Varun Gujarathi

Varun Gujarathi · Software Engineer & Builder

I build the product and the systems that make it last.

Just another nerd who loves to build cool stuff.

I like the messy early stage: figuring out what matters, building a practical first version, and making it reliable as it grows. I've shipped new products at DoorDash, scaled APIs at LiveRamp, and contributed to open source. Based in New York.

Let's build something See my work

A little about me

I'm happiest with a real problem, room to think, and a team that wants to move. I start with the outcome, ask the questions that reveal the risks, and take ownership from design through launch and cleanup.

That instinct has taken me from leading a robotics team in college to building software for payments, identity, and new products. I care about the people using what I build, and about leaving the code and the team in better shape than I found them.

What I bring to a small team

Ownership from idea to launch

At DoorDash, I helped design and build Spotlight Ads, owning systems across the campaign lifecycle for a product that unlocked $120M in revenue.

Speed with judgment

At LiveRamp, I migrated a legacy event streaming system to Kafka in six weeks, reducing technical debt and operational overhead.

Reliability when it counts

I helped scale LiveRamp's Identity APIs for 200K requests per second during the FIFA Club World Cup, with zero errors at peak.

Experience

Software Engineer

· DoorDash

Apr 2026 – Present

  • → Drove the design and implementation of Spotlight Ads, a premium ad inventory product that unlocked $120M in revenue, with end-to-end ownership of campaign lifecycle systems
  • → Updated backend supply filtering and auction logic to support low-SKU campaigns, expanding mid-market advertiser demand and auction depth

Software Engineer

· LiveRamp

Dec 2024 – Apr 2026

  • →Scaled Identity APIs to 200K requests per second during the FIFA Club World Cup, handling 6–7× normal traffic with zero errors at peak. Read the engineering article ↗
  • →Led engineering for the Chalice AI partnership, enabling predictive model deployment and individualized audience scoring in privacy-preserving clean rooms. Read the partnership announcement ↗
  • →Built foundational clean-room model execution capabilities that helped enable LiveRamp's NVIDIA collaboration and AI workloads with up to 15× faster model performance. Read the NVIDIA announcement ↗
  • → Migrated a legacy event streaming system to Kafka within six weeks, reducing technical debt and operational overhead

Software Engineer

· Fuel AI

Jul 2024 – Nov 2024

  • → Architected a scalable data marketplace platform in Golang, increasing user engagement by 40%

Software Engineer

· HSBC

Sept 2020 – June 2022

  • → Reduced banking fraud by 60%, saving $2M annually via real-time fraud detection with Spring Boot REST APIs
  • → Improved RTP request response time by 73% with a multi-threaded Spring Integration router
  • → Trimmed infrastructure costs by 30% by migrating microservices to AWS EKS with Docker and Jenkins
  • → Enabled SIM-Swap compliance reaching 14M+ U.K. customers in 15 days

Machine Learning Intern

· Shyena Tech Yarns

Jan 2020 – Jul 2020

  • → Built event-driven microservices using Python, Kafka, and PostgreSQL to analyze customer behavior
  • → Increased retail store revenue by 22%

Skills

Languages

Go Java SQL JavaScript Python Bash

Frameworks

Gorilla/Mux Spring Boot React.js jQuery WebSockets Spark LangGraph

Tools

PostgreSQL Bigtable BigQuery Kafka Redis Swagger

Cloud & DevOps

AWS GCP Docker Kubernetes Terraform Helm Jenkins ArgoCD

Projects

Owncast

Open source contributor. Integrated gorilla/websocket for real-time chat (25% engagement increase) and fixed a critical username sanitization bug for 50k+ users.

Go React.js

Video Party

P2P video streaming app supporting 1000+ simultaneous viewers using WebRTC and WebSockets.

Spring Boot React.js WebRTC WebSockets
View all projects on GitHub →

Education

Master of Science

Computer Science

Santa Clara University

Sept 2022 – June 2024

Bachelor of Technology

Electronics Engineering

Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune

Aug 2016 – May 2020

Certifications & Awards

  • → AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) · March 2024
  • → HSBC Best New Grad 2020 — fraud detection & infrastructure
  • → 1st place, undergrad capstone project (110 teams)

Extracurricular

Head of Robotics Club

Led 25 engineers to 6th place in an international robotics competition. Built an intelligent quadrupedal robot.

vitpunerobotics.com →

Website Lead, Student Council

Led college website development handling 10K+ peak traffic. Mentored 4 developers on ReactJS and AWS.

epecvitpune.com →

Executive Producer, TEDxVITPune

Orchestrated stage design, production, and content for a 500+ attendee TEDx event with thousands of live stream viewers.

tedxvitpune.in →

Let's talk about what you're building

If you're tackling a hard problem and want someone who can think through it, build it, and own the details, I'd love to hear about it.

Have an idea or a challenge?

Tell me what you're trying to build and where you're stuck. A short note is a great place to start.

Email me ↗

Direct Contact

varungujarathi9@gmail.com

Social

github.com/varungujarathi9 linkedin.com/in/varungujarathi dev.to/varungujarathi9