Headline

I ship what Technical Founders can’t finish & what Non-Technical Founders can’t articulate | Product Engineer for Early Stage Startups

About

TL:DR I build products and close first customers. Product Engineering. Early Stage Execution. Proof of Work over Promises. Portfolio: https://karthikarigela.super.site/ Thank you for continuing further! ❤️ In November 2024, I got laid off from my first job as Junior Software Developer. What followed felt like dog years. Not calendar time. Survival time. The kind where you learn more in a week than most do in a quarter. I took a 60% pay cut to join an early-stage startup. Built a sales automation product from post MVP to 10 paying customers waiting to use Product. Owned most critical module of the product: The entire email experience. User research, API integration, Vendor negotiation, Customer demos. Not delegated. Done. Then the founder scrapped the product. With paying customers waiting. Led a 15-person cross-functional team for a new US payroll product. Owned the employer-side product end to end including Onboarding architecture, access controls, third-party API integrations. Got laid off again. Same day. No notice. Most people would call this a disaster. I call it a masterclass in building under chaos. When you've had two products killed under you, you stop romanticizing ideas. You start shipping what survives. After the second layoff, I chose to build on my own terms. Just problems I found worth solving and the discipline to ship something real. Built an unsolicited prototype for Bolna (YC F25), a field intel voice AI agent for Sales Reps of Indian Pharma. Built similar prototype for Panta (YC W26), translating 40-page insurance forms into plain English for trucking insurance. Building Deloop, a voice-first reflection tool, still evolving across multiple MVPs. All of it self-initiated. All of it real. I can find a problem, build a solution, and ship something worth showing without waiting for permission. I also learned where I hold myself back. Asking for what I want. Committing to the ask. Following through on the discomfort. I don't just write specs. I interview customers, design in Figma, write API docs, verify code, and show up on sales calls. Technical founders - I finish what you started when you're pulled into fundraising. Non Technical founders - I translate your vision into shipped product without you learning to code. I speak both languages. Because I've been the developer who received bad specs. And the PM who wrote specs developers actually used. Currently looking for Founding Engineer roles where shipping matters more than titles.

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

antigravity

codex

notion

opencode

OpenRouter

Supabase

Work experience

Independent Product Engineer at Self Employed, Aug 2025 - Present · 1 y, Hyderabad, I didn't wait for someone to hand me a problem. After two products killed under me and two layoffs back to back, I went out and found real problems myself. In the real world. With real people. ATTEMPT 1: Electrical Contractor Business A family connection. A real business. A genuine problem of material going missing across construction sites with no tracking and no accountability. I explored it end to end. Mapped the workflow. Understood the vendor relationships. Built a concept for an inventory system with material tracking, daily image verification, in-person audit workflows. It didn't convert into a paid engagement. But what it taught me: how to walk into an unfamiliar domain, understand it fast, and identify where a system breaks down. ATTEMPT 2: Valley Oak, IIT-JEE Coaching Institute Personal connection. 3 campuses. A sales & Operations problem hiding in plain sight. I ran the discovery myself. Interviewed 6 parents. Audited the entire business workflow. Identified the core breakdown: same parents being contacted by multiple reps, no ownership, no coordination. Built a market study and a competitive positioning deck for their place in Hyderabad's coaching market. Pitched it. Had conversations. Tried to earn the work. Again, it didn't land the way I intended. But what it gave me: how to position value, and how to ask for the commitment you want. The sales instinct I'd been building in theory, I tested in practice. That's not something you learn in a PM course. The attempts that didn't convert didn't stop me from building. Built an unsolicited prototype for Bolna (YC F25), a field intel voice AI agent for Sales Reps of Indian Pharma. Built similar prototype for Panta (YC W26), translating 40-page insurance forms into plain English for trucking insurance. Building Deloop, a voice-first reflection tool, still evolving across multiple MVPs. All self-initiated. All built without a client, a brief, or a guarantee.

Product Management Intern at CODETRU, Apr 2025 - Aug 2025 · 5 mos, Hyderabad, Joined after 5 months of job searching post layoff. Took a 60% pay cut. Because I wanted to build. PRODUCT 1: Ruto - Sales Email Automation Owned the email experience end to end as Product Owner - User research, API integration, vendor negotiation, customer demos. Designed prototypes in Figma. Built swim lanes and user flows detailed enough for developers to ship without back and forth. Got on demo calls. Helped close the first paying customers. Then the founder scrapped the product. With paying customers lined up. PRODUCT 2: Surf - US Payroll Platform Led a 15-membered cross-functional sprint team. Owned the employer-side product including Onboarding, access controls, third-party API integrations. Learned US payroll from scratch. Delivered faster than peers despite being new to the domain. Got laid off again. Same day. No notice. Products die. Skills don't. Title said intern. Work said founding PM.

Product Management Fellow at Product Space, Nov 2024 - Mar 2025 · 5 mos, Remote

Associate Member of Technical Staff at Model N, Aug 2023 - Nov 2024 · 1 yr 4 mos, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, • Orchestrated a 3-person product development team, delivering tailored solutions for over 20 clients, including AstraZeneca, J&J, and Pfizer, enhancing customer satisfaction by 15%. • Spearheaded cross-functional collaboration with Product Managers to implement numeric-only ASP validations, improving data integrity and reducing failure rates by 30%. • Resolved 25+ SAST security vulnerabilities using Checkmarx, adopting secure coding practices to lower security risk exposure by 30%. • Integrated Pendo with Orchestration Services using Postman APIs to enhance data analytics and user insights, boosting user engagement by 15%. • Developed comprehensive Grafana monitoring dashboards for JVM statistics, improving system visibility and performance tracking. • Implemented Graylog for security log analytics, successfully reducing the mean time to detect issues by 7%.

Human Resources & Public Relations Coordinator at Swayam ED-cell,Vasavi College Of Engineering, Nov 2021 - Jul 2023 · 1 yr 9 mos, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, • Got amazing Opportunities to meet many Personalities & fellow Students from Various Colleges Nationwide • Received Huge Credibility from Professors & Students all around the college by Planning & Hosting VCE IPL auction with a record breaking participation of 450+ Students

Education

Bachelor of Engineering - BE, Electronics & Communications Engineering, Vasavi College of Engg

Public links

github: https://github.com/KarthikArigela

karthikarigela.super.site: https://karthikarigela.super.site/