Ankit Gupta is a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Samsara’s Platform Business. Based in Bengaluru, India, he joined the company in early 2025 and is responsible for leading the engineering teams focused on Samsara’s core services and infrastructure. 

We caught up with Ankit to learn more about his path into tech, what he's working on now, and how platform engineering plays a critical, if sometimes unseen, role in delivering value to customers.

Hi Ankit. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where did you start out, and what brought you to Samsara?

I grew up in India, and that’s where I did my bachelor’s degree in computer science. After working for a couple of years, I moved to the US to do my master’s at Texas A&M University. My goal was always to return to India once I’d finished my education and gained some international experience. 

I moved back to India in 2017 and spent nearly seven years at a startup focused on mobile device management. The technology stack had some overlap, especially around device data and infrastructure, which made the move to Samsara feel like the natural next step. Plus, it was a chance to take the kind of work I’d been doing and apply it on a much bigger scale and with far greater impact.

Can you tell us more about the platform business and the role it plays within the Samsara ecosystem? 

Of course. When people talk about Samsara’s Connected Operations Platform, they mostly think about the AI cameras, safety features, fuel saving tools, tracking – the list goes on. 

But all these tools, products, and features are built on a platform. Think of it as the foundation that everything else is built on. We sit underneath the end-user products – whether that’s fleet management, safety, or telematics – and we make sure those products can access and process the data they need.

You have to remember that Samsara’s hardware generates a huge amount of information, things like GPS location, fuel usage, battery levels, and more. All of that data flows through our platform systems first. We ingest it, structure it, and expose it to other product teams through APIs and shared infrastructure, which allows them to build their features.

So the platform enables the rest of the product suite to function?

Exactly. The platform allows Samsara’s different tools to speak the same language and operate consistently. Yes, for many people, it whirs away in the background, but without it, nothing else would work smoothly.

Are you able to share an example of something you’re building right now?

One of the biggest projects we’re working on is called EMR, which stands for Entity Metadata Registry. It’s about simplifying the way Samsara’s products interact with core platform features so that instead of wiring everything up manually, product teams can plug into EMR once, and they automatically get access to those shared features. It’s like having a central hub.

So it makes it easier to launch and scale new products?

Yes, and it also makes things more consistent. For example, if two different teams are building CSV upload features, and they do it in slightly different ways, the customer could end up with two different user experiences. With EMR, everything flows through the same interface, so the experience is uniform from day one.

And what kind of impact does that have from a customer point of view?

The benefit is that new features arrive faster, and they just work. Seamlessly. Our customers don’t have to think about integrations or wonder why one part of the platform behaves differently from another. It’s more reliable, more intuitive, and faster to adopt.

What else are you working on? 

We’re also working on scaling our cloud infrastructure. As Samsara grows, we’re seeing more and more data come in from devices. That means we’re working on a more scaled and distributed database to support our growing workloads so that they can handle increased traffic without any slowdowns or downtime.

So again, that’s about preparing the platform for growth?

Exactly. We want to make sure that no matter how many customers we bring on or how much data we process, the experience stays smooth. That means better performance, more reliability, and no surprises. We may not be as visible as some of Samsara’s solutions, but our work enables those customer-facing teams to move faster and deliver better experiences. Without the platform, they wouldn’t be able to do what they do as effectively.

What’s been most surprising for you since joining Samsara?

I’ve definitely developed a new appreciation for the world of physical operations. Before this, I didn’t fully realise how much data trucks and trailers could generate – or how much of a difference small things can make.

For example, I recently learned that around 25% of vehicle accidents happen while reversing. That’s a huge insight. With the data we collect, we can identify patterns like that and help customers reduce risk. Seeing how we can use data to make operations safer and more efficient has been really eye-opening.

And finally, what’s it like working at Samsara? 

It’s great. I get to work with some really smart people, and even in a management role, I still get hands-on with design, architecture discussions, and even code. We also use a lot of tools that boost productivity, such as AI-driven tools like Cursor. This really helps us work smarter and move faster. There’s a strong focus here on making engineers effective, and that makes a huge difference not just to me but to our customers as well.