About Charith ‘Alex’ Gunasekara
Head of Development & Engineering · Melbourne, Australia
Charith Gunasekara, known professionally in Australia as Alex Gunasekara, is an engineering leader based in Melbourne. He works as Head of Development & Engineering, with around 15 years across cloud, mobile, AI, and enterprise systems.
He is the rare technical leader who is genuinely hands-on and also leads people. His work sits at the point where an ambiguous business idea has to become a real, shipped product — framing the problem, designing the architecture, and leading the team that builds it.
Why two names
Charith is his original Sri Lankan name, and his legal name. It is the name his family uses, the name on official records, and the name friends and colleagues in Sri Lanka still call him.
Alex is the name he goes by professionally in Melbourne. It started as the simpler name for people to say at work, and it stuck. Most of his Australian colleagues have only ever known him as Alex.
Both names belong to the same person. He writes it as Charith ‘Alex’ Gunasekara so that neither half of his life needs a footnote.
Quick facts
- Full name
- Charith Gunasekara
- Known professionally as
- Alex Gunasekara
- Usually written
- Charith 'Alex' Gunasekara
- Role
- Head of Development & Engineering
- Based in
- Melbourne, Australia
- Experience
- 15 years in software
What he does
Engineering leader who turns business ideas into modern, innovative digital solutions — fluent in both the boardroom and the codebase, with 15 years across cloud, mobile, AI, and enterprise systems.
Day to day that means three things: turning vague direction into a plan a team can build, owning delivery until it actually ships, and translating in both directions between company directors and engineers. The technical depth is what makes the translation honest — he does not have to guess what a build will cost.
A fuller breakdown of the capabilities sits on the expertise page.
Writing
He publishes engineering deep-dives and leadership field notes, most weeks. Recent work has covered running language models locally on Apple silicon with MLX, on-device AI, and what changes when you lead engineers instead of only writing the code. Read it on the writing page.
Get in touch
Email hello@charithgunasekara.com, or find him on LinkedIn.