About Me

22 years in technology, 18 of them at Microsoft. Software, education, financial services, HR, and professional services. The industries change, but the questions are surprisingly similar.

I help organizations take AI, Power Apps, and automation from an idea to a pilot, and from a pilot to something the business actually runs on.

I'm Kaustubh Giri, a Senior Solution Engineer at Microsoft based in Austin, Texas. Most days I'm working with enterprise teams on AI agents, Copilot Studio, and Power Platform. Sometimes that's in an executive workshop about AI strategy. Sometimes it's a technical session trying to figure out why one agent answers a question and its clone doesn't.

What I work on

My focus is agentic AI and enterprise automation: designing agents that do real work across finance, HR, customer service, operations, and IT, and making sure they're governed well enough to scale. In practice that means:

• AI strategy with leadership teams: where agents fit, what to build first, and how to measure value.
• Agent architecture and design: Copilot Studio, connectors, MCP, knowledge grounding, and orchestration patterns that keep cost and complexity under control.
• Governance and operational readiness: environment strategy, DLP, identity, ALM, and monitoring. These are what make it possible to go from 5 agents to 500 without losing track of them.
• Hands-on troubleshooting: when something isn't working, I like to establish a baseline, collect the evidence, and work out the actual cause before anyone starts changing production.

How I got here

I started my career in 2004 on the front lines of technical support, troubleshooting Dell desktops and Windows for Wipro Spectramind. From there I moved to Convergys as an in-team trainer for Windows XP, then to Symantec, supporting Backup Exec, Windows Server, and Exchange.

In 2008 I joined Microsoft as a Support Engineer for Dynamics CRM, back in the CRM 3.0 and 4.0 days. In 2011 I became a Premier Field Engineer for Dynamics CRM, based in Chicago. For the next ten years, I was a trusted advisor to enterprise customers, making sure their CRM environments were healthy, performing well, and ready for whatever the business needed next.

In 2021 I moved into my current role as a Senior Solution Engineer, where I help organizations adopt Copilot, Copilot Studio, Power Platform, and agentic AI.

Over 18 years at Microsoft, the technology has changed many times, from on-premises CRM to cloud, low-code, and now AI agents. The fundamentals haven't. Healthy environments, clear ownership, and a reliable path to production mattered for CRM in 2011, and they matter even more for agents today. A career that started in support also taught me one habit I still rely on: establish a baseline and find the real cause before changing anything.

Certifications

• Dynamics 365 for Customer Service Functional Consultant Associate - Microsoft
• MB-230: Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service - Microsoft
• MB-200: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Core - Microsoft
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online Deployment - Microsoft

How I like to work

• Start with the "why." I'd rather get the problem right than give a quick answer to the wrong one.
• Practical over theoretical. If the admin center doesn't do something a customer needs, I'll build a small tool that does. That's how my Power Platform ALM guide and RBAC role manager came about.
• Honest about limits. If something is in preview or doesn't work the way the documentation suggests, I'll say so and suggest an alternative.
• Governance as a guardrail, not a gate. The goal is to make the safe path the easy one.

What you'll find here

I write about what I'm seeing in the field: environment strategy, DLP, agent governance, cost management, and practical patterns for building with Copilot Studio and Power Platform.

Start here:

• Environment Strategy and DLP: What I Recommend as Your Power Platform and Copilot Studio Footprint Grows
• The 2026 Governance Toolbox: How I Track and Manage Power Platform and Copilot Studio at Scale

I speak English, Hindi, and Marathi.

Let's connect

If you're working through an AI or governance challenge and want to compare notes, reach out on LinkedIn.

The views on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent those of my employer.