Vetted Apache Kafka Professionals

Sumer Joshi

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Senior Full-Stack Engineer specializing in backend systems and AI applications

Remote13y exp

“Candidate is deeply focused on AI-native software development, using a deliberate planner/implementer agent workflow with tools like Cursor, Claude, and Kimi. They also built a personal project called Config Proctor, an AI-agent-driven Terraform/AWS self-healing system that identifies infrastructure configuration gaps and proposes fixes.”

Manaswini Gogineni

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Mid-Level Software Engineer specializing in cloud infrastructure and full-stack web development

San Francisco, CA2y exp

“Backend engineer at Electric Hydrogen who built a serverless device-log ingestion and processing platform in Python/Flask, scaling throughput (4x peak ingestion) while keeping sub-300ms API latency. Strong in Postgres/SQLAlchemy performance (partitioning, materialized views) and production ML integration (ONNX model served via FastAPI microservice with async batch inference, Redis feature caching, and drift monitoring via S3/Lambda). Experienced designing secure multi-tenant systems with schema-per-tenant isolation and KMS-backed encryption.”

“Backend/AI engineer who has built a rule-service platform on AWS and evolved it into an agentic RAG system using LangChain, ReAct, tool calling, and LLM-as-judge review. Notable for combining heavy AI-assisted development with production safeguards like manual CR, CloudWatch monitoring, fallback strategies, benchmark testing, and user-feedback-driven model improvement.”

“Robotics-focused engineer with ROS 2 experience who has built and debugged real-time, distributed control/orchestration systems under production-like latency and safety constraints. Led platform changes at Persona for a real-time verification orchestration system using deterministic state machines and async workers, and has hands-on experience stabilizing multi-robot navigation/SLAM behavior using rosbag, RViz, and stress testing in simulation (Gazebo).”

Nishitha Thummala

Screened

Mid-level AI/ML Engineer specializing in LLMs, RAG, and scalable inference

San Francisco, CA6y exp

“Backend/retrieval-focused engineer with production experience at Perplexity building a large-scale real-time Q&A system using retrieval-augmented generation, emphasizing low-latency, high-quality answers through ranking, context optimization, and caching. Also has orchestration experience from both product-facing LLM pipelines and large-scale infrastructure workflows at Meta, and has partnered with non-technical stakeholders to align AI trade-offs with business goals.”

Kowshika M

Screened

Mid-level AI/ML Engineer specializing in LLM fine-tuning, inference optimization, and AI safety

Santa Clara, CA5y exp

“AI/LLM engineer with production experience at NVIDIA, where they fine-tuned and deployed a financial-services chatbot and cut latency ~50% using TensorRT + NVIDIA Triton, scaling via Docker/Kubernetes. Also has consulting experience at Accenture delivering a predictive maintenance solution for a logistics network, bridging non-technical stakeholders with actionable dashboards.”

Mitul Sheth

Screened

Senior Engineering Manager specializing in cloud security and graph-based data platforms

Seattle, WA9y exp

“Engineering leader at Sysdig Secure who pitched and prototyped a model data platform that initially got rejected, then proved value by migrating the CIEM offering and expanding adoption across multiple verticals. Now owns the CIEM suite plus the broader Sysdig Secure data and reporting platforms, manages 14 direct reports, and also leads a pilot AI team while remaining hands-on weekly.”

Nikhil Reddy

Screened

Mid-level AI/ML Engineer specializing in GPU inference and LLM platforms

San Francisco, CA5y exp

“Built and deployed an LLM-powered platform that turns models into scalable REST/gRPC APIs, focusing on keeping GPU-backed inference fast and stable during traffic spikes. Experienced with AWS orchestration (EKS/ECS/Step Functions), safe model rollouts, and production-grade monitoring/testing for reliable AI agents and workflows.”

