UPS names new tech chief, signaling bigger push on automation

UPS created the chief digital and technology officer role in June 2022, installing Bala Subramanian in the newly created post. At a company that generated $91 billion in revenue in 2023, that job can shape the handhelds, dispatch logic, sortation systems and maintenance diagnostics that set the pace for package handlers, drivers and mechanics.

UPS’s leadership page still identifies Subramanian as executive vice president and chief digital and technology officer. His LinkedIn profile places him in Dallas, Texas, and shows about 4,708 followers and 500 connections. In a May 6, 2024 Technovation interview, UPS was described as using new digital tools to become a “logistics orchestrator” and rethink the “network of the future.” For workers, that language usually turns into a practical question: what changes first, route optimization, handheld workflows, scan logic or more data-driven coaching.

The stakes got sharper as UPS cut labor. The company planned to cut 20,000 jobs on April 29, 2025 amid reduced Amazon deliveries and tariff pressure, then said on Jan. 27, 2026 it would eliminate 30,000 more as Amazon volume cuts accelerated. When headcount shrinks, software choices decide how much work gets pushed onto the remaining floor, how much driver judgment survives and how quickly discipline can follow from the data stream. In a Teamsters workplace, those changes tend to show up first as grievances over pace, productivity and discipline.

Surveillance worries are not abstract in logistics. Amazon and Walmart used surveillance technology to bust unions in 2021, a reminder of why UPS employees are likely to scrutinize any new digital layer closely. The question for package handlers, package car drivers, feeder drivers, mechanics and supervisors is not whether UPS will keep modernizing, but whether the next round of technology supports the job or turns every scan, stop and minute into another point of control.