Director of Engineering · Headspace
Building enduring products, platforms, and teams.
I’m Kunal Parakh, an engineering leader focused on the intersection of product growth, platform strategy, and organizational clarity.
Selected work
Creating leverage where product, technology, and organizations meet.
Connecting engineering investment to business growth
Aligned engineering strategy, technical OKRs, and portfolio investments with product and go-to-market priorities across consumer, enterprise, and health-plan businesses.
18% YoY ARR growth · 12–15% conversion lift
Turning operational complexity into reusable leverage
Built shared authorization and eligibility capabilities that replaced fragmented rules with configurable platforms—creating speed without trading away reliability.
95+ features · 30+ rules · 85M-member migration
Leading the launches that cross organizational boundaries
Led delivery across product, design, data, security, sales, and external partners to launch enterprise integrations and unblock high-value opportunities.
20% faster integrations · 15% fewer support requests
How I lead
Thoughtful systems. Clear decisions. Strong teams.
Technology matters, but how people build it determines whether the impact lasts.
Clarity over ceremony
Translate ambiguity into decisions, accountable owners, and measurable outcomes.
Platforms with a purpose
Invest in foundations when they create velocity, reliability, or repeatable revenue.
People are the multiplier
Build leaders, create room for ownership, and make the engineering bar attainable.
Experience
From building products to building organizations.
Headspace
Director of Engineering · 2024 — Present
Leading engineering across growth, B2B, health plans, and platform initiatives.
Dun & Bradstreet
Software Engineer
Built customer products, shared services, and full-stack commerce experiences.
University of Southern California
M.S. in Computer Science
Developed foundations in distributed systems, data, and product engineering.
Hands-on foundations
The craft behind the leadership.
Before leading organizations, I learned by building end to end.
Product engineering
Dun & Bradstreet
Customer products, shared APIs, commerce flows, and OAuth-backed cross-application experiences.
Startup ownership
MobiMedia + BriskSale
Architecture, data models, cloud deployment, payments, shipping, notifications, and production operations.
Applied computer science
University of Southern California
Search over NASA datasets, NLP, distributed systems, packet analysis, and mobile/web products.
Product discovery
FabShop + NoseKnows
Customer research, rapid prototyping, validation, image processing, and USC Viterbi recognition.
Beyond work
I’m a lifelong learner, a new dad, and an avid traveler who is happiest on a mountain trail. I value curiosity, perspective, and helping people do work they’re proud of.