Profile

Highly self-motivated, self-disciplined individual, with a knack for consistency.
Eager to learn; thrives in doing things the right way.
Loves automating monotonous tasks/chores and contributing to Open Source.
16+ years of experience in using computers and programming and 8+ years of experience in engineering software solutions, as a hobbyist as well as a professional utilizing multiple programming languages and frameworks.
Proficient in prompt engineering, using LLM based tools like Cursor, LMStudio, Github Copilot, Ollama, etc.
Proficient in Google Cloud Platform (and associated FinOps, IaC), along with experience in using AWS and Azure.
Experienced in customing and maintaining various aspects of Github and Gitlab organisations.
Proficient in operating *nix operating systems; proficient in developing and deploying solutions with security in mind.
Proficient in using Git, Kubernetes, Docker, VirtualBox, Agile methodologies, UML diagrams and documentation.
Good grasping power of new programming languages and concepts. Can easily explore/use APIs and SDKs.
Good time-management skills.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Takes regular interest in fitness, reading and writing.

Experience

Software Engineer | August/2020 - Present | Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute, Melbourne, AU

Principal Responsibilities & Strategic Contributions

Architect, evaluate, and optimize cloud infrastructure resources across Google Cloud Platform’s ecosystem, including Kubernetes clusters, Secret Manager, Cloud Storage, Cloud Armor, IAM, Logging, Tracing, Load Balancing, Billing Analytics, Anthos, Cloud Functions, Container Registry, Pub/Sub, and associated enterprise services.
Serve as primary technical contact point for Deakin’s GCP Subject Matter Expert (SME) to enhance organizational security posture and implement enterprise-grade security initiatives.
Design and implement monitoring solutions, alerting frameworks, and governance policies across multi-project infrastructure ecosystems.
Conduct security audits, performance optimization, cost-benefit analyses, and feasibility assessments for third-party service integrations.
Strategically evaluate emerging technologies and maintain stakeholder relationships across internal and external organizational boundaries.
Mentor junior team members in cutting-edge technologies, fostering continuous learning and professional development.
Architect, contribute to, and conduct rigorous peer reviews of multi-language codebases.
Implement testing suites including functional and performance validation.
Author and maintain technical documentation supporting project sustainability and organizational knowledge management.
Provide strategic insights for research initiatives and participate in scholarly paper reviews.
Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines ensuring seamless software delivery with automated SSL certificate rotation.
Implement cost-optimization strategies through GitHub Pages deployments and centralized infrastructure-as-code repositories for streamlined multi-project management.
Improve team productivity using zsh/bash/python scripting and standardising development environments.

Project: Conductor

Cloud Infrastructure & GCP

Manage multi-cloud infrastructure across Google Cloud Platform and third-party providers with comprehensive cost analysis for research grant applications including GCP services and integrations such as Twilio and Mailgun.
Implement Infrastructure-as-Code solutions using Terraform and Pulumi for automated deployment and system management.
Execute security vulnerability mitigation initiatives including OpenSSH vulnerability remediation across all GCP projects.
Provision managed SSL certificates for multiple domains.
Deploy enhanced observability solutions with comprehensive GCP metrics monitoring, sophisticated alert policies, and solution for analyzing traffic from untrusted open-source tools.
Collaborate with cybersecurity teams on Microsoft Defender cost-benefit analysis and security posture improvements.

Kubernetes & Container Orchestration

Optimize Kubernetes resource monitoring and consumption strategies across namespaces, resulting in significant hosting cost reductions and improved operational efficiency.
Resolve deployment issues, plan and upgrade Kubernetes clusters while implementing enhanced budget-compliant strategies for production environments.

