Pallavi Priya Patharlagadda
Pallavi Priya is a Senior Software Engineer at Cisco in the New York City Metropolitan Area, where she focuses on developing licensing modules for routers and switches using Golang and cloud technologies. With extensive experience in 4G and 5G packet core systems, she has contributed to critical network functions including PCF, SMF, and NRF, and played a key role in developing 5G roaming capabilities. Her technical expertise spans Go, Python, Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, and cloud computing (IaaS), with a strong emphasis on scalable, microservices-based architectures.
Over the course of her career, Pallavi has held engineering roles with global technology leaders including Ericsson and Tata Consultancy Services. She was instrumental in transforming large, monolithic codebases into microservices architectures and helped deploy 4G services to the cloud, significantly improving throughput and latency. Her work has included automation with Ansible and Python, building common execution platforms for 5G network functions, and developing containerized solutions deployed through Kubernetes and Helm charts. She has also contributed to OpenStack initiatives and is currently engaged in Wi-Fi 7 technologies.
Pallavi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Kakinada and is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect through Amazon Web Services. Known for her resilience and growth mindset, she has built a strong reputation for technical excellence, continuous learning, and mentorship. Her journey reflects a commitment to innovation, performance optimization, and advancing next-generation networking technologies.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect
• Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Kakinada
• Titan Awards
• GRA Award
• Second Harvest Food Bank
• Sacred Heart Communities
• Religious community activities
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my family, my spouse, and my kids who are supporting me in doing this, because it's not easy. I have twins who were premature, and I went through a lot of physical challenges - my health got disturbed, my kids were having a lot of complexities, and then I took some break. But then I had to join back, so I thank my family's support. My mom was behind me, supporting me everywhere. She was taking care of the kids when I had to take care of my career. And of course, my spouse was supporting me a lot. Whenever I had to go to a conference, virtual conference, he used to take care of the kids. My technical team and the leads were very encouraging - they are the foundation steps.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
When you are starting at zero, always be a continuous learner - even now, we have to be continuous learners. Whenever you are speaking to someone experienced or anyone in your team, you have to always feel like you are a learner, because the information now is vast and we can get it from everywhere. People can be more knowledgeable now even with less experience because of the advent of AI. So always be a learner, but if you have to present somewhere, present in such a way that you are the top notch in your field. Be confident, and don't be shy. Whenever you are asking questions, ask more questions and try to understand more - that's how we learn.