Razorpay Appoints ex-Google Leader Prabu Rambadran as SVP, Engineering

Razorpay has strengthened its technology leadership with the appointment of Prabu Rambadran as Senior Vice President, Engineering. Based in Bengaluru, the company says Rambadran brings more than 20 years of experience building and scaling engineering teams and enterprise-grade systems—most recently at Google Cloud, where he led critical infrastructure work across cloud security and API management.

“At Razorpay, innovation has always come from our people—builders who push boundaries and solve real problems at scale. Excited to welcome Prabu as we go deeper on AI-driven products and global expansion. Prabu brings deep experience in building secure, high-performance, intelligent systems. His leadership will strengthen our tech foundation as we build AI-first platforms for the next decade of digital payments and banking,” said Shashank Kumar, MD & Co-founder, Razorpay.

Prabu Rambadran: what he brings to the table

Prabu joins Razorpay after senior engineering roles at Google Cloud and earlier leadership stints at Nutanix and Microsoft. The company highlights his work on cloud security, Google’s API management solution and multiple enterprise software products. Those experiences position him to handle the complexity and scale that modern payments platforms require — from latency-sensitive transaction systems to risk and compliance engines.

Speaking on his appointment, Prabu Rambadran said, “What excites me most about Razorpay is its culture of relentless innovation, the drive to solve complex problems, and making an impact at scale. I’m thrilled to be part of this incredible team as we build secure, intelligent, and future-ready systems that shape the next wave of fintech transformation across India and Southeast Asia.”

The role: priorities and charter

At Razorpay, Prabu will lead the engineering charter across risk and intelligence, business banking, payments, customer engagement and core infrastructure. As SVP of Engineering, he is expected to drive product and platform excellence with a focus on secure, resilient and high-performance systems — priorities that are central as Razorpay scales AI capabilities and expands regionally.

The announcement frames his hire as strategic: Razorpay is pushing to build AI-first, globally adaptable platforms that support digital payments and business banking across India and Southeast Asia. Prabu’s remit therefore spans not just systems engineering but also embedding AI into product workflows — from fraud detection to business assistants and optimisation engines.

Razorpay has spent the past decade building a dominant fintech platform in India, and the company’s roadmap now emphasises AI, cross-border payments and a broader product set for businesses. The press release links Prabu’s appointment to that next phase: further deepening engineering capabilities, accelerating product innovation, and shoring up the technology backbone for global growth.

The company notes innovations such as Agentic Payments on ChatGPT, biometric card authentication, an MCP server for AI payment integrations, and internal AI products including a Fraud Detection Engine and RAY, its AI business assistant — all signals that the firm is already investing heavily in model-driven productisation. Prabu’s engineering leadership will be judged on converting these experiments into reliable, scalable services for millions of merchants.

Hiring senior engineering talent from hyperscale cloud providers is a clear signal of intent, but execution will determine impact. Key challenges for Prabu and his teams will include:

• Operationalising AI at scale: Ensuring models run reliably in production with predictable latency and cost.

• Security and compliance: Payments infrastructure faces high regulatory and security demands across jurisdictions.

• Platform resilience: Maintaining high availability during aggressive feature rollouts and geographic expansion.

• Talent scale: Building and retaining engineering teams capable of owning full-stack products in a competitive market.

If Prabu can help Razorpay demonstrate improved operational metrics—lower fraud rates, faster time-to-market for AI features, and stronger cross-border rails—the hire will quickly be seen as value-accretive.

Razorpay’s announcement positions Prabu Rambadran’s appointment as a technology-first move to prepare the company for a decade of AI-led fintech innovation. For enterprises and partners, the expectation will be practical: better reliability, smarter risk signals, and AI features that tangibly improve business outcomes. For investors and competitors, the hire signals that Razorpay is serious about scaling not just products, but the engineering discipline needed to run them at scale.