gopal@london:~$ whoami

Gopal
Yendluri

role: CTO · Technology Director
experience: 22+ years
location: London, UK 🇬🇧
current: CTO @ Freddie's Flowers

Hands-on CTO with 22+ years building and scaling digital platforms across subscription e-commerce, logistics, data, and cloud. Still deeply technical — and actively driving AI-assisted engineering adoption.

Gopal Yendluri
// about

Who I Am

I'm a hands-on CTO based in London with over two decades of experience building platforms that scale. My career started in C writing disaster recovery software for InMage (Microsoft) in Hyderabad, moved through telecom and SMS infrastructure, travel tech, mobile platforms, and eventually to leading engineering at subscription e-commerce businesses.

I’ve stayed close to the technical side throughout my career. I still review PRs, get involved in the code when needed, and use AI tools like Cursor and Claude in my day-to-day work. It helps me stay connected to the real challenges engineers face and make more practical, informed decisions.

Currently CTO at Freddie's Flowers, a subscription flower delivery business. Led platform modernisation, cross-country team scaling, and AI adoption across the engineering organisation.

// journey

Career Timeline

2020 — Present

Chief Technology Officer

Freddie's Flowers

Leading technology strategy, platform modernisation, and AI adoption. Managing cross-functional teams across UK and offshore.

2018 — 2020

Head of Technology

TouchNote

Led engineering for the world's most popular postcard app. Scaled infrastructure, migrated to Kubernetes, built data platform.

2016 — 2018

Systems Architect / Head of Infrastructure

TouchNote

Re-architected backend systems, established AWS infrastructure, handled 100x traffic spikes with zero performance impact.

2013 — 2016

Technical Lead Consultant

Da!Travel, SilverDoor, Grass Roots

Built travel meta-search engines with GDS integrations (Amadeus, Sabre). Payment systems, booking platforms, API architecture.

2010 — 2013

Lead Developer

TouchNote

Rebuilt API layer supporting iOS, Android, HP webOS, and Symbian. Scaled for Samsung Olympics campaign (100K transactions/hour).

2009 — 2010

Technical Architect

Airhub Technologies

Built high-throughput SMS infrastructure using Kannel. Delivered 40 million SMS messages for political campaigns.

2008 — 2009

Senior Software Engineer

Tata Consultancy Services

IPTV Centre of Excellence. Microsoft MediaRoom integration, real-time video delivery systems for telecom operators.

2007 — 2008

Software Engineer

Tanla Solutions

Telecom offshore projects including reverse auction systems and M-interacTV mobile interactive television platform.

2006 — 2007

Software Engineer

InMage Systems (acquired by Microsoft)

Enterprise disaster recovery software in C. Volume-based and file-based replication, database replication using rsync.

2005 — 2006

PHP Developer

National Informatics Center

Developed centralised citizen information system working with District Informatics Officer. First professional role.

// skills

Technical Stack

Languages
JavaScript/TypeScriptNode.jsPHPGoPythonC/C++
Cloud & DevOps
AWSDockerKubernetesCI/CDTerraform
Databases
PostgreSQLMySQLRedisAmazon Redshift
AI Tooling
CursorClaude CodeCodexKiro
Data
dbtLookerStitchDataAirflow
Frontend
Next.jsReactAngularJSTailwindCSS
// recognition

🏆 Pennies Unsung Hero Award 2024

Awarded at the 5th Annual Pennies Awards (October 2024) for outstanding technical contribution to Freddie's Flowers' micro-donation integration — enabling customers to round up their payments to support UK charities. Freddie's Flowers also won the Partnership Breakthrough Award at the same ceremony.

category: Unsung Hero
org: Pennies Foundation
year: 2024
pennies.org.uk ↗
// roots

Not Forgotten Where I Came From

💧

Clean Water for My Village

Personally funded and led the implementation of a reverse osmosis water purification plant in my native village in Andhra Pradesh, India. For years, the community relied on contaminated water sources with serious health consequences.

Designed for long-term sustainability — a nominal charge of 5p for 20 litres covers electricity and maintenance costs, ensuring the plant remains operational for the community.

10+ YearsSustainable ModelAndhra Pradesh
📚

Supporting Rural Education

Providing basic educational essentials — books, school bags, and shoes — to students in my native village and a few neighbouring rural communities. Small contributions that help children attend school with dignity.

In the UK, I work with local communities to advise young people on education pathways, career options, and job opportunities — helping bridge the gap between potential and opportunity.

10+ YearsYouth MentoringUK & India

No matter how far the journey takes me, my roots remain close to my heart.

// testimonials

What People Say

From colleagues, managers, and executives I've worked with over the years.

“Gopal arrived at a growing start-up that possessed a small-scale and creaking infrastructure and slow, unreliable APIs. He proceeded to re-engineer both. He massively improved the speed and reliability of our service and established an infrastructure that dealt with a spike of 100x in daily usage with no performance impact whatsoever. Incredible.”

“Gopal makes things work. Every company needs him.”

FG
Freddie Gjertsen
Head of Product, TouchNote

“I've seen this young man maturing over the years and I consider him a giant today. His eye for detail, meticulousness in delivering results, ability to vision out technical minutiae are truly great. He can quickly 'see' what others would take a few eons to understand.”

“If Gopal takes on anything you can be sure that it will be completed very successfully.”

AD
Animesh Das
Engineering Manager, InMage/Tanla

“Super smart, always delivers, extremely responsible and reliable, master of all things AWS-PHP-Java-DB-SysAdmin (and then some), relaxed and always happy at 8am (or at 2am when GoDaddy goes down). As a Sr Developer or contractor, Gopal will no doubt be star performer in any team he joins.”

OR
Oded Ran
CEO, TouchNote

“Gopal is the Golden Child - his famous nickname at TouchNote as he was quite simply a treasure to work with. Gopal is an excellent developer, an intelligent man and someone I hope to work with again in the future. Truly brilliant at his job and a thoroughly nice person too.”

AH
Andy Hunt
CRM Developer

“Gopal is an excellent developer. He is extremely diligent, conscientious, humble and constantly good-natured, but is also an expert problem solver. He is someone you wish you could clone!”

PB
Paul Burdin
CFO, TouchNote

“One of the most amazing people I have ever worked with. His passion and dedication to his work is second to none. Not only was he able to work diligently to solve complex problems but also break down step by step all the pieces that made a problem. Simply put, Gopal is a prodigy and is second to none.”

MA
Marlon Andall
QA Manager
// writing

Recent Posts

All posts →
// get in touch

Let's Talk

Whether it's a CTO opportunity, technical advisory, or just a conversation about engineering — I'm always happy to connect.

contact@yendluri.com