Tej Kanitkar – Principal Consultant

Tej Kanitkar - Principal Consultant
Washington, DC

Tej Kanitkar is a consultant with Cayenne’s Small Business Certification consulting practice, assisting minority-, veteran-, and family-owned organizations achieve the certifications needed to win contracts and become a preferred vendor for corporate buyers and government agencies.

Starting as a business development lead at a woman-owned small consulting firm, Tej helped the company win numerous set-aside contracts, placements on several Best-in-Class government-wide acquisition vehicles (including leading successful bids for placement onto GSA STARS III, Polaris, and OASIS), and fostered growth and network growth through the formation of several successful joint ventures, mentor-protege partnerships, and teaming agreements.

With over six years of experience in business operations and cloud infrastructure, Tej specializes in assisting businesses improve efficiency, refine their strategic focus,and enhance their growth potential. He further established himself as a key technical person through his past work with major industry cloud providers and cybersecurity players, including as a cloud engineer for the Small Business Administration in which he led a modernization and cost-reduction initiative that saved the SBA over $2M/year, as well as a long-standing role as a solutions architect with AWS, where he helped lead major deployments, including the third-largest Amazon Connect migration project (valued at over $50M) for one of the largest financial institutions in the US, which won him multiple accolades from senior leaders and organization-wide recognition.

In recent years, Tej has established himself as a tech entrepreneur, building software solutions for businesses to integrate artificial intelligence into their workflows. He also continues supporting fellow small businesses in navigating certification and compliance processes and developing business plans that set them up for continued success.

Tej holds a BS in Computer Science from George Mason University and several industry-leading certifications in cloud and cybersecurity.