Preetham Dandu

About

MS candidate with strong backend/data engineering focus who builds research and data systems with production-grade rigor (reproducibility, observability, restartability). Has hands-on experience securing and scaling FastAPI-based gateways in front of Java microservices, leading SQL Server→Snowflake migrations with dual-write/feature-flag rollouts, and hardening Kafka-based fleet-tracking systems against out-of-order and duplicate events.

Experience

Education

Key Strengths

• Designed reproducible ML/data research pipeline with production-like reliability, observability, and restartability
• Makes pragmatic architecture tradeoffs (velocity vs rigor; compute/storage cost vs determinism) to optimize outcomes
• Strong API reliability and security practices (contract-first validation, idempotency, versioning, rate limiting, JWT/RBAC)
• Improved security and debuggability on FastAPI gateway + Java microservices by closing auth gap and adding end-to-end traceable logs
• Led SQL Server to Snowflake migration with risk controls (containerized reproducible runs, schema casting, checksums, dual-write, feature-flagged rollout, parity checks)
• Deep understanding of distributed failure modes (Kafka re-delivery/out-of-order) and mitigation (dedupe, idempotency keys, monotonic sequencing) to reduce inconsistent states

Reference Highlights

• Very good ownership of backend systems end-to-end
• Strong judgment on architecture, security, and long-term decisions
• Successfully anonymized and cleaned data across multiple projects
• Built applications to visualize medical data
• Able to implement an entire visualizer
• Performs very well in ambiguous/early-stage (zero-to-one) environments
• Trusted to lead backend evolution for a critical product