Distributed Systems / AI Engineering

Hi, I'm Ram.

I build systems that scale.

I'm a senior software engineer who builds distributed systems that stay up under load, most recently leading a real time inventory platform at Nordstrom. These days I'm going deep on AI engineering, building LLM powered tools, retrieval systems, and agents in the open.

See my work → ↓ Resume

A bit about me

I'm a senior software engineer based in Seattle. For the last several years I led the engineering behind a real time inventory platform at Nordstrom, the kind of system where a few seconds of staleness shows up in stores and online. That work taught me to care about correctness, observability, and systems that hold up when traffic spikes.

Lately I'm pointing that same discipline at AI engineering, building LLM powered tools, retrieval systems, and agents, and treating them like real software with evals and guardrails. Away from the keyboard I collect watches, play chess and poker, and have written a few books.

const ram = {
  role: "Senior Software Engineer",
  builds: "systems that scale",
  focus: ["Distributed Systems", "AI Engineering", "Full-Stack"],
  caresAbout: ["system design", "correctness", "scale", "shipping"],
  currently: "building LLM tools, in the open",
  openToWork: true,
};

What I Do

Proficiencies

Distributed Systems

Real time platforms, event streaming, and data systems built to stay up under heavy load.

Kafka · Redis · PostgreSQL · Kubernetes

AI Engineering

LLM powered products: RAG, tool using agents, and evals, built on foundation models.

RAG · Agents · pgvector · Evals

Full-Stack & App Dev

End to end product work, from React and JavaScript to Spring Boot and Node services.

React · JavaScript · Spring Boot · Node

The Journey

How I got here

2026 · NOW

Building toward AI engineering · independent

RAG, agents, and evals, designed like production software and written about in the open.

Aug 2022 – Apr 2026 · Seattle

Senior Software Engineer, Tech Lead · Nordstrom

Led real time inventory platform work, including a cache reconciliation service and a cutover across 200+ locations.

Dec 2020 – Jul 2022 · Seattle

Software Engineer II · Nordstrom

Built Kafka based streaming with Avro schemas and a serverless observability stack on AWS.

Jan 2020 – Nov 2020 · Seattle

Software Engineer I · Nordstrom

Worked on the inventory systems of record that the real time platform was later built on.

Jul 2018 – Dec 2019 · Dallas

Software Engineer · Cox Automotive

Front end and platform work serving 15,000+ dealerships from a shared codebase.

2018 · Syracuse

M.S. Computer Science · Syracuse University

Graduate study in computer science.

2015 · Hyderabad

B.S. Computer Science · JNTU (VNR VJIET)

Undergraduate degree in computer science.

Projects

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AI Project

Real Time LLM Enrichment Pipeline

Enriches live Kafka events with LLM calls, with a reliability layer and token budgeting.

JavaKafkaLLM APIs

Live demo → Writeup →

[ project image ]

AI Project

pgvector RAG Service

Retrieval augmented generation over a corpus, served as a streaming API with eval gating.

PythonpgvectorFastAPI

Live demo → Writeup →

[ project image ]

Nordstrom

Real Time Inventory Platform

Unified inventory systems into one real time platform across 200+ locations.

JavaKafkaPostgreSQL

Writeup →

[ project image ]

AI Project

Tool Using AI Agent

Completes multi step tasks by planning and calling tools, with guardrails and evals.

PythonMCPEvals

Live demo → Writeup →

Skills & Tools

What I work with

J Java

Python

Kafka

Spark

Flink

Airflow

Spring Boot

Node

React

Redux

Angular

PostgreSQL

Redis

A AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

Kong

Datadog

New Relic

Splunk

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Consult

Let's talk.

Working on something in distributed systems or AI, or hiring for a senior role? I'd be glad to hear about it.

Email me or book a call →