Krishna Reddy

Screened

Mid-level AI/ML Engineer specializing in fraud detection and clinical LLM assistants

New York, NY6y exp

“Built and deployed a production clinical support LLM assistant at Mayo Clinic using a LangChain-orchestrated RAG architecture (Llama 2/PaLM) over de-identified clinical records, integrating BigQuery with Pinecone for semantic retrieval. Focused on healthcare-critical reliability by reducing hallucinations through grounding, implementing HIPAA-aligned privacy controls (Cloud DLP, VPC Service Controls), and running structured evaluations with clinician feedback.”

“Backend/full-stack engineer who has owned a production recruiting platform end-to-end (TypeScript/Node microservices for scraping/cleaning/serving job data, RabbitMQ for spike handling, MongoDB + Elasticsearch, AWS containers) with pragmatic CI, logging/alerts, and Docker Compose E2E tests. Also operated high-traffic event pipelines during a Binance internship using Kafka + Redis idempotency, with strong observability and failure-mode/rollback/degradation practices, and has experience designing developer-friendly REST APIs and resilient browser automation for E2E flows.”

“Technology-first venture builder with strong familiarity in the VC/accelerator landscape, specializing in greenfield innovation, M&A, and large-scale transformation/modernization. Described building a venture-funded retail banking greenfield startup to integrate lending-as-a-service for SME lending while meeting federal and local financial services compliance requirements.”

“Recent internship project at Google Workspace building an LLM-driven Python backend pipeline to extract/enrich NLP features from messy customer web domains and integrate them into a Domain Feature Store for personalization and promotions. Also has hands-on Kubernetes/Docker deployment experience for a Digital Signage SaaS backend with GitHub Actions CI, plus strong streaming-systems knowledge (Kafka exactly-once, schema evolution, Flink scaling) and built an information retrieval system handling 30,000+ cases.”

“Fintech/neobank CTO (5+ years across US and UK markets) now building Payzo Money, a fintech copilot for SMBs covering expenses, accounting, invoicing, and payroll. Pre-revenue and seeking a $5M seed round, with active Bay Area conversations and a clear focus on bank sponsorship plus compliance/operations readiness; leverages Claude-based AI agents to accelerate building with limited resources.”

Amrita Pritam

Screened

Senior Backend Engineer specializing in distributed microservices and event-driven systems

Fremont, CA10y exp

“Backend engineer with production experience building a high-scale notification pipeline (~20M/day) using Java/Dropwizard with Kafka and Azure Queue, including DLQ/poison-message handling and the outbox pattern for reliability. Also led a batch-based migration of Yammer Messaging user data from PostgreSQL to Azure Cosmos DB for global multi-region scale, addressing throttling and network failures via retries, escalation policies, and dynamic throughput tuning.”

Shilong Li

Screened

Intern Software Engineer specializing in backend and distributed systems

San Jose, CA1y exp

“Backend engineer with experience at ByteDance (TikTok monetization) and Baidu, plus a personal real-time course booking/tracking platform built with FastAPI, Postgres, and Redis. Demonstrates strong concurrency and reliability engineering (Redis distributed locks with TTL extension, idempotent event processing) and practical DevOps skills (Kubernetes/Helm, GitLab CI/CD, Docker build-time optimization).”

“ML/AI engineer with hands-on ownership of production computer vision and GenAI systems, spanning real-time public safety video analytics and RAG-based knowledge assistants. Stands out for translating research-oriented approaches into scalable, monitored production systems with clear business impact, including 50% latency reductions, 25% faster response times, and 40% lower document search time.”

Kunj Amrutbhai Patel

Screened

Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in distributed backend systems on AWS

Seattle, WA4y exp

“Built production systems in the AWS ecosystem, including an internal AI assistant for diagnosing account transfer and permissions issues and an end-to-end account transfer workflow used by enterprise customers. Stands out for combining LLM/RAG design with strong distributed systems reliability practices, emphasizing guardrails, fallbacks, and operational trust in high-stakes workflows.”