Madushan Chathuranga
- 10+years building enterprise grade software
- 6industries
A Full stack developer who’s been building enterprise grade software since 2015. Most of it has been in Java, Python and Go on AWS and GCP. Along with front technologies such as React, NextJs, Vue, Typescript and NodeJS. I have also been involved in event driven systems moving data in near real time on Kafka, Kinesis and Pub/Sub. More recently the work has been RAG and agentic AI with Vertex AI and LangChain. I am based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The rest of the time I am out with a camera waiting for something wild to move.

I have worked in two modes. Embedded with a client organisation as a forward deployed and consulting engineer, inside their team and their codebase. And in house as a product engineer, on systems that have to keep working for years after the project closes.
The domains have moved around a lot. The problems underneath do not change much.
Right now I lead a team of seven at Techlabs Global. We are embedded with Sportserve. Before this I spent two years at Visa in Singapore building a payment acknowledgement system that carries 40M transactions a day inside a 5 second SLA. Before that I was at Sysco LABS building the ecommerce software behind a Fortune 500 modernisation. Earlier still, John Wiley & Sons, Axiata Digital Labs and Virtusa.
I am an AWS Certified Solutions Architect. Also a SAFe® Agilist and a Certified ScrumMaster.
On my own time I am usually out with a camera. Wildlife mostly. I like the waiting as much as the photograph. Every frame on this site is mine. They go up on Instagram as @_wild_diary.
I care about how animals are treated. I read philosophy and history when I get the time. I want to know how the world got from one age to the next.
Competencies
- Languages
- Java (8/17/21/25)GoPythonJavaScriptTypeScript
- Data & Event Platforms
- Apache Kafka (Confluent)GCP Pub/SubBigQueryAWS Kinesis
- Cloud
- GCP (Cloud Run, BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL, Secret Manager, IAM)AWS (Lambda, Aurora, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, ECS, Fargate)Certified Solutions Architect
- AI & LLM Delivery
- RAG pipelinesagentic workflowsVertex AI / GeminiClaude CodeAI assisted SDLC and CI/CD authoring
- Backend & Data Stores
- Spring BootRESTOpenAPIgRPCmicroservicesevent-driven architectureBPMN orchestrationPostgreSQLMongoDBOracleRedisBigQuery
- Frontend
- ReactNext.jsNode.jsVue 3Angular
- Delivery & Observability
- GitLab CIJenkinsDockerKubernetesTerraformArgoCDDatadogDynatracePrometheusGrafanaSplunkELK
01
Career
Senior Technical Lead
Embedded with Sportserve as technical lead on their data platform.
- Technical lead on EventStream 2.0, A Go event processing platform on GCP handling millions of events a day. I own the design end to end and lead a team of seven spanning backend, frontend, data warehousing and SRE.
- Owned the dead letter queue subsystem end to end. Consumer, error classification, replay engine and the operator API. Delivered as 23 tracked stories in ten weeks with integration tests running down to the database layer.
- Built the event provenance service for EventStream 2.0 that gives per event lineage across the pipeline. Backed by a BigQuery with the GCP footprint in Terraform
- Prototyping a RAG and agentic layer on Vertex AI and Gemini which is grounded in the platform’s live processor registry, so business users can build and query data workflows in natural language instead of a visual DAG editor.
- Selected the stack and built the B2B reporting application on Spring Boot, gRPC and React
Senior Software Engineer
- Developed the Kafka-driven payment acknowledgement system behind Visa Flexible Credentials. 40M transactions a day against a 5 second SLA from payment processing to acknowledgement, with banks consuming transaction decisions through the Visa Developer Portal API gateway.
- Migrated the pipeline off legacy TCP/IP socket connections carrying raw byte streams, removing the system’s main reliability problem.
- Built custom observability on the Kafka Admin API with Prometheus and Grafana showing consumption per partition, then ran continuous performance testing to tune consumer configuration.
- Planned feature development with a team of three backend engineers and one QA
- Held the responsibility for held quality gates with SonarQube, Karate test automation and Checkmarx.
Technical Lead
- Led four developers and two QAs on moving active data off a legacy AS400 database onto PostgreSQL
- Migrated the streaming layer from Amazon Kinesis to Confluent Kafka for cloud portability
- Owned three Spring Boot microservices serving the e-commerce platform
- Managed engineers for continuous engineering best practices and career growth via mentorship
Senior Engineer, then Technical Lead
- Led the Sri Lanka offshore team of three developers and one QA
- Built BPMN process orchestration automating book and article publication
- Used Dynatrace for APM and performance work across the CMS platform
Senior Software Engineer
- Built the Mastercard MPGS gateway integration for a PCI-DSS certified digital wallet
- Led the Lanka QR payments integration into the PickMe taxi app end to end
Intern, then Engineer, then Senior Engineer
- Client-facing delivery for MetLife and Dell SecureWorks to build Insurance systems and Info Sec systems
- Built a threat modelling platform in a team of six inside a 90-person programme
- Worked across Java, Spring framework, Jenkins, Angular, Python, Ansible & AWS
02
Selected work
04
Blog
What Does It Mean for Something to Exist?
There is a question that seems simple until you start chasing it.
I Replaced Manual QA with Claude Code Agents in My GitLab Pipeline. Here’s Exactly How.