Spring Boot & other Application Development

Lead major framework upgrades including Spring Boot version migration from 2.2.7 to 3.3.4, resolving Hikari connection pooling issues and implementing enhanced dependency management systems.
Establish centralized dependency management architecture with OpenRewrite integration for automated dependency updates and enhanced gradle multi-module project structure.
Contribute and review code towards a live, complex distributed system involving Artificial Intelligence and multiple asynchronous operations backed by RabbitMQ.
Implement contract testing using Pact along with guidelines to facilitate team adoption and knowledge transfer.
Gained significant experience working with Auth0.
Gained significant experience working with Supabase and Flutter for cross-platform mobile apps.

Miscellaneous Activities

Orchestrate comprehensive documentation for research ethics compliance and execute systematic adherence protocols to maintain regulatory standards.
Oversee Metabase implementation for analytics of multi-study research datasets and system performance metrics.
Manage Keycloak deployment supporting OAuth2.0 + OpenID Connect authentication protocols for Android and iOS client integration with microservices architecture.
Administer multiple Postgres instances including performance monitoring, access-control, and provisioning advanced features like forward data-wrappers.
Evaluate and improve time-series data solutions including Timescale implementation for participant data collection.
Conduct performance testing in emulated environments to identify and rectify bottlenecks.
Establish disaster recovery pipelines for production dataset backup and isolated environment restoration for testing.
Implement project knowledge management solutions using Coda platform for enhanced team collaboration.
Migrate CI/CD infrastructure from Codefresh to GitHub Actions, improving deployment automation and workflow efficiency.

Project: Living Knowledge

Machine Learning & AI

Developed familiarity in statistical and machine learning methodologies including TF-IDF vectorization, Naive Bayes classification, cross-validation techniques, and various distance algorithms for advanced data analysis.
Architected and implemented sophisticated PDF processing solutions leveraging GPT-3/4 integration, focusing on fuzzy matching algorithms and semantic search capabilities for enhanced document analysis.
Established familiarity in cutting-edge ML frameworks including LangChain for language model orchestration, Jupyter notebooks for interactive development, Keras and TensorFlow for deep learning implementations.
Developed and tested various indexing and chunking strategies to optimize document summarization and question-answering systems.
Developed proficiency with open-source large language models and SLURM cluster management for high-performance computing environments.
Investigate AI Gateway capabilities for semantic caching in LLM-based applications, contributing to advanced AI infrastructure optimization strategies.

Database & Search Technologies

Implemented database solutions utilizing pgvector and tsvector for vector similarity search and full-text search capabilities.
Conducted comprehensive evaluation of proprietary and open-source PDF text extraction and annotation solutions, including PDFTron, Mathpix, Adobe SDK integrations, and other enterprise-grade JavaScript and Python libraries.

MLOps & Development Tools

Developed familiarity in MLOps ecosystem including Google Cloud ML services, MLFlow for experiment tracking, Weights & Biases for model monitoring, and Metaflow for workflow orchestration.
Deployed robust containerized experiment tracking infrastructure using MLFlow with SQLite backend for reproducible machine learning workflows.
Developed familiarity with rapid prototyping capabilities using Gradio framework for creating intuitive user interfaces for machine learning applications.

Project: Cognitive Reviewer

Full-Stack Development

Architected and authored comprehensive engineering specifications for user feedback collection systems, subsequently leading full-stack implementation from design to deployment.
Developed robust RESTful APIs utilizing FastAPI framework, establishing comprehensive Python testing frameworks and methodologies to ensure code quality and system reliability.
Implemented sophisticated frontend features using React framework, delivering responsive and intuitive user interfaces for cognitive assessment tools.

Project: Suggestion Engine

Infrastructure & Database Management

Provisioned and administered Dgraph and Elasticsearch infrastructure on dedicated remote systems, facilitating collaborative access to extensive datasets essential for development initiatives.

Application Development & Code Review

Contributed to and conducted comprehensive code reviews for ASP.NET applications, ensuring adherence to enterprise development standards.
Executed sophisticated data analysis utilizing JavaScript and Python scripts to derive actionable insights informing strategic system architecture decisions.

