Headline

AI Engineer & Builder at

About

Hands-on AI engineering leader, currently on a career break and building full time. For years I kept a list of ideas I never had time to ship. I'm working through it now with AI: running local models on my own hardware, building agentic coding workflows, and pushing inference on-device and into the browser. I've tested hundreds of local LLMs for real coding work — most of what gets claimed about them doesn't survive contact with a real codebase. Before this, I led the team that built a config-driven UI platform for Uber's Customer Obsession org — one system powering many surfaces, with changes shipped by non-engineers instead of release trains. I've been an engineering leader for years and I still write code every day. The interface layer is where AI gets interesting: models are commoditizing fast, the experience around them is not. Voice, multimodal and agents are collapsing the distance between intent and software. We're moving from designing screens to designing conversations, with the UI assembling itself around the user. Working with: LLM application architecture, agentic workflows, on-device and in-browser inference (Apple MLX, Gemini Nano), and context engineering — on top of React, Node, TypeScript, GraphQL, web performance and PWA. I also spend a lot of time on what comes next: the AI software factory model, and how AI-native teams should actually be structured and run. I build in the open: https://nvkudva.github.io/ · https://github.com/nvkudva Open to AI engineering leadership roles, applied-AI teams, and advisory conversations.

Location

Bengaluru

AI stack

claude code

hugging face

ChatGPT

LM Studio

Qwen

Wispr Flow

Work experience

Professional development at Career Break, Jun 2025 - Present · 1 yr 4 mos, Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India, Moved back to India after years in the US, and used the transition to rebuild my craft around AI — from leading teams that ship software to building with models myself, every day.

AI Engineer & Builder at Self-Employed, Jun 2025 - Present · 1 yr 4 mos, Bangalore, Learning in public and shipping what I learn. • Local LLMs in depth — benchmarked hundreds of open models for real coding work, and learned where each holds up on consumer hardware vs. where the benchmarks lie. • On-device and in-browser inference: Apple MLX, Gemini Nano — low latency, offline, private by default. • Agentic coding workflows — using and extending AI dev tooling daily, working out what makes an agent reliable rather than demo-impressive. • Production habits, applied to AI code — my repos are real tools with tests, CI, docs and releases, not notebook demos. Same bar I held teams to at Uber. Portfolio: https://nvkudva.github.io/ · Code: https://github.com/nvkudva

Engineering Manager II at Uber, Mar 2022 - May 2025 · 3 yrs 3 mos, Sunnyvale, California, United States, • Built and spearheaded a team of engineers to build platform to integrate new Uber Business Lines and partners with the Customer Obsession (CO) organization's infrastructure. • Developed and executed strategic roadmaps for multiple business partners and Uber's multiple lines of businesses. • Scaled team and project across multiple geographies ( usa, brazil, india). • Creator of CO console - Envisioned, architected, and drove the development of the Onboarding Platform, enabling self-serve onboarding by bringing all scattered configuration into a single place along with tracking for all uber businesses, significantly reducing engineering dependency. • Spearheaded the multi channel Modality team and executed a strategy to enhance channel configurability to meet critical B2B requirements.

Engineering Manager I at Uber, Jan 2020 - Feb 2022 · 2 yrs 2 mos, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, • Led and empowered a high-performing team of 16 engineers in the complete lifecycle (concept to launch) of a next-generation customer care UI platform. • Architected and executed a comprehensive strategic vision for modernizing the entire frontend stack. • Prioritized and delivered significant improvements in loading performance and developer efficiency, achieving a notable reduction in new widget development time from four weeks to five days.

Senior Software Engineer at Uber, Dec 2018 - Dec 2019 · 1 yr 1 mo, bangalore, • Creator of Uber's next gen customer care UI platform • Led a frontend engineering team at Uber, transitioning multiple projects from global counterparts and developing next-generation products. • Spearheaded the development of a case management system for handling customer safety tickets effectively. • Established a common UI library for seamless user experience across multiple projects.