The agent reads business requirements, analyzes the source code, discovers edge cases on its own, generates Karate test scenarios from scratch, runs them against a real database, commits the tests to the branch, and…
Use of Claude Code Agents in mitigating application security vulnerabilities
A practical guide to building agentic workflows that save hours of tedious maintenance work including step by step agent setup, folder structure, and real prompts.
Kafka-Driven Async Data Streaming: A Superior Choice Over Amazon Kinesis
Data streaming has revolutionized real-time data processing and analytics, with Apache Kafka and Amazon Kinesis emerging as prominent players in this field. In this article, we will explore why Kafka, especially when…
05
What people say
Industry leaders and colleagues I’ve worked with have left some nice words about me on my LinkedIn profile. Read them there
Senior Manager at Visa Inc.
01 Jun 2025, Zhi Min managed Madushan directly
I had the distinct pleasure of working closely with Madushan, and I can confidently attest to his exceptional professionalism, technical acumen, and leadership capabilities. From the outset, Madushan consistently demonstrated a high level of expertise in his domain and approached every task with diligence and precision.
One of Madushan’s most commendable attributes is his ability to take initiative and lead with confidence. He independently managed and successfully drove one of our primary projects, navigating complex challenges with strategic foresight and minimal supervision. His proactive approach and unwavering accountability were instrumental to the project’s success.
In addition to his technical strengths, Madushan possesses outstanding interpersonal skills. He quickly built strong rapport within the team, fostering a collaborative and positive working environment. His ability to connect with colleagues, coupled with his integrity and reliability, earned him widespread respect and recognition across the organization.
Madushan is a highly competent and driven professional whose contributions have left a lasting impact. I am confident that he will continue to excel and deliver exceptional results in any future endeavor. He would be an invaluable asset to any team or organization fortunate enough to work with him.
Solution Architect at John Wiley & Sons
09 Oct 2022, Eranda was senior to Madushan but didn’t manage Madushan directly
Madushan worked very closely with me in Wiley. He is a very keen and fast learner, very good in technical and interpersonal skills, Well focused and reliable in delivering his objectives. Indeed, a professional in need where he is capable of handling vast area himself. I feel indebted to Madushan's great effort on his project work, and would strongly recommend him to anyone.
Project Manager at John Wiley & Sons
13 Jul 2023, Dakshi worked with Madushan on the same team
If you are looking for someone who can effortlessly get the team together and drive them to achieve the team's goals, Madushan is your go-to person. He's a master of motivation and team spirit. He understands that success is a collective effort and goes out of his way to ensure everyone feels supported and valued.
He's a quick learner and an exceptional technical lead. With his expertise and passion for technology, he makes even the most complex tasks seem like a walk in the park.
I had the pleasure of working with Madushan during my time at Wiley and he was one of the best leads I've worked with. If you ever need a helping hand, technical advice, or just a good laugh, Madushan is there, ready to lend an ear and offer support. He has an innate ability to make everyone feel at ease, fostering an environment where collaboration and creativity flourish.
Software Engineer at SyscoLABS
06 Jun 2024, Chamod reported to Madushan directly
I had the opportunity to work with Madushan at Sysco, where he was the team lead of my team. One thing that stands out about Madushan is his incredible ability to learn quickly. He swiftly adapted to our environment and mastered our complex systems in no time.
Madushan is an outstanding leader with exceptional technical knowledge and problem-solving skills. Whenever any team member encountered a problem, Madushan was the go-to person. He knows how to keep the team motivated and happy while guiding everyone towards the goals.
I must say, Madushan is one of the best team leads I have ever worked with, and I gained a lot of knowledge from him during our time together. As a lead, he takes excellent care of junior developers, helping them grow and develop their skills. If someone asked me to create a dream development team, Madushan would definitely be a key member.
Senior Software Engineer at SyscoLABS
11 Oct 2024, Yohan reported to Madushan directly
Madushan was one of the managers whom I worked under. I can confidently say he is one of the best managers I've had in my career. He possesses a unique blend of technical expertise, leadership, and a people-first approach that makes the work environment both productive and enjoyable.
I highly recommend Madushan to any organization looking for a strong, empathetic leader who brings out the best in their team. It has been an absolute privilege to work with him.
Technical Lead at Axiata Digital Labs
01 Nov 2019, Asanka managed Madushan directly
I've had the pleasure of working with Madushan for a period of 10 plus months in project Genie at Axiata Digital Labs. Madushan is a hardworking and versatile techie who has been contributing immensely to the Genie Payment solution. He have a good understanding of managing design, scalability, performance aspects of the product whilst ensuring the code is consistently maintained at industry standards!
Senior Consultant at Virtusa
01 Feb 2019, Tiroshan managed Madushan directly
Madushan is one of the best resource I have worked with having dedication and commitment. He can succeed on any kind of technical challenges. I believe he has that capability to achieve any technical goal.
Software Engineer at Virtusa
01 Feb 2019, Shanalie worked with Madushan but on different teams
I have had the privilege of working with Madushan at Virtusa over an 2 years period of time. He's expertise in Technologies such as Java, Ontology, Ansible scripting, AWS, Python and fluent in agile software engineering methodology. Not to forget he is driven with full of leadership skills and hard working.
As a creative thinker who possesses a can-do attitude, Madushan is a pleasure to work with.
06
Contact
open to selected work
Got an idea or a problem to solve? Let’s talk. I work across full stack engineering, event-driven systems, database optimization, AWS and GCP migrations, and agentic AI systems. I’m open to new opportunities.
mchathuranga4@gmail.com













