frameworks, and DLQ offset replay.
3. Enterprise Search & Modernization
Deep Lucene architecture (Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Lucidworks, Bloomreach, Coveo) and leading seamless zero-downtime migrations off legacy Oracle Endeca.
4. AI/ML, Contextual Retrieval & Agents
Building production Multi-Agent LLM pipelines, Contextual Retrieval (Anthropic RAG), dense vector embeddings (e5-small-v2), Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and Hallucination Shields.
Enterprise Track Record
Across my career at organizations such as HCL Technologies, US Foods, Marks & Spencer, Adidas, Guess, Lululemon, Eaton, Office Depot, and CORT Furniture, I have led both onshore architecture and offshore delivery teams (directing 11+ engineers) delivering revenue-critical, 24/7 high-availability systems on AWS (EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS), Azure (AKS, App Services), and Google Cloud.
The 108 Technical Guides
The 108 architectural deep-dives published on this platform were written during live production deployments, high-load tuning sessions, and major search cutovers. They document the real-world mechanics of ITL indexing pipelines, DGraph thread performance, Experience Manager cartridges, and Lucene schema optimization.
Anvi Search Platform
I created Anvi Search — the world's first Agentic-ready, Hybrid RAG commerce search platform and drop-in Endeca migration instrument with 28 subsystems, 100% in-VPC isolation, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools.
Advisory & Architectural Reviews
For enterprise search audits, Kafka streaming middleware design, AI/ML agent pipelines, or Endeca migration assessments, visit the Contact & Advisory page or explore the Search Architecture Directory.