engineering manager · identity · AI-first

I lead the team building the platforms and products other engineers depend on.

more below

Software is two products: the one users see, and the one the next engineer maintains.

Both matter.

01

brief background

I'm an Engineering Manager at Splunk, leading the team that owns identity, access, and integrations for Splunk Observability Cloud. I've been at Splunk seven years across IC and EM roles — long enough to ship Unified Identity end-to-end, build a custom RBAC system from scratch, and promote four engineers along the way.

Outside of work: roughly 6,000 hours of Dota 2 across the years, 100,000+ Spotify minutes a year, ten-plus concerts when the calendar allows, and an Apple Watch I'm forever trying to close out before midnight.

The throughline, if there is one, is that I keep ending up at the seam between platforms — wiring things together that weren't designed to talk to each other, then figuring out who's allowed to do what once they can.

05

say hi

Easiest by email. The JSON is the same thing, served properly.

~/.well-known/contact.json 200 ok
{
"subject": {
"name": "Ankit Bhagat",
"role": "Engineering Manager",
"location": "San Francisco Bay Area"
},
"endpoints": {
},
"scopes_supported": ["EM", "PM", "Staff Eng"],
"audience": ["AI labs", "product companies"],
"response_time": "usually within a day"
}

GET /.well-known/contact.json →

A platform without a product is a hobby.
A product without a platform is a demo.