Headline

Senior Software Engineer | AI Product Systems & Scalable Backend Architecture | Quora (Poe) | UC Berkeley

About

Backend-leaning Senior Engineer building AI-native, user-facing product systems end-to-end. At Quora (Poe), I lead full-stack initiatives across AI-driven conversational experiences and shared backend infrastructure. I design and own backend services and APIs used across iOS, Android, and Web clients, and architect large-scale moderation systems integrating internal tooling, third-party services, and ML-based classification. I also built a fault-tolerant, event-driven CSAM detection pipeline serving 300M+ MAUs across Quora and Poe (Kafka → S3 → SQS → containerized workers), processing 15K+ images/hour and reducing manual compliance review time from ~60 minutes to ~2 minutes. Previously at PayPal, I worked on distributed systems handling 800K+ documents/day and 100TB+ datasets. I led performance and reliability improvements that reduced critical batch execution time from 10 hours to 17 minutes (~35x improvement) and executed zero-downtime production migrations. My strengths sit at the intersection of: – AI integration in production – Distributed systems and system design – Product iteration at scale – Full-stack architecture Currently exploring Senior Backend / Full Stack/ Platform roles focused on AI-native systems, distributed infrastructure, and high-scale product engineering. Fiat Lux!

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

claude code

cursor

Work experience

Senior Software Engineer at Quora, Jan 2023 - May 2026 · 3 yrs 5 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, • Led full-stack initiatives for Poe (Quora’s multi-model AI chat platform with multi-million dollar annual revenue), translating Figma prototypes into high-performance conversational UX, building scalable infrastructure, and shipping ML-integrated features including LLM-powered suggested replies and follow-up actions. • Served as engineering POC for cross-functional projects (2–5 engineers), authoring technical docs, driving architectural tradeoffs and cross-team alignment, and owning execution, testing, rollout strategy, and post-launch monitoring. • Designed and owned shared backend services and GraphQL APIs backed by sharded MySQL; defined shard keys, index strategies, and schema evolution, and implemented read-through caching with TTL and write-path invalidation (memcache/Redis) to ensure scalable, low-latency cross-platform reads. • Reduced resolver fan-out and improved page latency through batching, pagination, async execution, and aggressive caching strategies to achieve speed targets across Poe clients. • Architected a fault-tolerant CSAM detection platform serving Quora (300M+ MAU) and Poe, designing an event-driven pipeline (Kafka →S3 →SQS →Container →SQS) with retry logic, monitoring, and human-in-the-loop review workflows, processing 15,000+ images/hour. • Partnered with Legal, Operations, and ML teams to gather requirements, design and implement systems that automated enforcement workflows. This reduced manual compliance review time from∼60 mins to∼2 mins and strengthened regulatory posture, and enabled cost saving by allowing the decommissioning of legacy compliance data storage servers. • Mentored junior engineers, reviewed backend code and design docs, served as primary on-call engineer, authored postmortems, and reduced recurring pager alerts through systematic reliability and tech-debt initiatives.

Senior Software Engineer at Quora, Oct 2022 - Dec 2022 · 3 mos, Mountain View, California, United States, Working on the Quora Moderation and Poe (www.poe.com) Core Product teams. [ Details above ^ ]

Software Engineer at Quora, Jun 2021 - Sep 2022 · 1 yr 4 mos, Mountain View, California, United States, Working on the Quora Moderation and Poe (www.poe.com) Core Product teams. [ Details above ^ ]

Software Engineer Intern at SAP, Jun 2020 - Aug 2020 · 3 mos, Palo Alto, California, United States, • Developed full stack features on Compensation Admin to give users control over the features they need enabled without having to reach out to SAP agents for the same. • Built Java REST-ful API controllers and helper methods for Compensation module’s complex worksheet management processes such as upload, create, and delete forms. Leveraged JUnit testcases for Test driven development.

Graduate Student Instructor at University of California, Berkeley, Jan 2020 - May 2021 · 1 yr 5 mos, Graduate Student Instructor for CogSci 1: Introduction to Cognitive Science supporting Prof. Linda Isaac. [Spring, Summer, Fall 2020] Graduate Student Instructor for INFO 233: Social Psychology and Information Technology supporting Prof. Coye Cheshire. [Spring 2021]

Software Engineer 2 at PayPal, Jul 2017 - Aug 2019 · 2 yrs 2 mos, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, • Improved the “Mass Correction Tool” flow system. Used by PayPal’s customer service agents through a Java client, reduced the execution time required by the disputes related C++ money transfer batches from 10 hours to ~17 mins. • Partnered with database, product development, business, and end-user representative stakeholders to gather requirements such as SLAs and performance, understand constraints such as budgets, and capacity issues applicable to the Document management flow within ATTACK to enable better DR performance for the system. • Analyzed production data, and used rapid prototyping to incrementally design the system and the archival strategy that allowed a seamless transition for the client-side applications in accordance with the gathered business requirements. • Partnered with stakeholders to drive the end-to-end deployment of the system, including a new Oracle DB, changes to the Java front-end client, and SQL queries, to enable efficient management of the 800k+ documents received/day. • Optimized server-side C++ APIs that generate dynamic SQL queries to improve availability, performance, and scalability for the growing dataset and traffic volume. Completed the system deployment with zero downtime and zero impact on clients.

Member, PayPal CAN at PayPal, Jul 2017 - Jul 2019 · 2 yrs 1 mo, Greater Chennai Area, Member of a team reporting directly to the General Manager, PayPal India Tech Centers. This team, PayPal CAN (Change Agent Network) was tasked with identifying potential areas of improvement at our India Tech Centers, looking for solutions, and implementing them, thus bringing about 'change' through our initiatives.

Member, Innovation Track at PayPal, Jul 2017 - Apr 2019 · 1 yr 10 mos, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, • Member of the Innovation Track at PayPal working towards growing innovation and innovative thinking in employees. • Was one of the members of the team tasked with starting PayPal Chennai's Innovation Lab and responsible for conducting and organising various technical and non-technical sessions amongst employees to foster a culture of innovation.

Intern at GirnarSoft, Jun 2015 - Jul 2015 · 2 mos, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, Worked as an intern to observe and learn about industry standard software development practices.

Education

Masters in Information Management and Systems, Computer and Information Sciences, General, UC Berkeley School of Information

Engineer's Degree, Computer Science, Vellore Institute of Technology