Instrumentation & Control Engineer · GIS Specialist · AI Practitioner · Educator
Part control systems specialist, Electrical Engineer, part geospatial specialist, part AI tinkerer, part Educator, part artist — whatever lane you put him in, he's already looking at the one beside it.
Engineering is ultimately about people. Systems exist to serve lives. Data exists to make decisions better. Technology is only as valuable as the problem it actually solves.
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Upul Pallekumbura is an Instrumentation and Control Engineer at EGL (Pvt.) Ltd. (formerly Ceylon Electricity Board). His career began in the heart of the Sri Lanka overseeing the construction of medium Voltage lines — work that taught him faster than any classroom what it means when infrastructure fails and who depends on it.
From Distribution SCADA and Smart Meter rollouts to enterprise GIS platforms, Control & Instrumentation systems, AI agent deployments, and wildlife conservation consulting - his technical instincts have never stayed inside the lines drawn for them.
A technical range that spans disciplines that rarely sit in the same professional biography — from Hydropower control rooms to geospatial platforms to autonomous AI agents.
Enterprise GIS & Remote Sensing at M.Sc. level, with production-grade deployment experience across inhouse developed Cloudview GIS platforms. Designed a scalable online GIS model for Western province south II electric power distribution.
Smart Meter rollouts, Distribution SCADA, mini-SCADA systems, and online power distribution modelling from concept to live commissioning. Built the WPS II Distribution Control Center from the ground up.
DCS architecture, excitation systems, HiPASE controllers, DCS logic, and component-level fault diagnostics — including digital governor systems using negative logic principles for precision fault isolation.
Not theoretical. LLMs and AI agents currently deployed in live engineering environments for maintenance assistance, operational guidance, and technical training support within utility operations.
Routing, DNS, subnets, NAT, proxies — the connective tissue of industrial IT that rarely gets credit for how much depends on it. Deep hands-on experience across industrial and enterprise networks.
Custom system design, responsive architecture, and full-stack thinking that comes from building tools you actually have to use yourself — including field data collection, Technical documet management, inventory systems with QR integration and access control systems.
Station by station, system by system — a career built not on a single lane, but on the courage to look at every lane beside it.
Serving as the Instrumentation & Control Engineer responsible for plant maintenance, DCS unit controller functionalities, and implementing the Infopond data logging system. Managing excitation system diagnostics, electronic governor installations, and deploying AI agents for operational guidance and training support.
Transferred to the Mahaweli Complex assuming full operational duties from March 10, 2020. Oversaw day-to-day generation operations across both power stations, coordinating unit dispatch, plant availability, and operational safety compliance during the critical COVID-19 transition period.
Held dual covering roles as Project Engineer (Electrical) and Operations Engineer for the 1MW×50 Containerized Emergency Power Plant. Managed the electrical commissioning, operational readiness, and ongoing performance monitoring of 50 containerized generation units deployed for national grid emergency support.
Focused on MV switchgear plans, protection coordination studies, and network development. Spearheaded the introduction of the Cloudview GIS solution — designing a scalable online GIS model for electric power distribution that gave the utility a living, real-time map of its infrastructure.
Founded and established the Distribution Control Center from the ground up. Introduced Distribution SCADA systems that gave operators real situational awareness over a network that had previously run on instinct. Participated in Sri Lanka's early Smart Meter programme rollout — turning a reactive grid into a responsive one.
Appointed as Electrical Engineer managing MV/LV electrical construction projects. Directed rural electrification and network expansion — managing teams, commissioning medium-voltage lines, and solving problems that don't appear in textbooks. This grounding in the human cost of infrastructure failure shaped every role that followed.
Joined the Ceylon Electricity Board completing a 2.5-month structured induction training programme covering generation, transmission, and distribution systems across Sri Lanka's national grid infrastructure.
Began professional life as an educator — teaching computing fundamentals to engineering students at Sri Lanka's premier engineering faculty. The instinct to teach, explain, and mentor that started here never left — it simply found new stages: control rooms, boardrooms, podcasts, and Toastmaster platforms.
Chapters — not just projects — each one permanently changing how he understood what engineering is really for.
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Designed and deployed a scalable online GIS model for Sri Lanka's electric power distribution network, integrating enterprise spatial platforms Cloudview and Infopond to give the utility a living, real-time map of itself.
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Introduced Distribution SCADA that gave operators real situational awareness over a network that had previously run on instinct. Participated in Sri Lanka's early Smart Meter programme. Turned a reactive grid into a responsive one — a shift in how a national utility understood itself.
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Technical consultant to Sri Lanka's national Human-Elephant Conflict mitigation programme. Applied electrical engineering principles to one of the country's most persistent conservation challenges — helping develop and revise the national electric fencing guidelines.
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Building field data collection systems with QR integration, access control systems, and operation data management, inventory and document management systems. Deploying LLMs and autonomous AI agents for maintenance assistance and operational training inside a live public utility — one workflow at a time, no fanfare.
University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
Postgraduate · Geospatial Intelligence specialisation
Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka (IESL)
Recognised for internal automation and utility management systems
Toastmasters International · Advanced Level · Speech & Evaluation Competition Winner
Sri Lanka Wildlife Authorities · National Electric Fencing Guidelines Author
The same instinct that drives great engineering — looking at a blank space and building something that wasn't there before — finds expression across professional bodies, public platforms, and conservation work.
Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) — the highest achievement in Toastmasters. Speech and Evaluation competition winner. Active mentor helping engineers develop the communication skills that turn good ideas into enacted reform.
Member of IESL (MIESL), actively contributing to the professional engineering community through technical sessions, knowledge sharing, and upholding engineering standards across the national utility sector.
Hosts engineering conversations on YouTube and Clubhouse that Sri Lanka's technical community actively seeks out — covering microprocessor architecture, AI, smart grids, and the future of computing with industry professionals.
Technical consultant to Sri Lanka's national Human-Elephant Conflict mitigation programme. Co-authored the national electric fencing guidelines, applying electrical engineering principles to one of the country's most persistent conservation challenges.
Maintains an active creative practice spanning graphic design and photography. The engineer's eye for precision translates into composition, light, and form — another expression of the same instinct to make something where there was nothing.
Holder of a national patent and recipient of three innovation awards for internal automation systems — inventory management with QR integration, access control systems, and operation data management platforms that re-engineered how a public utility manages technical knowledge.
Open to collaboration, consulting, and opportunities across instrumentation engineering, GIS, AI deployment, and power systems innovation.
Kandy, Sri Lanka