Heena Piratiyath stands at the confluence of innovation, strategy, and leadership, leveraging her technical acumen to build secure, privacy-compliant systems in an increasingly complex digital world. As a Product Owner and Technical Program Manager at Google, she shapes the architecture of privacy-first tools, influencing industry standards and driving organizational change.
Her impact goes beyond execution Heena is a catalyst for change, a bridge between engineering and vision, and a leader known for clarity, strategy, and a dep commitment to privacy.
Early Life and Academic Foundation
Heena’s journey began in Mumbai, India, where she earned her Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology with distinction from the University of Mumbai. Her quest for advanced knowledge led her to the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where she completed her Master’s in Computer Science in 2012.
Currently, she is further deepening her expertise through a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence at The University of Texas at Austin, with graduation expected in 2026. This academic progression reflects a consistent theme in Heena’s journey: a drive to remain at the forefront of technological innovation.
These academic milestones laid a strong foundation for her analytical and problem-solving skills, which would go on to define her professional career. Her blend of theory and practice has enabled her to design impactful systems in some of the world’s most respected companies.
Professional Journey
Heena’s career reflects steady, strategic growth. She began as a Salesforce Engineer in 2013, building and optimizing Salesforce systems, integrating tools, and developing secure applications.
She then progressed through roles at Capgemini and PwC, rising from Salesforce Developer to Technical Architect and Manager. At PwC, she led a team of 20+ and partnered with C-level executives to drive customer engagement through large-scale Salesforce transformations. Her work included developing cloud strategies, integrating sentiment analysis, and architecting solutions for industries such as finance and insurance.
Now at Google, Heena leads complex compliance, privacy, and security initiatives, overseeing project lifecycles from initial vision through to launch for critical platforms. Her leadership in developing data retention solutions and conducting third-party product security and privacy evaluations has established new benchmarks for company-wide compliance efforts.
Leadership and Innovation
Heena’s leadership stands out for its collaborative, cross-functional nature. She aligns teams across geographies, functions, and expertise, ensuring technical solutions remain human-centric and while meeting business needs.
At Google, she has led high-impact initiatives such as development of controls to ensure third-party product compliance with security and privacy requirements, implementation of scalable content solution, AI-enabled solutions that streamline the development lifecycle and the creation of a security assessment framework that reduced rollout timelines by over 50%. Her work on data retention and deletion workflows strengthened privacy adherence, while her ability to bridge technical and business teams ensures the delivery of scalable, secure, and compliant solutions.
What sets her apart is her fluency in both engineering and strategic business. As a product leader, she defines visions and roadmaps while ensuring every deliverable aligns with evolving global data protection regulations.
Notable Achievements
- Privacy and Security Compliance Tools: Designed and launched tools that enforce data privacy and protection policies across sensitive platforms.
- Salesforce Security Risk Framework: Delivered a reusable framework that improved assessment timelines by 50%.
- Canonical Data Model Project: Streamlined data across systems to support advanced analytics and compliance tracking.
- Mentorship and Team Leadership: Led diverse teams to deliver seamless digital transformations for global enterprise clients.
Her results have not only improved technical infrastructure but have also set new benchmarks in privacy-centric product management.
Academic Contributions
Heena’s academic path, now culminating in AI studies at UT Austin, reflects her dedication to lifelong learning. She was selected to present a research poster at the UT System AI in Healthcare Symposium in Houston, showcasing her work on “Predicting the Age of Onset of Metabolic Diseases Using Machine Learning and Biomarkers.”
She bridges academic theory and industry practice, particularly in privacy engineering, cloud architecture, and data governance areas often discussed academically but rarely implemented with such scale and precision.
Future Vision and Impact
Heena is not one to rest on past achievements. Her pursuit of a second Master’s in Artificial Intelligence signals her forward-looking mindset and her drive to lead at the frontier of AI and privacy integration. She is positioning herself and the organizations she leads to remain resilient in a world where data security, ethical AI, and compliance are non-negotiable.
Her continued work ensures that companies can innovate responsibly, enabling progress without compromising user trust. Heena Piratiyath is more than a technical expert; she is a visionary, shaping not only products but also the ethical frameworks that will define the future of technology.
