Rohith Akhil Panicker

VP of Engineering, Willow Ops - embedded Linux · C · ARM Cortex-M

Willow Ops

Hyderabad, India · IST (UTC+5:30)

11+ years experience

VIT Vellore

English, Hindi, Telugu

Co-founder

Messaging unavailable

Overview

I lead embedded systems at Willow Ops in Hyderabad. Brought on-call pages for firmware down from 26 a week to 1. Before that: Airtel and Philips. Most at home with embedded Linux and hardware bring-up. Swimming before work keeps me sane.

Good reasons to reach out

People who want to build this with me
Working sessions on ARM Cortex-M

Please don't message about

Recruiters for roles outside my stack
Agency or outsourcing pitches
Generic networking requests

Replies on weekends

Skills

embedded Linuxhardware bring-upRTOSARM Cortex-MBluetooth LEC

Co-founderLooking for a co-founder

closes in 3 months

Looking for a commercial co-founder for returns management for freight forwarders

The idea: Returns management for freight forwarders
Stage: Customer interviews
I bring: 10 years in embedded systems
Looking for: Commercial co-founder who has sold to enterprises
Commitment: Full-time now
Location: Hyderabad or remote

I bring 23 years of embedded systems (currently Willow Ops). Ideally you've sold to enterprises. Have a working prototype and design partners.

Hyderabad, Indiartosembedded linuxc

Open

Experience

VP of Engineering
Jun 2025 - Present
Willow Ops · 1 yr 4 mo · Full-time · Hyderabad, India
- Led the migration of 58 services to hardware bring-up.
- Moved 90% of firmware traffic off a legacy monolith without a customer-facing incident.
- Shipped 30 launches on the firmware team without a rollback.
Staff Embedded Engineer
Feb 2023 - Jun 2025
Airtel · 2 yr 4 mo · Full-time · Hyderabad, India
- Led the migration of 35 services to ARM Cortex-M.
Director of Engineering
Jul 2020 - Dec 2022
Philips · 2 yr 5 mo · Full-time · Hyderabad, India
- Cut p99 latency on the firmware services from 579ms to 55ms.
Senior Embedded Engineer
Mar 2018 - Apr 2020
LTIMindtree · 2 yr 1 mo · Full-time · Hyderabad, India
- Shipped a rewrite that took build times from 20 minutes to under 6.
Staff Embedded Engineer
Jun 2015 - Mar 2018
Morgan Stanley · 2 yr 9 mo · Full-time · Hyderabad, India
- Cut p99 latency on the firmware services from 869ms to 62ms.
- Wrote the Bluetooth LE service that now handles 70 million requests a day.

References

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Education

VIT Vellore
B.Tech, Computer Science
1998 - 2002

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