I am Uma Chingunde. I am currently at Block, leading engineering efforts for Square Identity. Before this, I led engineering at Render from seed to Series B. I previously led the Compute team at Stripe, which supported the internal compute platform within Stripe’s Foundation (infrastructure) organization. Before Stripe, I led engineering teams at Delphix and VMware. Before starting engineering management roles, I was an engineer on the vSphere platform team at VMware, building out Virtual Machine management primitives.

I grew up in India, moved to the US when I was in my 20s, and have lived in the Bay Area, primarily San Francisco, for many years. I like writing about tech, people, and the intersection of both.

How to reach me

• Email - uma [dot] chingunde [at] gmail.com Or email [at] uma.dev
• https://twitter.com/umachingunde
• https://www.threads.net/@umachingunde
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/umachingunde/

Advising and coaching

I take on a few advisory or coaching clients when I have more cycles (as of Dec 2025, I am being very selective about this!). I like helping founders or early startup employees, particularly those in leadership positions, navigate the complexity of early-stage startups. Drop me a note (email above) if that is something you are interested in working with me on.

Other

• I occasionally give talks or am a guest on podcasts or panels. Some previous ones here.
• A bit more about how I angel invest and investments here