Ashish Prakash Khandelwal is a Principal Engineering Architect at Microsoft Corporation, where he plays a critical leadership role within the Azure Data R&D division. With over 17 years of experience in legacy system modernization and data platform migration, Ashish specializes in transforming mission-critical mainframe applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud. He currently leads the Data SQL Ninja program for Mainframe and Legacy modernization, which is instrumental in accelerating the adoption of Azure Data Platform across global enterprises.
In his role, Ashish has spearheaded more than 50 end-to-end mainframe migration engagements for Fortune 100 companies, overseeing the modernization of technologies such as DB2, VSAM, IMS, COBOL, and CICS. His strategic contributions span engineering feedback loops, capability specification authoring, and roadmap development for core Azure products like Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, and Data Migration tools.
Ashish’s work extends beyond execution—he is deeply involved in evangelizing modernization practices across Microsoft’s global partner ecosystem. He has authored technical whitepapers, led over 50 technical workshops, and trained more than 200 Microsoft field sellers. His efforts have significantly reduced customers' total cost of ownership and accelerated Azure deal closures through best-practice frameworks and automation.
Before joining Microsoft in 2018, Ashish held engineering and analyst roles at Springleaf Financial (now OneMain Financial), Thomson Reuters (via Codeworks), Syntel Inc., and CapGemini India. Across these roles, he contributed extensively to the enhancement, migration, and maintenance of mainframe-based credit risk, securities processing, and insurance quoting systems.
Ashish holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Amravati University and is certified in mainframe application programming. He has received multiple SMART Awards recognizing his excellence in team management, client handling, and impactful contributions to enterprise-grade application reliability and delivery.