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karthik s

Lead Engineer | Full-Stack Systems | TypeScript • React • Python • Node.js

Greater Bengaluru Area

7+ years of work experience

Horizontal
Jun 20265 mosPresent

Bengaluru

Working for Target, Leading AI-driven automation in reverse logistics. Built return dispute classification system hitting 80-90% accuracy on 10M+ disputes yearly. That's 85% less manual review work—real money saved, faster seller payouts. Also developed Return Policy module. Sellers used to spend weeks on forms. Now the system generates policies from templates in minutes. Onboarding went from 3 weeks to 1 week. Policy disputes dropped 65%.
Career Break
Oct 20259 mosJun 2026

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Adobe
Feb 20232 yrs 9 mosOct 2025

Bengaluru

Built end-to-end finance platform processing millions in monthly transactions, 99.9% uptime. React Spectrum frontend, Node.js microservices, MSSQL backend. Global Prepaid Dashboard handles invoice automation. Finance team was spending 6+ hours daily on manual entry. Built the system to cut that to under 1 hour. Performance work brought page load from 3.2s to 1.8s, Lighthouse from 43 to 92 in 3 months. Implemented OAuth 2.0, JWT, CSRF protection for sensitive financial data. Built Splunk monitoring enabling 45-second incident response. Mentored 6 engineers, established testing standards achieving 85% code coverage.
Cashfree
Aug 20211 yr 7 mosFeb 2023

Bengaluru

Payments platform. Built JSON-driven form engine cutting development time from 2 weeks to 3 days. Performance optimization: Lighthouse from 43 to 91 in 6 weeks. Championed TDD—test coverage from 40% to 80%, production bugs basically eliminated. Implemented micro-frontends with Module Federation. 8 teams deployed independently. That's the definition of shipping faster.
Preqin
Jan 20192 yrs 8 mosAug 2021

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Investment analytics. Built benchmark visualization platform with D3 for 200+ fund managers. Query optimisation on 10K fund records—response time 2.3s to 0.8s. Developed AI-integrated data pipeline reducing annual report generation from 3 weeks to 1 week.

karthik’s AI Stack

anthropic apis
anthropic apis
claude code
claude code
claude
claude
codex
codex

Education

International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore

Master's degree, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning

International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore

20252 yrs2027
Visvesvaraya Technological University

Bachelor's degree, Computer Engineering

Visvesvaraya Technological University

20085 yrs2013

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Headline

Lead Engineer | Full-Stack Systems | TypeScript • React • Python • Node.js

About

Full-stack engineer with 11 years building systems that scale. I work with TypeScript, React, Python, and Node.js. Led teams at Adobe, Cashfree, and Preqin. Now at Target working on return logistics automation. I ship products. Millions of transactions daily. I think about performance—page load times, bundle sizes, database queries. I think about uptime and reliability. I think about code quality and testing. Those things matter. Started my career at Pace Wisdom shipping mobile apps. Built healthcare systems, financial platforms, payments infrastructure, analytics dashboards. Each role taught me something about building systems that actually work. I'm interested in AI/LLMs, performance optimization, and building resilient systems. Open to discussing full-stack challenges, architecture decisions, or just talking about tech.

Location

Greater Bengaluru Area

AI stack

anthropic apis

claude code

claude

codex

Work experience

Lead Software Engineer at Horizontal, Jun 2026 - Present · 5 mos, Bengaluru, Working for Target, Leading AI-driven automation in reverse logistics. Built return dispute classification system hitting 80-90% accuracy on 10M+ disputes yearly. That's 85% less manual review work—real money saved, faster seller payouts. Also developed Return Policy module. Sellers used to spend weeks on forms. Now the system generates policies from templates in minutes. Onboarding went from 3 weeks to 1 week. Policy disputes dropped 65%.

Professional development at Career Break, Oct 2025 - Jun 2026 · 9 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Lead Frontend Engineer at Adobe, Feb 2023 - Oct 2025 · 2 yrs 9 mos, Bengaluru, Built end-to-end finance platform processing millions in monthly transactions, 99.9% uptime. React Spectrum frontend, Node.js microservices, MSSQL backend. Global Prepaid Dashboard handles invoice automation. Finance team was spending 6+ hours daily on manual entry. Built the system to cut that to under 1 hour. Performance work brought page load from 3.2s to 1.8s, Lighthouse from 43 to 92 in 3 months. Implemented OAuth 2.0, JWT, CSRF protection for sensitive financial data. Built Splunk monitoring enabling 45-second incident response. Mentored 6 engineers, established testing standards achieving 85% code coverage.

Senior Software Engineer at Cashfree, Aug 2021 - Feb 2023 · 1 yr 7 mos, Bengaluru, Payments platform. Built JSON-driven form engine cutting development time from 2 weeks to 3 days. Performance optimization: Lighthouse from 43 to 91 in 6 weeks. Championed TDD—test coverage from 40% to 80%, production bugs basically eliminated. Implemented micro-frontends with Module Federation. 8 teams deployed independently. That's the definition of shipping faster.

Sr Software Engineer at Preqin, Jan 2019 - Aug 2021 · 2 yrs 8 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Investment analytics. Built benchmark visualization platform with D3 for 200+ fund managers. Query optimisation on 10K fund records—response time 2.3s to 0.8s. Developed AI-integrated data pipeline reducing annual report generation from 3 weeks to 1 week.

Education

Master's degree, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore

Bachelor's degree, Computer Engineering, Visvesvaraya Technological University