Gaurav Rathor is a highly accomplished and seasoned Performance Engineering Leader with over 14 years of comprehensive experience in the Information Technology industry, specializing in enterprise application performance optimization, microservices, and infrastructure engineering. Armed with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Technology from Yeshwant Rao Chavan College of Engineering, India, Gaurav blends academic excellence with a distinguished professional track record in performance engineering, infrastructure automation, and DevOps practices. Currently based in the United States, Gaurav serves as a Senior Member of Technical Staff at VMware Inc., where he leads the Performance Benchmarking and Optimization initiatives for cutting-edge products. In this capacity, he collaborates closely with product leadership and engineering teams to embed performance engineering principles into the software development lifecycle — from design through to production rollout. His expertise in managing the performance of diverse technology stacks, including monolithic .NET applications, containerized microservices, APIs, and message queues, underscores his versatility and deep technical acumen. At VMware, Gaurav has made significant contributions by creating Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) automation frameworks for continuous deployment and performance testing on containerized environments, leveraging tools such as Terraform, Ansible, and Docker. His work in deploying testing tools on Kubernetes for enhanced resource management and observability has resulted in increased operational efficiency and improved application reliability. Gaurav’s leadership in defining performance management services and best practices has not only elevated system scalability and resilience but also ensured alignment with business-critical Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Before his tenure at VMware, Gaurav held multiple leadership roles that further solidified his reputation as a performance engineering expert. At Total System Services (TSYS), he managed the performance of a CRM application supporting call center agents for one of the nation’s leading banks. As a Software Engineer Lead, he was responsible for overseeing a global performance engineering team, managing end to-end performance engagements, and collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders to address bottlenecks, optimize performance, and support seamless customer experiences. During his role as a Test Lead at The Home Depot, Gaurav contributed to the success of mission-critical eCommerce and data management applications. His role encompassed NFR (Non-Functional Requirements) gathering, performance scenario identification, and test plan development. His proactive initiatives in improving testing practices and adopting modern technologies earned him recognition for operational leadership and process innovation. Gaurav’s career foundation was built at Patni Computer Systems (now Capgemini), where he led performance engineering efforts for Coca-Cola’s promotional and campaign sites across North America, Latin America, and APAC. His responsibilities included scenario design, execution, server performance diagnostics, and providing actionable recommendations to optimize system throughput and response times — directly contributing to the success of globally visible digital campaigns. A certified expert in performance engineering tools such as LoadRunner, JMeter, Neo load, Dynatrace, Splunk, and Grafana, Gaurav has also mastered modern DevOps, container orchestration, and CI/CD frameworks, including Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Jenkins, and Bamboo. His strong command over monitoring tools and diagnostic utilities like Dot Memory, GC Viewer, and Visual VM, coupled with his hands-on expertise in databases, messaging systems, and application servers, positions him as a versatile and future-ready technology leader.