Vikram Seshadri (he/him)

Director of Reliability Engineering at Gulfline Process Systems · Stanford Alumni Interviewer

Houston, Texas, United States

About

I keep big, hot, pressurized equipment from failing, which mostly means asking why something broke before anyone replaces it. Sixteen years in Houston's energy and industrial sector, the last six leading reliability and data teams. I'm interested in how people learn things that aren't on any syllabus, and I mentor early-career engineers, many of them the first in their families to work in the field. I've interviewed Houston-area applicants for Stanford since 2014 and still enjoy every conversation.

Experience

Gulfline Process Systems (Houston, TX) - Director of Reliability Engineering, 2020 - present - Lead 14 engineers and analysts across four refineries and chemical plants. - Built a sensor-based early-warning program for compressor failures; cut unplanned shutdowns by about a third.

Gulfline Process Systems - Senior Reliability Engineer, 2015 - 2020

Bayou Grid Analytics (Houston, TX) - Data Engineer, 2011 - 2015 - Wrote forecasting models for a regional power-demand startup through two hurricane seasons.

Meridian Petrochemical Services (Baytown, TX) - Process Engineer, 2009 - 2011

Stanford Alumni Interview Program - Volunteer interviewer, Houston, 2014 - present

Education

Stanford University - B.S., Chemical Engineering, 2009. Minor in Linguistics, which I took because of one Phonetics class and never regretted.
Rice University - M.S., Statistics (part-time), 2014.

Volunteering

Stanford Club of Houston, events co-chair (2016 - present).
Math tutor, a Saturday program for middle schoolers in southwest Houston (2012 - present).

Languages

English (native), Tamil (conversational), Hindi (basic).

Interests

Cricket on weekend mornings, South Indian cooking with too many curry leaves, old radio technology, and hiking whenever I can get out of Houston's flatness.