Frontend Architect at Myntra, Apr 2018 - Dec 2018 · 9 mos, Bangalore, • Creator of Myntra's PWA - Architected and led the development of Myntra’s PWA with a highly scalable and reusable architecture, using React/Service Worker/LESS/Webpack/Node.js, focusing on scalability and reusability. • Delivered an app-like web experience significantly enhancing user engagement and satisfaction resulting in a 37% increase in conversion rates. • Pioneered and implemented advanced caching strategies (cdn/service worker/in-memory/local storage) • Strategically implemented code splitting, network optimizations and other techniques to dramatically reduce initial load times and improved user experience. • Scaled the site from 100K to 14 million users with 71% reduction in JavaScript size, 3X faster loads. • Collaborated closely with the Google team to integrate AMP tech, rebuilt the site in AMP in just 7 days, resulting in a 12% revenue increase. Key Highlights & Recognition: Google Hack Day Winner (2017): "Best Progressive Web App" at the Google Gurugram office. Google I/O Feature (2017): Developed Myntra's AMP site in just a few days, got demoed on stage. Speaker: • Myntra's AMP Architecture, Google AMP Roadshow Bangalore (2018) • Building a Practical PWA at Scale, Android Conference – Fragments (2017) • Myntra's Web Tech Journey, Flipkart's SlashN Conference (2018) • Building High-Performance Sites with React and PWA, React Meetup Bangalore (2018)

Technical Lead at Myntra, Jan 2016 - Mar 2018 · 2 yrs 3 mos, Bangalore, Spearheaded the development of Myntra's Google AMP implementation, focusing on achieving blazing-fast page load times (under 1 second). This initiative, featured at Google I/O 2017, involved: Rapid Prototyping: Single-handedly built the initial MVP in just 7 days, demonstrating agility and a deep understanding of AMP. Early Adoption of AMP Features: Pioneered the use of experimental features like amp-bind, placing Myntra at the forefront of AMP development. Interactive AMP Experiences: Created fully interactive product pages, a rare achievement in the AMP ecosystem. Impact: The AMP site boasted over 100,000 indexed pages, driving an approximate 12% revenue increase and showcasing Myntra's commitment to performance and innovation.

Senior Software Engineer UI at Myntra, Jan 2014 - Dec 2015 · 2 yrs, Bangalore, • Creator of "Unity platform" – a rapid enterprise app building UI framework based on React, LESS, Gulp, and Bootstrap. It can build apps in hours instead of weeks. • Smart Tool Kit - Unity provides a complete toolkit, including a template project, a smart component library, and a theming module, significantly simplifying and accelerating UI development. Key features include: • Rapid App Development - Unity empowers teams to quickly spin up and deploy new applications, drastically reducing development time from several months to just a few hours. • Configuration-Driven UI - Conceptualized and implemented a configuration-driven approach, allowing entire interfaces to be built via configurations while maintaining flexibility. • Impact: Unity is now the standard UI framework for nearly all (50+) Myntra applications, significantly accelerating development cycles and ensuring UI consistency across the enterprise. This has resulted in a 10x reduction in new application development time (from two months to approximately one week). Unity Framework Blog - https://medium.com/@nvkudva/micro-apps-building-block-of-myntras-scalable-ui-architecture-ebecec0d9677

Senior Software Engineer at Digital Insight, Aug 2013 - Dec 2013 · 5 mos, Bangalore, Led the development of a complex hybrid UI framework at Digital Insight, allowing for dynamic and configurable app features across multiple platforms. Collaborated with teams to create custom branding and themable options, enhancing user engagement and experience.

Education

MCA, Computer Science, PESIT Peoples Education Society Institute of Technology

Bachelor of Science (BSc), Computer Science, Nitte Shankara Adyanthaya Memorial College

Public links

github: https://github.com/nvkudva

nvkudva.github.io: https://nvkudva.github.io/

medium: https://medium.com/@nvkudva