Principal Software Engineer with 22+ years of experience building scalable systems in the travel and e-commerce industry. Currently leading AI/ML adoption initiatives and site reliability engineering efforts. Known for translating complex technical concepts into practical solutions and mentoring engineers across global teams.
Lasantha Kularatne
Principal Software Engineer
Professional Summary
- 22+ years software engineering experience
- 12+ years at Expedia Group (incl. HomeAway/Vrbo)
- 5+ years as Principal Engineer
- Expert in AI/ML, SRE, and distributed systems
- Patent holder in advertising technology
- Published author on Medium
Work Experience
Principal Software Development Engineer
Expedia Group | March 2020 - Present | Austin, TX
AI/ML Engineering Leadership
- Led AI adoption program achieving 100% tool adoption across 115+ engineers globally
- Drove developer toil targeting 30-40% reduction through automation and AI-assisted workflows
- Designed and executed LLM-based fraud detection proof-of-concept using historical analyst decisions to identify fraud in booking transaction data
- Co-developed developer tools using Model Context Protocol (MCP) reducing context-switching time by 80%
Site Reliability Engineering
- Created AI-powered root cause analysis tool (patent process started) now used in production to reduce MTTK
- Achieved 99.9% platform availability through standardized SLOs and improved incident response
- Created first AWS Operational Readiness Review (ORR) template adopted company-wide
- Standardized root cause analysis process, improving incident review quality
- Led rollback exercises reducing rollback times by 50%+ for critical services
- Built traffic prediction models achieving ±5% accuracy for capacity planning
Technical Leadership
- Mentored 10+ engineers to senior and principal levels
- Delivered global training sessions across US, India, and EU
- Recognized by VP-level leadership as model for SRE engagement
Staff Software Engineer / Team Lead
Vrbo / Expedia Group | November 2016 - March 2020 | Austin, TX
- Led cloud migration building cloud-ready microservices for checkout flows
- Designed traveler checkout microservice supporting web, mobile, and external integrations
- Won first place in internal Kaggle competition for booking value forecasting using Random Forest
- Mentored junior engineers and led technical interviews
Staff Software Engineer / Team Lead
HomeAway | April 2013 - November 2016 | Austin, TX
- Led team building scalable web solutions for property managers
- Designed Hadoop HBase-backed reporting API for supplier analytics
- Created Solr-based fast search API (under 50ms latency) for internal applications
Software Engineer → Senior Software Engineer → Technical Lead
Bazaarvoice | September 2009 - March 2013 | Austin, TX
- Built highly scalable REST API delivering ad snippets based on user-generated content
- Applied NLP and machine learning for auto-generating snippets from review texts
- Filed 2 patents on insertion of user-generated content into advertisements
- Introduced Agile methodologies improving team productivity
Earlier Experience
Software Engineer II - Toppan Photomask | 2006-2009 | Round Rock, TX
- Built web-based user and order management system for photolithography services
Software Developer - University of Texas at Austin | 2006 | Austin, TX
- Contributed to Java-based student authentication & authorization system
Software Engineer - CodeGen.IT | 2003-2005 | Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Built flight reservation module for tour operating system
Technical Skills
Languages
Cloud & Infrastructure
AI/ML
Data Technologies
SRE & Observability
Architecture
Education
B.Sc. Computer Science and Engineering
University of Moratuwa | 1998 - 2003 | Sri Lanka
Top engineering university in Sri Lanka
GCE Advanced Level, Mathematics
Royal College, Colombo 07 | 1995 - 1997 | Sri Lanka
Premier educational institution in Sri Lanka
Publications & Patents
Patents
- Insertion of user-generated content into advertisements based on contributor attributes
- Insertion of user-generated content into advertisements
- AI-powered root cause analysis tool (patent process started)
Publications (Medium)
- “Error Budget Policy Adoption at Expedia Group” - Using data to set the standard for reliability
- “Predict It! An Engineer's Journey into Data Science” - Using R, Fourier series, and a linear regression model to predict web site traffic
- “Jarviz, Can You Show My Application Couplings?” - Java bytecode analysis reveals field-level dependencies
Open Source
- Jarviz - Tool for analyzing application couplings and dependencies
Let's Connect
Feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or check out my work on GitHub.