Lead Software Engineer | Mar/2019 – June/2020 | Deakin University, Melbourne, AU

Principal Responsibilities & Leadership Achievements

Spearheaded engineering excellence and product ownership across multiple concurrent projects utilizing React, Hapi framework, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Socket.io, and PostgreSQL databases, demonstrating expertise in full-stack development and architectural decision-making.
Conducted rigorous peer code reviews, ensuring adherence to industry best practices and maintainability standards.
Served as primary liaison and technical point-of-contact for multiple clients across projects, managing stakeholder expectations and deliverables.
Navigated complex stakeholder relationships while implementing Agile software development methodologies, ensuring alignment between business objectives and technical execution.
Helped develop standards and protocols for writing secure, maintainable code and deploying projects using Docker Swarm, docker-compose and bash scripts.

Project: Educator Health Reporting System

Backend Development & Database Management

Developed a backend server-application single-handedly using Hapi framework that extracts sensitive information of participants of a longitudinal study, securely from multiple REDCap (project-redcap.org) projects using its web API, and updates a local MySQL database using Sequelize ORM. Subsets of participants’ data were synced across both systems to meet various product and research requirements. Other notable node modules were utilized to fast-track the agile-development for different deployment environments, like Gulp for building complex workflows, Jasmine for time-sensitive as well as insensitive Behavior Driven Development, semantic-release for effortless releases, etc.
Developed a 4NF database-design to mitigate issues in existing systems for capturing participants’ data.
Wrote scripts to process and migrate ~19K records of existing data to the new schema as well as transporting them onto REDCap in parallel batches using Bottleneck.
Implemented support for secure, multi-device sign-in using JWT authentication strategy.

Frontend Development & UX Design

Developed frontend application using React and Material UI, with my primary responsibilities being functionality, navigation, layout and routing using react-router.
Iterated multiple wireframes/designs with all stakeholders using Balsamiq and Adobe XD to display the data of more than 40 variables each year on a mobile-view with UX in mind.

Deployment & Security

Deployed the solution on development and production servers using Nginx, Docker Swarm for scaling, docker-compose and zsh/bash scripts.
Modified legacy PHP reporting application to enhance security.

Project: Overseer

Container & Security Architecture

Engineered a vertically scalable, containerized Ruby application featuring sophisticated architecture for instantiating host-machine Docker containers to execute and evaluate untrusted student submissions within the OnTrack system. OnTrack, formerly known as Doubtfire, encompassing a Ruby on Rails backend complemented by a hybrid Angular 8 + AngularJS frontend application.
Researched and implemented advanced Docker security solutions and best practices for container isolation.

Application Development & Integration

Enhanced and modified various API endpoints and data models within OnTrack architecture to enable academic unit coordinators to configure sophisticated assessment protocols and facilitate seamless result presentation to students and their respective faculty.
Developed a highly configurable Ruby gem to implement shared codebase functionality between Overseer and OnTrack backend, featuring a publisher/subscriber wrapper architecture for Bunny integration.

Message Queue & Deployment

Researched and configured a sophisticated RabbitMQ Docker server container infrastructure to maintain job queue integrity and facilitate secure communication protocols between Overseer listeners and OnTrack backend.
Orchestrated deployment of the application stack across production environments.

Casual academic | Mar/2019 – June/2020 | Deakin University, Melbourne, AU

Principal Academic Responsibilities

Orchestrated comprehensive weekly tutorial sessions encompassing curriculum delivery and student mentorship.
Conducted rigorous evaluation and provided constructive feedback on student submissions to facilitate academic progression.

Object-oriented programming (Course code: SIT232, language used — C#) [2020, 2019]

2020 Unit link, 2019 link

Data structures and Algorithms (Course code: SIT221, language used — C#) [2019]

2019 Unit link

Software Architecture and Scalability for Internet-Of-Things (Course code: SIT314, languages used — JavaScript and Java) [2019]

2019 Unit link

Noteworthy experience — Taught software architecture and scalability for IoT devices using AWS, IBM Cloud and other cloud-based solutions.

