Track Host: Janani Narayanan

She / her / hers

Applied ML Engineer @Uber, Previously Tech Lead on DynamoDB Control Plane (Early Stage), 10+ Years Tech Industry Experience

Janani is a Senior Staff Engineer and Technical Lead Manager at Uber Technologies, where she has been at the forefront of transformative zero-to-one (0-1) initiatives for the past nine years. Prior to her current role, she was a pivotal contributor to SimpleDB and DynamoDB, playing a key role in their development during the initial four years post-public launch. Her work has led to several patents across both DynamoDB and Uber.

At Uber Eats, Janani leads a specialized "tiger team" focused on addressing the cold start problem by understanding selection. Her team's mission is to solve challenges related to eater and merchant retention by improving the precision of machine learning models that drive eater targeting, merchant acquisition, growth, personalization, ranking, and recommendations. Previously, she has successfully scaled UberEats’s Ads, Feed, and Search backends by 3x while maintaining low latency, optimized global rider pricing through advanced ML pipelines, and developed precise ETA predictions for accurate upfront pricing.

Janani has also built foundational infrastructure for anomaly detection in fares, created targeted rider promotions powered by machine learning, and developed distributed event processing systems capable of handling trip-scale data. These systems are crucial for real-time and batch processing, underpinning Uber’s real-time machine learning predictions across its marketplace, finance, and accounting functions.

Find Janani Narayanan at:

Track

Navigating Major Architecture Migrations

Architectural migrations are some of the most complex, high-stakes moves engineering teams undertake—often necessary, rarely easy, and always full of trade-offs. This track explores real-world stories of organizations making bold shifts in their systems—changing foundational technologies, rethinking architectural paradigms, and evolving long-standing infrastructure. You'll hear hard-won lessons, unexpected hurdles, and practical guidance from those who've made (or are still making) these transitions. Whether you're planning your own migration or simply curious about how others are doing it, this track will help you make sense of the chaos and chart a clearer path forward.

Date

Tuesday Nov 18 / 10:35AM PST

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