Prem Kumar Joins SambaNova Systems as Senior Principal Engineer

Prem Kumar, a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with significant experience supporting Fortune 500 companies worldwide, has joined SambaNova Systems as Senior Principal Engineer, effective May 5, 2025. He most recently served as SRE for the top global brand in the financial services industry, and previously worked for five years as Senior Systems Administrator and SRE for one of the world’s top 10 video game companies by revenue.

Prem brings over a decade of advanced expertise in developing infrastructure, deployment processes, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to his new role, as well as a deep technical understanding of DevOps practices and release management. Specializing in automation, Kubernetes orchestration, cloud infrastructure provisioning, and product management, he has a proven ability to design and lead effective change management, ensure the seamless integration and timely delivery of AI products and solutions, supervise and collaborate with product engineering and cross-functional teams, and drive operational excellence in a fast-paced, innovative environment.

As Senior Principal Engineer at SambaNova Systems, Prem will oversee all release engineering activities associated with the development of sophisticated tooling to automate the build and deployment processes for microservices and cloud infrastructure. In this leadership position, he will be responsible for identifying and integrating new technologies that improve build and release efficiency, seamlessly incorporating new tools into CI/CD workflows, and architecting solutions tailored to specific project requirements. His responsibilities furthermore include continuous monitoring of the infrastructure to maintain the highest levels of system performance and reliability.

Prem received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering in his native India. After relocating to the United States, he earned a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a focus on Security from Tennessee Technological University. He continued his professional education at the University of Texas, where he earned two postgraduate diplomas in Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning Business Applications, and Data Science and Business Analytics. 

Additionally, Prem holds professional certifications including RHCSA and RHCE 6 licenses. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and has published multiple articles and conference papers in IEEE journals, including Privacy-Preserving Power Injection over a Hybrid AMI/LTE Smart Grid Network, Privacy-Preserving and Secure Communication Scheme for Power Injection in Smart Grid, and Privacy-Aware Power Charging Coordination in Future Smart Grid. His innovative contributions to Open Source platforms are utilized and cited by leading technology organizations. 

SambaNova Systems, founded in 2017, is a Palo Alto-based technology company specializing in high-performance computing solutions for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications. The company has been recognized with industry-leading awards, including earning fourth-place ranking on Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies of 2025, Computing Category,” and inclusion on the Forbes “2025 AI 50” list. SambaNova was also ranked sixth on Fortune Magazine’s “2024 Future 50” list. 

Speaking about his new position, Prem Kumar said, “I am very excited to join the team at SambaNova Systems, which has rapidly emerged as a leader in AI hardware and software innovation, and continues to reimagine the future with its groundbreaking technology developments such as SambaNova Suite, DataScale, and SN40L Chip, among others. I welcome the opportunity to contribute my expertise to the company’s cutting-edge solutions that enable organizations across diverse sectors to deploy state-of-the-art generative AI capabilities efficiently and securely.”