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Achal Prabhakar

Achal Prabhakar

Product & Technology Executive and General Manager

San Francisco Bay Area. linkedin.com/in/achalprabhakar

General Manager and technology executive whose career spans the full arc from engineering leadership at massive scale to product leadership and business ownership. Today, I lead Mapping at Lyft, a 300+ person multidisciplinary organization spanning product, engineering, data science, AI, and operations. It is a function that sits at the heart of how Lyft competes, where every improvement compounds into driver efficiency, rider experience, and the unit economics of every ride.

My path there was deliberate. At HERE Technologies I led a 1000+ person organization building a $1B+ location business, then took on its 100+ person product organization and 40+ product portfolio. Before that I was General Manager of Amazon's Selection Discovery organization. Earlier still, I established Expedia's India operation and helped grow it from zero to 700 people.

25+ years building, growing, and transforming customer-centric teams across location technology, security, machine learning, e-commerce, retail, and travel, with a rounded approach that balances execution, innovation, and growth.

Leadership arc

  1. Engineering at scale

    1000+ strong global orgs, billion-dollar platforms

    HERE, Expedia, Microsoft

  2. Product leadership

    Head of Product, $1B+ portfolio of 40+ products

    HERE, 1Password

  3. General management

    Owning the business across product, eng, data science, AI, and ops

    Amazon, Lyft

Core expertise

  • P&L & business leadership
  • Product management & strategy
  • Technology management
  • GIS, location & mapping
  • Enterprise AI & ML platforms
  • Marketplace & e-commerce
  • Cross-functional org building
  • Global operations & site building
  • Developer platforms & open source

Professional experience

March 2025 — Present

Head of Mapping

Lyft in San Francisco Bay Area

Lead Mapping at Lyft, a 300 person organization spanning product, engineering, data science, AI, and operations. Own the full mapping and geospatial surface at the company: from underlying map data and the operators who keep it accurate, to routing, ETAs, and the in-app navigation drivers rely on.

  • Extraordinary scale. Billions of rides and hundreds of billions of ETA queries across multiple continents and business lines, with deep handling of airports, venues, and local regulations.

  • Competitive advantage. Every improvement shipped shows up in driver efficiency, rider experience, and the unit economics of every ride, compounding into real operational advantage and meaningful leverage on both the top and bottom line.

  • Industry leadership. Among the top 10 global contributors to OpenStreetMap, improving the map for everyone, not just Lyft riders.

2020 — Present

Executive Advisor & Advisory Board Member

Early & Growth-Stage Companies

Advise C-level executives and founders at category-leading companies on strategy, product, organizational design, and technology, including serving in interim executive capacity (CPO & CTO).

2023 — 2025

Vice President, Product Engineering

1Password

Led a diverse, multidisciplinary, globally distributed team of ~300 engineers, leaders, and subject matter experts owning engineering and support for 1Password's entire product offering: the world's best security products across every platform (Windows, Linux, Mac, Web, iPhone, Android, Watch, SDKs, APIs).

  • Extended beyond engineering into product leadership. Led a cross-company initiative that established 1Password's product leadership, bringing it to the forefront of industry leaderboards and market positioning.

  • Built with extreme customer empathy. Partnered across multiple organizations to craft scalable, highly performant, delightful products.

2020 — 2021

Vice President of Engineering

Landing AI in San Francisco Bay Area

Led ML and systems engineering teams across US, Colombia, and China building a first-of-its-kind, data-centric ML platform for manufacturing and ag-tech customers. Beyond engineering: coordinated a refinement of company strategy, led the product go-forward vision, defined the roadmap, and expanded the team for a subsequent public launch of the flagship AI platform.

2017 — 2020

Vice President of Engineering & Product

HERE Technologies in Berkeley, CA

Led the global 1000+ person Maps Organization responsible for all location content, including large-scale systems, machine learning, industry-leading tools, APIs, and data compilation, across three continents, building products generating $1B+ in topline.

Then expanded into product leadership as Head of Product Management for HERE's core portfolio ($1B+): a 100+ person, globally distributed product team managing 40+ products across Data, Platform, Services, and Developer offerings, spanning a wide variety of industry segments and markets.

2016 — 2017

Director & General Manager, Selection Discovery

Amazon in Seattle

General Manager of a 300+ person organization of Engineers, Scientists, Ontologists, Product Managers, and Ops at the core of Amazon retail technology: the systems and processes enabling customers to explore the world's most extensive catalog across web and mobile. The data mastered, classifications enabled, and product answers provided power category-based search, navigation, personalization, merchandising, and marketing channels.

2012 — 2016

Sr. Director of Technology

Expedia, Inc. in Bellevue

Technology leader for Expedia's Flights, Ad Engineering, Search Solutions, Cars, Cruises, Insurance, and New Product Incubation groups: a ~300 person organization across US/Canada and Asia building software powering multi-billion dollar revenue product lines.

  • Founded Expedia India. Established the office from scratch and helped grow it to 700+, driving site maturity while concurrently building the teams that rewrote the flights stack into a modern, cloud-hosted, microservices, white-label capable platform.

Earlier career

2008 — 2012

Principal Development Manager

Microsoft

Led and grew multiple development teams for core business applications in HR Staffing, Learning & Development, and Talent Management. Established and led the shared services User Experience team for Microsoft IT in India.

2004 — 2008

Vice President

Citigroup

VP & Lead Technical Advisor to the HROne strategic program: business systems transformation across all of Citi's businesses globally, a large-scale process, system, and operational effort spanning 4+ years.

2000 — 2002

Research

Los Alamos National Laboratory & NASA Langley

High Performance Computing research: hybrid programming models for massively parallel cc-NUMA and distributed systems; OpenMP compilation and performance. Published in reputed journals (5 selected publications).

1995 — 2004

Software Development & Entrepreneurship

Independent

Software development, entrepreneurship, online web properties, and open source. Started novel businesses; built large-scale systems driving digitization for SMBs and organizations including the multi-site University of Houston system.

Education

  • University of Houston

    MS (classes & research), Computer Science

  • St. Stephen's College, Delhi

    B.Sc. (Hons.), Chemistry

English and Hindi, both native or bilingual.

Career highlights

  • Lead a mapping function serving billions of rides and hundreds of billions of ETA queries
  • Led both a 1000+ person org and a 100+ product org over a $1B+ portfolio at HERE
  • GM of Amazon's 300+ person Selection Discovery organization
  • Founded and scaled Expedia India from zero to 700+ people
  • Brought 1Password to the forefront of industry leaderboards through cross-company product leadership
  • Top 10 global contributor to OpenStreetMap, via Lyft Mapping