Vetted Software Engineers in the Bay Area

Mike Henniger

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Staff Software Engineer specializing in scalable backend and full-stack web systems

Burlingame, CA32y exp

“Frontend-leaning full-stack product engineer with IMVU experience who designed both user-facing flows and the production telemetry behind them. Most notably, they built a JavaScript crash detection system using signature-based aggregation and Redis that helped reduce crash volume from millions per day to tens of thousands, and they pair that reliability mindset with reusable UI architecture and onboarding design for consumer social products.”

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.”

“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.”

Joseph Fusco

Screened

Senior Software Engineer specializing in AI-powered developer tooling and backend platforms

Marin, CA10y exp

“Backend/product engineer from Postman Flows who has owned complex platform features end-to-end, including production versioning and an LLM-powered flow-building orchestration layer. Stands out for combining product-minded backend design, agentic AI workflow implementation, and strong production reliability work, including re-architecting a failing event pipeline from in-memory to managed queues.”

“CTO-minded builder seeking to join a startup; previously created an AI-driven platform that abstracted away DevOps and infrastructure for drug discovery researchers. Emphasizes high-leverage, zero-to-one execution with managed cloud/open-source tooling, and a strong reliability/reproducibility mindset validated against existing scientific pipelines.”

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.”

UDAY JARAJAPU

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in AI-native products and large-scale platforms

Fremont, CA22y exp

“Experienced cross-functional operator with background in AI, edtech, consumer mobile, cloud, and real estate search, including roles at Apple, AWS, and Trulia. Currently building Typerighter, an AI-native writing workspace focused on compliance, authenticity, and human-verifiable content, with a nuanced understanding of institutional requirements and startup/accelerator dynamics.”

Christian Alcala

Screened

Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in LLM-powered analytics

Redwood Shores, CA4y exp

“Engineer with a pragmatic, production-focused approach to AI development, emphasizing verification, observability, and system design over hype. Built LLM-driven features and automated regression/validation pipelines, including quality measurement work at Oracle, and uses hands-on projects to test how AI fits into real business workflows.”

Pranav Hariharane

Screened

Mid-Level Backend Engineer specializing in REST APIs and AWS

SF Bay Area, CA3y exp

“Backend engineer who built a new REST eligibility service at Barclays that unified siloed account logic (card/loan/deposit) and integrated with web/mobile, ultimately serving millions of users daily. Also built an end-to-end LLM-based pharmaceutical care-plan generation tool in a rapid Columbia startup competition, emphasizing configurable design, strict validation, persistence, and robust error handling.”

“Full-stack engineer with Uber experience building finance/billing reconciliation systems: shipped and owned an internal operations dashboard (Next.js App Router/TypeScript) that cut investigation time from hours to minutes and improved load time from ~6–7s to <2s. Deep in Postgres modeling and performance (sub-200ms optimized queries) plus durable event-driven workflow orchestration with idempotency, retries/backoff, DLQs, and reconciliation jobs; also has seed-to-Series C startup experience emphasizing end-to-end ownership.”