👋 Hello! I'm Aditya Karad.

This is my personal website.

I'm currently finishing up my MSCS program at UC Irvine.

Here's a short bio:

  • MSCS student at UC Irvine (4.0 GPA).
  • Previously worked as a software engineer at JPMorgan Chase.
  • Worked as a Backend SWE Intern at AppLovin (ad-tech) in Palo Alto this summer.
  • Competitive programming background (more info later in this page).
  • Strong CS fundamentals in OS, Databases, Distributed Systems, and Algorithms.
  • I also write technical articles on 🖊️ BytesandLogs.
  • Here is a list of projects I've worked on.

I’m looking for full-time software engineering roles (2025 start) in the US. If you're a recruiter or a engineering team leader looking to hire a software engineer for your team ⇒ Reach out to ankarad@uci.edu. Here is a link to my resume.

Updates

Fall 2024

  • Moved back to Irvine, CA.
  • This quarter I have a little bit of a free time. So I'll working on a couple of personal projects I have always wanted to do, but never quite got the time to do them.
  • Books I am reading — System Design Interview – An Insider's Guide: Volume 1 & 2 (Alex Xu).
  • Working as a TA for CS122B under Prof. James Herold.

Summer 2024

  • Moved to Palo Alto, CA.
  • I'm working at AppLovin as a Backend SWE intern. I'll be building backend systems in C++ in the summer ☀️.
  • At AppLovin, I worked on developing an asynchronous event pipeline in C++, using Google PubSub and BigQuery. The interesting part: the server I'm working on receives around 70B ad requests per day.
  • I also worked on a "cache" microservice which triggered database queries periodically and provided the results of that query to all other applications in the org. We found that this microservice (a multithreaded Java application) was a performance bottleneck because sometimes the periodic tasks would take a lot of time. To find potential performance bottlenecks, I integrated distributed tracing (GCP Cloud Trace) in this microservice to analyse performance bottlenecks. This helped me optimize the running time of all database queries by 20% through improved thread utilization and parallelism.
  • I also worked on adding new features to their new e-commerce effort. This work mainly revolved around cookies, pixels, and how e-commerce works.
  • Books I read — The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz), High Performance MySQL (Baron Schwartz).
  • I also picked up the habit of reading HackerNews this summer.

Spring 2024

  • I worked under Prof. Chen Li to implement a Texera control plane that rapidly deploys an isolated, secure Texera instance with hardware limits in <5 seconds, dynamically leveraging AWS EC2, EFS, and EBS resources [Demo].
  • Coursework: Data Structures, Advanced OS, Software Project (CLI Tool written in Rust), Database Systems (CMU 15-445/645).
  • I served as a teaching assistant for CS122B and developed course content for teaching Kubernetes to undergrad students.
  • I developed core database components for BusTub database system in C++17 (from CMU’s 15445-645).
  • Books I read — Operating Systems (Three Easy Pieces), Database Management Systems by Ramakrishnan.

Winter 2024

  • Worked under Prof. Chen Li to run Texera (a collaborative data analytics research project at UC Irvine), in a distributed on premises Kubernetes cluster to support 150+ concurrent users running resource-intensive workloads.
  • Coursework: Distributed Systems, AI, Individual Study.
  • I served as a teaching assistant for CS121 — Information Retrieval.
  • Books I read — Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

Fall 2023

  • Moved to Irvine, CA
  • Joined MSCS program at UC Irvine.
  • Contributed open-source patches to Apache AsterixDB, a big-data DBMS project at UC Irvine.
  • Coursework: Computer Networks, Cryptography, & ML.

July 2022 - Aug 2023 (1 yr, 1 month)

  • Moved to Mumbai, India.
  • Worked a full-stack software engineer at JPMorgan Chase. I was part of the Asset and Wealth Management division.

Highlights:

  • Spearheaded development of a regulatory reporting application for Geneva Credit team, supporting 20+ unique reports. Worked on the application from proof-of-concept to production.
  • Migrated cache microservice from on-premises Pivotal Cloud Cache to AWS Elasticache, reducing annual operating costs by 89% from $22800 to $2604 across 7 application pools.
  • Achieved highest year-end performance rating (SSS) & awarded with Circle of Excellence Award (Q4 2022).

Other highlights:

2018-2022

Studied at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee.

Highlights:

  • Summer Intern at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
  • Developed an AirBnb clone.
  • Got traction and revenue from a weekend project.
  • Launched a gamified productivity app on Play Store.
  • Competitive Programming:
    • Competed in several competitive programming contests on platforms like Codeforces, Codechef, Google Kickstart, Google Hashcode, Facebook Hackercup.
    • Secured global rank of 35th in Codechef May Cook-off (top 0.33%) & 112th in Codechef May Lunchtime (top 2%).
    • Achieved global rank of 315th in Codeforces Round 719 (top 1.68%) & 445th in Google Kickstart Round B.

Before 2018

  • Secured an All India Rank (AIR) of 1615 in IIT-JEE Advanced 2018: Top 0.1% out of 1.5 million students.
  • I read a lot of Math & Physics. I loved reading the different volumes of "The Feynman Lectures on Physics". I also solved problems from books written by I.E Irodov, S.S Krotov, and H.C Verma.

I like working out, watching F1, reading random things out of curiosity, and long walks in the evenings.

You can reach out to me at ankarad at uci dot edu.

I also like writing blog posts at 📝 Bytes and Logs.