Santosh Kumar Mishra

Director of AI Innovation at Alta | Founder of InterviewCafe | Worked at Microsoft, VMware | Mentored 50000+ Student | Featured on AajTak, ABP News, Economic Times, Humans of Bombay, JoshTalks & more

Hyderabad, Telangana, India

About

I help students and early-career engineers break into top tech companies - and I've spent 7+ years proving it's possible, even against long odds. 50+ rejections โ†’ Microsoft โ†’ now helping 50,000+ students do the same. Today I lead AI innovation at Alta School of Technology, where we're rethinking how the next generation of engineers learn AI, ML, and systems thinking. Before Alta, I shipped infrastructure at Microsoft (Azure ARC for Private Clouds - VM customization, Cloud-Init, VMware Tools, multi-Sev2 incident resolution, multiple internal awards) and VMware. ๐Ÿš€ What I'm building โ†’ Director of AI Innovation @ Alta School of Technology - designing AI-first curricula for the next million engineers โ†’ Founder, InterviewCafe - the interview-prep platform built on the playbook that's placed students at Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and beyond โ†’ Mentor @ Scaler - DSA, system design, career strategy โ†’ Author - The Art of Data Structures and Algorithms and The Art of Operating Systems โ†’ Public speaker ยท global hackathon judge ๐Ÿ“ฐ Featured in Aaj Tak ยท ABP News ยท Economic Times ยท Humans of Bombay ยท JoshTalks and more... ๐ŸŒ Reach 500K+ followers across LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Telegram - daily content on AI, DSA, system design, and the mindset behind cracking Big Tech. ๐ŸŽ“ Background MCA, NIT Tiruchirappalli ยท 4th rank, BHU MCA Entrance ยท AWS, Teradata, VMware certified ๐Ÿ“ฉ Let's connect if you are: A student or engineer trying to break into Big Tech or AI roles A university, brand, or conference looking for a speaker, judge, or AI advisor A founder building in EdTech or AI DM me - or start with InterviewCafe.

Experience

  • Director of AI Innovation at Alta School of Technology
    Apr 2026 - Present ยท 4 mos

    As the Director of AI Innovation, I lead the strategic vision and implementation of artificial intelligence across the institution to prepare thousands+ students for the rapidly evolving tech landscape. My core focus is on bridging the gap between academic theory and industry-ready AI application. Key Initiatives: - LLM Research Lab: Leading the end-to-end setup of a state-of-the-art Large Language Model (LLM) lab, providing students with the infrastructure to build, fine-tune, and deploy advanced generative AI models. - Curriculum Transformation: Integrating AI into the core curriculum across departments, ensuring students develop hands-on expertise in prompt engineering, RAG frameworks, and AI ethics. - Project Mentorship: Overseeing student technical projects to ensure AI enablement, guiding them in building intelligent applications that solve real-world problems. - Industry Readiness: Developing specialized training tracks to make students "AI-first" in their approach, ensuring they graduate with the skills required by top-tier global tech firms. - Innovation Leadership: Driving a culture of experimentation and research, fostering a community of students who are not just consumers of AI, but creators of it.

  • Founder at InterviewCafe
    Oct 2022 - Present ยท 3 yrs 10 mos

    - Your one-stop for non-stop learning - helping ambitious learners crack FAANG and top product companies. - Structured roadmaps for DSA, system design, frontend, backend & DevOps - step-by-step paths with milestones and practice. - Placement training - designed with Microsoft engineers: DSA, system design, resume, mock interviews & placement support. - Trained 50,000+ students across 50+ colleges in India through our campus technical training program. - AI mock interview - resume-based questions, voice answers, webcam proctoring & a readiness score with actionable feedback. - 1:1 mentorship from industry experts and an elite book library of trusted interview problem sets and technical books. - 500K+ learners community - join students and professionals building skills and landing top tech roles. - From campus to FAANG - roadmaps, placement training, AI practice & mentorship in one platform.

  • Microsoft (5 yrs 1 mo)
    • Software Engineer II
      Sep 2024 - Jan 2026 ยท 1 yr 5 mos

      - Development of Azure Migrateโ€™s Assessment and Business Case reporting engine , enabling customers to estimate cost savings and feasibility of migrating their servers and SQL resources to Azure. - Developed and maintained comprehensive E2E test suites covering multiple customer scenarios to ensure quality and reliability of new features.

    • Software Engineer
      Jan 2021 - Aug 2024 ยท 3 yrs 8 mos

      As a dedicated Software Engineer at Microsoft, I contribute to the development and maintenance of Azure ARC for Private Clouds. ๐Š๐ž๐ฒ ๐‚๐จ๐ง๐ญ๐ซ๐ข๐›๐ฎ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐ฌ: โ— Added various features in Azure ARC for Private Clouds, including: โ— VM Customization Support โ— Cloud-Init Support โ— VMware Tools Install and Upgrade โ— Support for Clusters, Datastores, Hosts, etc. โ— Worked on various customer and internal issues, including critical Sev2 issues, ensuring timely resolution. โ— Won multiple awards at Microsoft for delivering high-quality work.

  • Member of Technical Staff II at VMware
    Feb 2018 - Dec 2020 ยท 2 yrs 11 mos

    Worked on Distributed Storage Systems vSAN (#1 HCI software) Read more about vSAN- https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2018/07/02/idc-leadership-hci/ - Making enhancements and added a couple of features in CLOM (Cluster level Object Manager) module, it manages the placement and migration of objects (i.e vmdk) and distribute component across the host in the cluster. - Involved in the development of the vSAN checker tool, it used to collect the metadata from the disks in vsan datastore. - Implement in-memory logging features in userspace demons process. - Worked on a couple of customers escalation and fixes customers and internal bugs. - Developed a checker tool that catches and generates a report of all the offensive/racial terminology uses in the user changeset at the time code reviews. This tool is being used by all the VMware developers. - Developed and make enhancement in a couple of debugging tools that help to triage bugs faster. Skill: C, Python, Distributed system, GDB tool, Data Structure & Algorithm.

  • Teradata (2 yrs 1 mo)
    • Software Engineer
      Jul 2016 - Jan 2018 ยท 1 yr 7 mos

      - Enhancements in the Parallel Database extension module, it is a middle layer taking care of communications between OS and database application. - Worked on module taking care of monitoring and reporting errors in the system memory. - Worked on resolving the memory leaks in database processes using Valgrind tool. - Worked on enhancements of kernel module taking care of size reduction of core dumps being generated from various database processes. - Pick intel drivers source code from the Sourceforge and created the patch file and build the rpm for SuSe Linux. Drivers are e1000e, igb, i40evf, ixgbe, and ixgbevf. - Making enhancements in multiple Teradata tools. - Wrote scripts to automate the task using Python/Shell Scripts. - Wrote a script to make rpm package of a couple of kernel module. Skill: C, C++, Data Structure, Python, Shell Scripts

    • Softwar Engineer Intern
      Jan 2016 - Jul 2016 ยท 7 mos

      - Developed a website to automate testing in the distributed environment that has been using by Teradata internal teams. Skill: Java Spring, HTML/CSS/Bootstrap, Teradata Database.