Ram Yadlapalli

VP of Product Development and Engineering at Optym, Dallas, Texas

I am an engineer first. I lead product and engineering at Optym, a logistics tech company in Dallas. I own the engineering organization, the product roadmap, and the business unit P&L. I have managed teams since 2015, and I still write code.

I believe in product engineering: product and engineering as one discipline, not two functions handing work back and forth. I like building products that solve problems customers actually have.

The main product is a First Mile and Last Mile Optimization and execution platform for LTL carriers. I took it from discovery to MVP to scale: learned the operation in carrier terminals and on ride-alongs with drivers, developed the MVP as a monolith, led its rebuild in 2018 into a cloud native platform, and grew it to where it runs today at 11 LTL carriers in the US and Canada, used every day by drivers, planners, and dispatchers.

The product work starts with customers. During the build and rollout years I spent about half my time onsite at carrier terminals and riding with drivers. I sit with planners, dispatchers, drivers, and dock teams, listen to the problem in their words, and turn it into software.

In 2026 I built three more products on the platform: an MCP server for customer reporting (how we built it), an appointment scheduling agent, and shipment tracking. A fourth, dock automation, came out of discovery work on carrier docks.

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Writing

• How We Built an MCP Server on Our Existing APIs
  A production MCP server built on the reporting APIs, identity provider, and Kubernetes cluster we already had. OAuth, multi-tenancy, tool design, and performance.
• All writing →

From engineer to VP

• 2011, first job. Developing iOS apps at Teleparadigm Networks. Built an app for Sydney Airport.
• 2011 to 2017, MAQ Software. Built enterprise apps and reporting tools for Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks. In 2015, four years in, I took on a team of 10.
• 2017, joined Optym as a Senior Software Engineer. Developed the MVP of the planning platform as a monolith.
• 2018, the rebuild. Led the rebuild of that monolith into a cloud native platform, with live customers running on it throughout.
• 2020 to 2023, Manager, then Director. Rode along with drivers to understand their pain points firsthand, and led the development of the mobile app drivers use. Took the problems with no owner: monthly releases, release discipline, production failures customers could feel.
• 2024 to 2026, Senior Director, then VP. Five promotions in nine years. Now I own engineering, the product roadmap, and the business unit P&L.
• 2026, still building. Shipped an MCP server, shipment tracking, and an appointment scheduling agent this year.

Experience

Education

• B.Tech, Computer Science and Engineering, Younis Sultan College of Engineering, JNTU Hyderabad · 2007 to 2011
• Nine Microsoft certifications across .NET development, SQL Server, SharePoint, and web development

Skills

TypeScript, React, React Native, Node.js, Python, .NET, Azure (AKS, Azure SQL, Service Bus), Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Docker, Redis, Keycloak, Datadog, CockroachDB, MCP servers, and agentic AI applications, including voice agents and browser use agents. Nine Microsoft certifications.

Press

• Southeastern Freight Lines completes rollout of the platform across its network · DC Velocity
• Yellow selects the platform to optimize pickup and delivery operations · DC Velocity
• Frozen Food Express partners for pickup and delivery route optimization · PRWeb
• Platform deployment at Saia wins Top Supply Chain Project award · GlobeNewswire