Software Engineer

Harshit Thakkar

Graduate student in Computer Science with a focus on distributed systems, DevOps, and competitive programming. I enjoy building reliable backends, contributing to open source, and solving hard algorithmic problems.

Harshit Thakkar

Education

Master of Science, Computer Science

GPA: 3.7 / 4.00

Coursework: Distributed Systems, Advanced Data Structures, Algorithms, Software Architecture, Parallel Computing

Bachelor of Technology, Information Technology

GPA: 8.2 / 10.00

Coursework: Object-Oriented Programming, Operating Systems, Database Management, Machine Learning

Experience

Software Engineer (Intern)

Blueinfy · Ahmedabad

  • Engineered a custom JavaScript Concrete Syntax Tree parser achieving 98% accuracy, integrated with Semgrep's workflow to automate static code analysis and review code quality across 100k+ lines of Gosu.
  • Applied rigorous live debugging to diagnose complex technical bottlenecks in *nix environments, delivering actionable, well-documented logic that enhanced security governance and reduced manual audit cycles by 25%.

Software Engineer (Intern)

Level Supermind · Mumbai

  • Consolidated freeze streak and regular streak microservices into a single database structure by modeling the freeze streak as a standard activity, streamlining PostgreSQL pipelines to ensure continuous data availability.
  • Analyzed and optimized core algorithms to reduce computation from quadratic to log-linear time, slashing latency from 1.2s to 150ms to strictly fulfill a 1-second API contract for iOS frontends.
  • Packaged scalable architectures via Docker to reliably support 10,000+ concurrent requests, establishing end-to-end ownership of observability metrics to drive a 30% increase in user engagement.
  • Maintained comprehensive operational runbooks for live debugging and 24/7 support, ensuring seamless adoption across global engineering squads.

Technical Projects

Brain Map

  • Collaborative infinite-canvas mind-map with a WebGL frontend, quadtree-backed spatial engine, and local-first map storage on the user's device.
  • Spring Boot REST API with Google OAuth and MongoDB; documented GCP and DigitalOcean deployment workflows.

Quadtree Database

  • Desktop map database suite with a custom .plusmap binary format, quad-based spatial indexing, and import/query engine for terrain and road features.
  • Core and engine modules complete with 47 passing tests; powers the spatial backend behind Brain Map.

LockIn

  • Local-first YouTube content filter using offline LLMs to classify recommendations against a user profile and block irrelevant tiles — zero cloud dependency.
  • JavaFX desktop app controls the Chrome extension via localhost IPC, with profile sync, live stats, and sub-180ms classification latency.

Code-cage

  • Multiprocess code execution platform running Java, Python, C++, JavaScript, and Bash in isolated OS processes with real-time stdout/stderr streaming.
  • Enforces per-run time and memory limits with TLE killing, live process history, and Chaos Monkey compatibility for resilience testing.

Simian Army

  • Built a Simian Army suite for a university distributed-systems course — chaos, latency, conformity, and load monkeys to stress-test a social-media microservices app under simulated production failures.
  • Instrumented services with observability tooling and validated resilience patterns; monkey scripts live in the public repo — the full university social-media app stays private.

Rubik's Cube Solver

  • Swing GUI that solves scrambled cubes using the beginner's method, with text-scramble and per-face color input modes.
  • Animates the solve step-by-step with pause, rewind, speed control, and move notation highlighting for learning standard cube notation.

Upcoming

Research Assistant

Browser extension that uses Gemini 2.5 to assist with research workflows — summarizing papers, answering questions in context, and streamlining literature review.

LexiKV

Lightweight key-value store for LLM query caching and retrieval — designed for simple, fast lookup of prior prompts and responses in local agent workflows.

Open Source Contributions

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Skills & Activities

Languages

Python, Go, Java, C/C++, SQL, Bash/Shell, JavaScript

Infrastructure & OS

Linux/UNIX, Kubernetes, AWS, Docker, TCP/IP Networking, Load Balancing

Databases & AI

MySQL, PostgreSQL, Local LLMs (Ollama), Prompt Engineering, Agent Orchestration

DevOps & SRE

Terraform (IaC), CI/CD, Observability, Debugging, Chaos Engineering

Competitive Programming

Active algorithmic problem solver with 400+ complex challenges solved, focusing on distributed systems data structures, dynamic programming, and graph theory.

MG Science College — Bootcamp Lead

Hosted an intensive coding bootcamp instructing students on Python, core software engineering principles, machine learning fundamentals, and writing clean, scalable code.