Software Engineer Intern | Nov/2018 – Feb/2019 | Deakin University, Melbourne, AU

Project: Deakin Launchpad Research Studies

Full-Stack Development & Database Management

Spearheaded the development of sophisticated frontend applications utilizing React framework and comprehensive backend solutions employing Hapi framework with MongoDB database integration.

Project Management & Documentation

Executed multiple agile spikes to identify optimal solutions for complex technical challenges.
Authored comprehensive documentation encompassing requirements analysis, architectural designs, and logical workflow specifications utilizing UML methodologies.

Freelance Software Developer | July/2016 – Jan/2018, India

Strategic Accomplishments:

Architected and developed mobile applications utilizing Qt and Android frameworks, complemented by robust server-side infrastructure leveraging Node.js and Ruby on Rails with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Firebase database integrations.
Implemented third-party SDK integrations for video advertisement monetization within client applications.
Engineered multiple WordPress-based web solutions with optimized Nginx hosting configurations for enhanced performance and reliability.

Education

Masters of IT (Professional) | 2019 | Deakin University, Melbourne, AU

Specialization in Cyber Security

3 months paid internship at Deakin Launchpad.
Minor thesis: Automatic assessment and Feedback System to improve Students’ Programming Skills Development for OnTrack — The aim of this project was to understand the many challenges, advantages and disadvantages of implementing an online automatic assessment and feedback system for students studying the programming discipline and find practical solutions to face the inevitable challenges. Existing literature in this domain was thoroughly reviewed and the research was carried out using action research methodology. The outcomes of this undertaking lead to Project Overseer.

B. Tech in Computer Science | 2016 | LPU, India

Majors in Software Engineering

Capstone Project: Hatchen App — Spearheaded a team of 3 for the development of an Android application focused on enhancing team communication, utilizing Node.js, Socket.io, and MySQL database at the backend.

Recent Achievements

Awarded first prize by GovHack, AU, 2018.

Side Projects

EnvisionCraft | 2016 - 2017

Accomplishments:

Developed configurable plugins for different distributions of Java server of the popular game Minecraft. Many of these plugins utilized MySQL for persisting players’ data via JDBC and communicated between multiple server instances backed by Redis, including a Proxy server.
Deployed and maintained server software on multiple remote VMs. Used SSH-tunneling for secure networking amongst the VMs.
Deployed, managed and contributed to the open-source Rails forums engine Thredded.
Hardened security by configuring firewall, SSH daemon and other services like Redis.
Configured DNS records and Nginx reverse proxy server.

Open-source Projects/Contributions

smartCapitaliseJs: akashagarwal7.github.io/smartCapitaliseJs
doubtfire-api: github.com/doubtfire-lms/doubtfire-api/commits?author=akashagarwal7

Technical Skills and Abilities

Programming Languages: Java, Python, Dart, Zsh/Bash, JavaScript, Ruby, C#, TypeScript, C++.

Markup/styling Languages: Markdown, HTML5, CSS3, SCSS.

Frameworks: Flutter, Supabase, Spring Boot, FastAPI, Asp.NET, Express, Hapi, React, Ruby on Rails, Bootstrap, Unity.

Databases: Postgres, Google BigQuery, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB.

Operating Systems: macOS, Ubuntu, CentOS, Windows.

CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Codefresh, Travis, CircleCI.

Monitoring & Observability: Prometheus, Metabase, MLFlow, Weights & Biases, Metaflow.

Miscellaneous: Git, Portainer, RabbitMQ, AWS, VirtualBox, Vim, Tmux, Pandoc, J2SE, Maven, Gradle, OpenRewrite, Zsh, DNS record configuration, wire-framing utilizing Balsamiq and Adobe XD, graphic design utilizing GIMP/Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office suite — Word, PowerPoint and Excel; Apple iWork suite — Pages, Keynotes and Numbers; GSuite applications — Docs, Slides, Sheets and Forms.