Prince Kumar

Lead Solution Architect & Engineering Manager  ·  Metlife Japan

12+ Years Experience JLPT N2 SAFe 6 Scrum Master Azure AZ-104

Professional Summary

Lead Solution Architect with 12+ years of experience designing and modernizing large-scale enterprise systems in the insurance, fintech, and enterprise software domains in Japan. Proven track record leading architecture for cloud-native platforms supporting 50,000+ sales agents and high-volume insurance transactions.

Specialized in distributed system architecture, Kubernetes platforms, and enterprise modernization programs, with hands-on expertise across microservices, API platforms, and data systems. Experienced leading cross-functional engineering organizations of 40+ engineers and driving large-scale cloud transformations across legacy and modern systems.

Fluent in English and business-level Japanese (JLPT N2), with strong experience collaborating across engineering, business, and security stakeholders in global organizations.

Work Experience

Metlife Japan · Tokyo, Japan
Mar 2020 – Present
Manager, Lead Solution Architect — Distribution System Apr 2025 – Present

Lead architecture and engineering direction for the modernization of MetLife Japan's insurance distribution platform processing 1M+ transactions per day, supporting internal sales channels and partner integration.

  • Lead and mentor a cross-functional team of 40+ engineers across 8 agile teams responsible for design, development, and operations of the distribution F2F platform.
  • Established architecture review processes and technical standards across 8 engineering teams to ensure consistency, security, and scalability.
  • Architected modernization of the F2F insurance distribution platform used by 50,000+ agents, improving performance by ~70% and reducing production incidents by ~80%.
  • Designed and optimized Kubernetes and Istio infrastructure, increasing availability to 99.99% and cutting deployment time by ~80% via automated scaling and traffic routing.
  • Defined resilience strategies including Kubernetes health-check, automated failover, and monitoring frameworks to improve operational stability.
  • Led migration of 15+ insurance product systems from legacy monolithic architecture to cloud-native microservices on Azure.
Assistant Manager, Senior Solution Architect — Distribution System Apr 2022 – Mar 2025
  • Provided technical leadership across 8 cross-functional agile teams responsible for migrating the legacy distribution platform to cloud-native architecture.
  • Designed the target architecture for the F2F insurance distribution platform on Azure Kubernetes Service supporting 50,000+ sales agents daily.
  • Led transformation of legacy ESB / ETL / SOAP-based integrations into modern API-driven microservices architecture.
  • Migrated CI/CD pipelines and observability from on-premise to Azure DevOps and cloud-based monitoring platforms.
  • Implemented centralized observability using Splunk, AppDynamics, and Azure Application Insights to track system performance and business KPIs.
Senior Software Engineer — Bancassurance System Mar 2020 – Mar 2022
  • Collaborated in designing and executing the migration of two major Distribution Bancassurance platforms from on-prem infrastructure to Cloud.
  • Designed system integrations and architecture proposals for new platform capabilities and BAU activities.
  • Design and Integration of SSO & R/P for Sales Platform to connect seamlessly with existing systems.
Tech: Java Groovy NextJS React Spring Boot MongoDB Azure Kubernetes Istio Azure DevOps Docker Splunk AppDynamics
Origami Inc · Tokyo, Japan
Feb 2019 – Feb 2020
Sr. Software Engineer — Platform Development Feb 2019 – Feb 2020

Developed microservices for Origami Pay, a mobile payment platform used by merchants and consumers across Japan.

  • Designed and implemented Go-based microservices supporting P2P payments, wallet management, and KYC verification workflows.
  • Built payment services handling merchant transactions and wallet balance management.
  • Implemented fraud detection features and 3D Secure authentication flows for credit card payments.
Tech: Golang AWS PostgreSQL MongoDB Docker React Redis GitLab
Works Applications Inc · Tokyo, Japan
Nov 2016 – Jan 2019
R&D Engineer — HUE Interface Nov 2016 – Jan 2019

Large-scale enterprise platform development for HUE ERP systems.

  • Developed microservices supporting large-scale data ingestion and analytics workflows.
  • Built REST APIs for processing and ingestion of large-size data to the system.
  • Implemented batch processing, data transformation, encryption, compression, and streaming with Kafka, Hadoop, Hive, and PrestoDB.
  • Developed high-performance data synchronization services across cloud and on-prem environments.
Tech: Java PostgreSQL AWS Cassandra Kubernetes Kafka Hadoop Hive PrestoDB Ansible Redis
Hikari Tsushin Inc · Tokyo, Japan
Feb 2014 – Oct 2016
Lead Software Engineer — System Development Feb 2014 – Oct 2016

Developed backend systems for EPARK, a real-time reservation and queue management platform.

  • Built REST APIs supporting reservation and waiting-time management services.
  • Migrated existing applications from on-prem infrastructure to AWS.
  • Designed centralized user account management services used across multiple EPARK products.
Tech: Java PHP MySQL Redis AWS Elasticsearch JavaScript
Venera Technologies Pvt Ltd · New Delhi, India
Jun 2013 – Nov 2013
Software Engineer Jun 2013 – Nov 2013

Developed a video encoding and transcoding platform (cutcompress) — data compression, transcoding pipelines, and file splitters for combining multiple inputs.

Tech: C++ MFC MySQL JavaScript