Vetted Elasticsearch Professionals

Kaustubh Rai

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in distributed systems and cloud-native microservices

PA, USA2y exp

“Software engineer with ~2 years at UnitedHealth Group plus CMU coursework/TA experience, spanning backend modernization and cloud-native operations. Worked on migrating a customized open-source EDI system from Python 2 to Python 3 while improving SQLite database traceability via JSON exports, and has hands-on Kubernetes microservices deployment on Azure using Helm, HPA, and Jenkins-based Git-triggered CI/CD. Also built a large-scale real-time ride-hailing simulation using Kafka + Samza with explicit fault-tolerance strategies.”

“Backend/data engineer focused on production ML/LLM systems: built a real-time FastAPI inference API on Kubernetes with strong reliability patterns (timeouts, idempotent retries, centralized error handling). Delivered AWS platforms using EKS + Lambda with GitHub Actions/Helm CI/CD and built Glue-based ETL from S3/Kafka into Snowflake with schema evolution and data-quality controls; also modernized legacy analytics/recommendation workflows into Python services with safe, feature-flagged cutovers.”

“Engineering leader (12+ years Director, 17 years lead) focused on developer productivity and platform/framework work across Oracle, PlayStation, Workday, and CafePress. Notable for building distributed teams from scratch and delivering high-impact platform architecture—e.g., re-architected PlayStation’s upload pipeline to support 500GB–5TB submissions using browser-to-AWS chunked uploads with SNS/SQS and deduplication/resume support.”

“Built and deployed a production LLM-powered clinical support assistant at BJC HealthCare (RAG + transformer) to answer patient questions, summarize clinical notes, and support appointment workflows. Implemented PHI-safe data pipelines (Spark/Hadoop/Kafka) with automated scrubbing, dataset versioning, and audit logs, and runs the system on Docker/Kubernetes with Pinecone vector search while partnering closely with clinical operations staff.”

Nagsen Dahat

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in FinTech platforms and cloud-native systems

New York, NY18y exp

“Motivated by the desire to work independently after spending significant time working for others. Demonstrated notable discipline and follow-through by completing a Master's program with great grades while managing a full-time job, family with two children, and a social life.”

“Meta engineer who emphasizes AI-native development workflows, using Claude Code heavily to ship UI and performance fixes quickly. Notable examples include a location-aware ad relevance feature that increased CTR and revenue, and a vehicle insights chatbot whose UX improved through metric-driven prompt tuning.”

“Engineering leader who built and delivered an IoT smart-spaces platform for the self-storage and smart-living domains, translating customer requirements into architecture, capability maps, and a multi-milestone roadmap. Personally stood up missing AI/ML capabilities (including churn prediction) using Databricks (Delta Lake/MLflow), enabling follow-on features like energy optimization and security/anomaly detection. Scaled an org from 20 to 80+ with disciplined Agile planning (Jira Advanced Roadmaps/Confluence) and strong executive/customer-facing leadership during high-stakes customer commitments.”

Timothy Lee

Screened

Senior Full-Stack Engineer specializing in AI platforms and scalable web systems

Live Oak, FL12y exp

“Built and shipped production agentic/LLM systems that could safely perform real customer and subscription operations, not just answer questions. Demonstrates unusually strong depth in agent orchestration, tool safety, evals, tracing, and backend workflow design across Node.js/TypeScript, Go, Redis, Postgres, Kafka, and GPT-4.”

Durgaprasad G

Screened

Mid-level AI/ML Engineer specializing in LLM infrastructure, RAG, and agentic systems

New York City, NY3y exp

“Stripe engineer who owned and unified multiple team RAG systems into a shared production platform used by 200+ internal operators, deployed on EKS with Kafka ingestion and hybrid retrieval. Drove measurable business outcomes including <400ms latency, ~35% inference cost reduction, ~25% accuracy lift via fine-tuning, and real-time auto-approval of 80%+ merchant compliance applications through strong observability and reliability patterns.”

“Senior engineering leader and architect with 15+ years of experience building organizations and cloud-native platforms across cybersecurity, healthcare, fintech, and enterprise software. At A10 Networks, he served as the principal architect while managing 30+ engineers, delivering a multi-tenant SaaS platform and AI-powered DDoS product in under a year, then migrating legacy products and enterprise customers onto the new foundation.”

“ML/NLP engineer with experience building production-grade legal-tech and data platforms, including a GPT-4/LangChain contract review system using ElasticSearch embeddings (RAG) deployed on AWS EKS. Strong in entity resolution and scalable batch/streaming pipelines (Kafka/Spark), with measurable impact (70%+ reduction in contract review time) and a focus on monitoring and CI/CD for reliable delivery.”

“Growth-stage full-stack engineer with recent hands-on Go work in a compliance-focused B2B SaaS environment and deep prior experience in React/TypeScript, Node, PostgreSQL, and Elasticsearch at Tend. Stands out for owning cross-stack performance, search, and reliability improvements in fast-moving teams, including reducing latency, improving search efficiency, and designing integrations for regulated operational workflows.”