Senior Software Engineer · Expedia Group Istio Multi-Cluster & Ambient Mesh KubeCon Speaker

Raghav Grover

Backend & Cloud-Native Infrastructure Engineer · Kubernetes Operators, Multi-Cluster Istio Service Mesh & Distributed Systems

Backend and infrastructure engineer with 8+ years building cloud-native compute platforms. Engineered multi-cluster Istio service mesh (sidecar & ambient) in-house across 150+ EKS clusters and 5,000+ applications at Expedia without enterprise vendor contracts—saving $4M/year alongside $1M/year in Kubernetes resource optimization. Upstream contributor to Istio, Reactor Netty, AWS Karpenter, and Crossplane.

Jersey City, NJ github.com/raghav-grover

kubectl get engineer raghav -o yaml

apiVersion: platform.expedia.io/v1

kind: StaffComputeProfile

metadata:

name: raghav-grover

location: Jersey City, NJ

spec:

primaryLang: Go, TypeScript / Node.js, Java

primarySkills:

- Kubernetes

- Operators

- Service Mesh

- K8s Networking

serviceMesh:

- Istio Multi-Cluster & Ambient Mesh

- Declarative MeshIntent Operator

upstreamOSS:

- istio/istio (#44985)

- reactor/reactor-netty (a230865)

- aws/karpenter (PR #2812)

- crossplane (IAM policy tagging)

# status: Ready · 150+ clusters · 5,000+ applications

$4M / yr

Mesh Contract Savings

In-house multi-cluster Istio at scale

$1M / yr

Infra Cost Savings

Custom K8s utilization controller

150+

EKS Clusters Federated

Cell-based mesh & Kubefed DR

5,000+

Applications Powered

Via rcp-api & MeshIntent CRD

4 Core

Upstream OSS Projects

Istio, Netty, Karpenter, Crossplane

Upstream Contributions

Open-Source Contributions & Upstream Fixes

Upstream fixes and controllers shipped to Istio, Project Reactor Netty, AWS Karpenter, and Crossplane.

Conference Speaking & Technical Publications

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Speaker & Engineering Authorship

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2023 · Chicago Nov 9, 2023

Under the Hood: Exploring Istio's Lock Contention and Its Impact on Expedia's Compute Platform

Co-presented at KubeCon NA 2023 on diagnosing and resolving a critical control-plane lock contention in Istio Pilot (istiod) across Expedia's Kubernetes fleet, covering the root-cause investigation, production mitigation, and upstream telemetry contribution.

Watch Talk on YouTube KubeCon Schedule

Expedia Group Tech Blog · Medium Oct 31, 2023

Enhancing Istio's Performance: Unveiling the Impact of Lock Contention on Expedia Group's Compute Platform

Authored an engineering deep dive detailing how Expedia's Compute Platform team profiled Istio control-plane bottlenecks across 150+ Kubernetes clusters and collaborated with upstream maintainers to ship controller queue metrics in Istio v1.19.

Read Article on Medium

8+ Years Career Progression

Professional Experience & Impact

Education

B.Tech, Computer Science

Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology

2011 – 2015 Score: 79.25%

Production Stack