University of North Texas 
In a career that has spanned decades of technological change, Broadcom’s Vikas Sinha has established himself as a leader in a foundational technology for the world’s largest enterprises: mainframe computing.
As vice president of engineering and architecture for Broadcom’s Mainframe Software
Division, Sinha’s job is to guide the evolution of mainframe and influence the way
IT executives understand and evaluate modern mainframe computing.
Mainframes have been the foundation of large-scale computing for decades. They allow enterprises to store, process and secure vast amounts of data. For many enterprises and governments, the platform is the preferred option for their most critical workloads.
But not long ago, many believed mainframe’s best days were behind it. A 2013 conversation with the general manager of CA Technologies’ Mainframe Division (before its acquisition by Broadcom in 2018) persuaded Sinha to take on a new challenge: helping reposition the mainframe as the powerful, reliable platform it has always been.
At the time, Sinha was quite happy leading predictive analytics at IBM. It was a good job at a strong company. But after repeated attempts to recruit him, the manager persuaded Sinha to fly to New York for a face-to-face meeting.
“We spent hours talking, a great conversation” about mainframes uses, why they are relevant in the landscape of modern businesses and technologies, and the misconceptions surrounding the platform, Sinha recalled.
“Rather than asking if the technology was right or wrong, I realized it was a business problem,” he said. “The platform was extremely misunderstood.”
Intrigued, he took the challenge and left IBM to join CA Technologies.
Broadcom Invests in CA
When Broadcom acquired CA Technologies in 2018, the mainframe division was running very lean. “We were down to the bone,” Sinha said.
Things started moving in a positive direction with Broadcom’s investment and empowerment.
“We started hiring people, and some were even coming back,” he said. “We started to rebuild our teams.”
That growth in resources allowed Sinha’s team to accelerate innovation, re-establish growth, and extend leadership in the marketplace.
Sinha now leads the division’s global engineering efforts. Until March, he ran all customer-facing services — pre-sales, services, support, and education — an experience that gave him unique insight into customer needs and opportunities.
“Vikas has a huge breadth and wealth of technological skill and masterfully combines that with the ability to connect and relate to both our own Broadcom staff as well as our customers,” said Greg Lotko, the division’s senior vice president and general manager.
From India to the USA
The curiosity, discipline and desire to solve problems that have made Sinha successful have their roots in his upbringing in Hyderabad, India, where he was the eldest of three children.
His father was a senior government officer, eventually retiring as the surveyor general of India. “Even though my dad was a very senior officer, we were not wealthy,” Sinha recalled. “In a government job, you don’t make much money. But he was a man of character, a man of strong ethics.”
His mother was a homemaker, and held a master’s degree in sociology. In his family, education was the foundation of everything.
After completing his undergraduate degree in civil engineering, Sinha dreamed of becoming a research scientist in Antarctica. That dream was inspired by a friend’s brother who spent seasons doing research on the icy continent. It led him to cold-call American universities.
A professor at Florida Atlantic University answered, and eventually offered Sinha a fully funded assistantship in ocean engineering.
A Shift Toward Software
Once in the United States, Sinha’s direction began to shift. Because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen, his ability to secure research internships with government-affiliated institutions was limited.
As a result, his research began to gravitate toward programming and simulation. “I did a lot of Fortran, a lot of C. It was really writing applications to solve engineering problems,” he recalls.
Despite having no formal training in computer science, his resume became increasingly dominated by software experience.
“What I had done for years, it looked more like a computer science resume,” he said. His experience led him to IBM, where he started on the OS/2 development team as a contractor through Keane (now part of NTT Data).
IBM eventually shut down OS/2 and moved Sinha to its AIX operating system group in Austin, Texas. It was a turning point: now possessing a U.S. residence card, he accepted a management role with SPSS in Chicago in 1996.
Building DevOps Before It Had a Name
At SPSS, Sinha was charged with bringing engineering discipline to an organization that, at the time, lacked formal processes.
He applied what he had learned at IBM to build what’s now called DevOps: automated testing, repeatable builds, continuous integration. “We didn’t use any of that terminology, but the principles were exactly the same,” he said.
By the time IBM acquired SPSS in 2009, Sinha had risen to head of global R&D. He stayed on to lead the predictive analytics portfolio, just as the worlds of applied statistics and machine learning were becoming known as “data science.”
Sinha noted the contrast between the more traditional leadership style at IBM with Broadcom’s leadership culture, what he calls “leadership by presence.”
“At IBM, leadership often aligned closely with titles and organizational hierarchy,” he explained. “At Broadcom, I’ve experienced more leadership by presence – having the opportunity to sit down with the CEO at least once a quarter for our business reviews, having those conversations eye to eye. It’s amazing.”
Giving Back Through Education
Outside of work, education is still a passion for Sinha, who is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. In 2023, he earned a Ph.D. in data science from the University of North Texas. He now serves as a research advisor, a College of Information Leadership Board member, and benefactor at the institution.
In addition, Sinha and his wife, Anuradha, made a substantial donation to the university in 2024 to set up its Department of Data Sciences and furthered that commitment in 2025 to set up an Innovation Lab for Data Science. They’ve also established several academic endowments and professorships at the school.
Sinha mentors doctoral candidates and often speaks to other students and young technologists, advocating for them to consider careers in mainframe technology.
“We believe that education is the cornerstone of opportunity and progress, and our efforts aim to provide access to quality learning for the underserved populations,” Sinha wrote in his LinkedIn profile. “Whether through scholarships, funding educational institutions, or supporting skill-building programs, our mission is to nurture talent, ignite potential, and create a ripple effect of positive change.”
From aspiring oceanographer to mainframe champion and lifelong student, Vikas Sinha’s journey is a testament to reinvention, resilience, and relentless curiosity.
The trade publication Planet Mainframe said it well in a recent profile , calling Sinha a “top influential mainframer” for 2025:
“Vikas chose mainframes because they mattered – and still do. His career is proof that the platform’s future lies not in nostalgia but in leadership that embraces engineering excellence and accessible innovation.
“As he continues to evolve how the world views and uses the mainframe, his legacy is taking shape in the systems that run silently behind the scenes and in the students, engineers, and leaders who now see the mainframe as their platform.”
Article originally published on Broadcom B-Connected Blog