Software engineering, with an operator's seat.
I'm Ashok Hirpara — a director at a US-focused IT services company, leading partnerships, delivery, customer success, business planning, and packaged solutions that compound into recurring revenue. First decade as an engineer — front to back, traditional to cloud-native. Now leading the teams shipping the next decade of it.
Not just an engineer. Not yet a CEO. The operator between the two.
A decade ago I started with no roadmap — just curiosity and a willingness to figure things out. From junior to senior to lead to director, every role taught me something the previous one couldn't see. From traditional development through cloud-native systems to AI-native workflows, every era asked for a different version of me. The constant through all of it: adapt, or get left behind. And the work isn't done — I'm still evolving today, and intend to be evolving the day after the next shift arrives.
Today I run the operator's seat at a US-focused IT services company. The seat between the CEO and the team — where partnerships get negotiated, delivery systems get redesigned, customer success becomes a revenue function, and packaged solutions get translated into recurring revenue. It's not pure engineering. It's not pure business. It's the translation layer between the two, and that's where the leverage lives.
I've built projects, products, automations, teams, and departments — so I can read the room from every chair I've actually sat in: the engineer's (a decade), the lead's, the director's. And the rooms across — clients, owners, and the engineers shipping into both. What I think about most: how the org chart of 2027 won't look like 2024, how vendor evaluation has been rewired by AI, and what gets approved in hiring now — and what quietly doesn't.
Six domains. One P&L line.
Every responsibility ladders up to the same scoreboard — predictable, compounding recurring revenue.
Partnerships & Alliances
Evaluating vendors, building integration economics, and structuring agreements that survive contact with delivery. Partnership math has been quietly rewired by AI.
Delivery Operations
Redesigning service delivery so output scales faster than headcount. AI inside the delivery layer isn't a feature — it's a structural shift in the operating model.
Customer Success
Treating CS as a recurring-revenue engine rather than a support cost center. Retention, expansion, and the operating rhythm that keeps both compounding.
Business Planning
Quarterly and annual planning that survives AI-era uncertainty. Headcount logic, vendor spend, capability bets, and what gets accelerated — or quietly cut.
Solution Packaging
Turning bespoke services into productized offerings. Finding the repeatable shape inside custom work and packaging it to be sold once, delivered many.
Recurring Revenue
The line that ties everything else together. Every other domain is a tributary; this is the river. Predictability, compounding, and the discipline that produces both.
A decade. Four chapters. One continuous expansion outward.
How I think. How I decide.
Systems over heroics
If a problem requires a hero, the system is wrong. Build the structure that makes next quarter's version of this problem boring.
Second-order thinking
"AI can code" isn't the insight. What changes because of it — hiring, ladders, partnerships, org design — is. Stop at first-order at your peril.
Leverage > effort
The right question isn't "how hard should I work on this?" It's "what changes the leverage equation?" If nothing does, the work is the wrong work.
Translate between worlds
Engineering language. Operational language. Business language. I move between all three because I've worked in all three — and the engineers reading this know which translations land and which don't. The director's job is the translation layer; most decisions get lost in the bad translations.
Build for predictability
Predictable delivery beats spectacular delivery every time. Customers, CEOs, and boards all buy the same thing: the version of you that shows up the same way next quarter.
Read all four chairs
Client, owner, engineer, employee — every decision lands differently in each. I've sat in all four. The work is making sure the decision survives contact with all four.
Still building. Still evolving.
Every quarter, every decision, the next chapter — the work continues.