Infoblox CEO on India expansion and why DNS security matters in AI era

US-based cloud networking and security firm Infoblox has opened a new engineering office in Pune. The company also expanded its Bengaluru campus, adding over 350 roles across engineering, product development, cloud security, AI, and customer-facing functions, as it sharpens India’s role from an execution hub to a global innovation engine.

The expansion takes the Bengaluru facility to more than 1,000 seats, with Pune adding over 100 seats and continued investment in Trivandrum.
Over the last nine months, Infoblox has recorded about 30% net-new headcount growth in India, with more than half of its global engineering workforce now based in the country 

In an exclusive interaction with TechCircle, President and CEO Scott Harrell said India has evolved into a global centre of excellence for the company — not just in engineering, but across product, IT, finance, HR, marketing and customer support.

“The best results I’ve seen in my career are when we give high levels of ownership and accountability to teams in India,” Harrell said. “This is not just about local capability. India is acting on behalf of the company worldwide.”

The India operations are driving up to 80% of select strategic programmes, including Infoblox’s enterprise DDI (Domain Name System or DNS, DHCP and IP address management) platform, which is used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500 and over 6,000 customers globally across banking, healthcare and government.

Jay Shivaram, VP Engineering and Head of India Operations, said the company has already expanded its India headcount by 35% over the past year and continues to hire. Including vendor partners, the India team now exceeds 1,200 people.
“What we design in India, we design for the world,” Shivaram said, adding that nearly 80% of one of the company’s most strategic global programmes is driven out of India.

Cybersecurity demand shifts

The hiring push comes even as parts of global tech grapple with layoffs and cost rationalisation. Harrell attributed Infoblox’s expansion to structural shifts in cybersecurity demand.

“There is no service more essential than DNS. It’s the oxygen of the digital world,” he said, describing DNS as a Tier-0 service that enterprises can no longer afford to underinvest in.

He pointed to two major shifts: enterprises treating DNS-layer resilience as mission-critical infrastructure, and the rise of AI-enabled, highly personalised cyberattacks. Traditional security models based on “herd immunity” — where detection in one environment protects others — are breaking down as threat actors use AI to tailor attacks to specific companies.

“With DNS, we can observe threat actors preparing infrastructure before it’s weaponised — sometimes up to two months in advance,” Harrell said. “In a world of mass personalisation, you cannot wait for a breach. You have to stop it before it happens.”
The company recently announced its intent to acquire Axur to strengthen its external attack surface management capabilities, extending protection beyond the enterprise perimeter 

AI, automation and authoritative data

Harrell cited authoritative, real-time data as a key technical bottleneck holding enterprises back.

“Almost every business function depends on IT. If IT moves slowly, the business slows. To move at machine speed, you need automation — and automation requires highly accurate data,” he said, warning that flawed datasets amplified by AI can scale errors rapidly.
As a protocol server operating at the DNS layer, Infoblox generates authoritative network data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling what Harrell called “automation with confidence”.

The company is also embedding agentic AI capabilities into its DDI portfolio to simplify operations at scale as enterprises distribute AI workloads across clouds.

For Shivaram, AI is also reshaping internal innovation cycles. The company runs startup-style cross-functional teams in India that rapidly prototype and iterate products using AI tools, compressing development timelines. AI-assisted coding and testing, he said, are enabling early-career engineers to contribute to complex systems faster.

Beyond headcount growth, Infoblox is positioning India as a long-term global capability centre rather than a back-office outpost.

“Many companies begin in India as support centres. True maturity comes when you become a global capability centre,” Shivaram said. “For a company of our size, achieving that milestone this early is something we’re proud of.”

From a business standpoint, Harrell added that India is not just a talent base but a revenue opportunity, with “significant untapped potential” to grow the country’s contribution to global topline over the next 12 to 18 months.