Karthik Anantha Padmanabhan

Hi! I'm Karthik, a Senior Engineering Manager at Pinterest leading our AI Training Infrastructure team. Over the past 7+ years, I've grown from a hands-on engineer to leading teams building large-scale ML systems that power billions of recommendations.

I have a passion for mentoring engineers looking to scale their impact, whether that's through technical excellence or leadership growth. Having made the IC to management transition myself while staying deeply technical, I understand the challenges of navigating career growth in fast-paced tech environments.

My expertise lies in ML infrastructure, distributed systems, and technical leadership. At Pinterest, I've built our ML training platform from scratch, led the adoption of PyTorch across the company, and recently architected our ML training supercomputer for generative AI workloads.

I regularly speak at conferences like MLConf and AWS ReInvent, and I believe in sharing knowledge through writing and public speaking. Whether you're looking to deepen your technical expertise, transition into leadership, or build impactful ML systems - I'd love to help you navigate your journey.
My mentoring style focuses on practical guidance drawn from real experiences.

I can help you:

Navigate technical and organizational challenges
Make the transition from IC to tech lead or manager
Build and scale ML infrastructure
Develop your public speaking and technical writing skills
Prepare for interviews and career transitions

Let's work together to accelerate your growth in ML infrastructure and engineering leadership.