Kaushik Chakraborty

kaushik@kaushikc.org | github.com/kaychaks | keybase.io/kaushikc | linkedin.com/in/kaychaks/
kaushikc.org/tags/technology

About me

I am passionate about programming from its mathematical to its industrial aspects. My interests lies in Functional Programming, Knowledge Engineering, and Decentralized Web. I am a self-learning, research-focused, and hands-on programmer with experience in building sytems at both server and client level. I’ve worked in R&D organizations as well as handled large Enterprise Client Delivery projects. My idea of leadership is show-and-tell and less leadership more collaboration. I value open-source culture and try to contribute to open-source projects on the side.

Programming

TypeScript, JavaScript, Haskell
Also: React, Vue, Svelte, Relay, Redux, Rust, Scala, PHP, Python, PureScript

Operations

Linux, Kubernetes
Also: Nix, Terraform, Ansible, Circle CI, Docker Registry, Dhall

General

Modern Web Programming(GraphQL, Virtual DOM, Progressive Web, Web Assembly), Functional Programming, Type Systems
Also: HTTP(1&2), Reactive Principles, Graphs, Formal Methods, Knowledge Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Extreme Programming based Agile

Experience [Cognizant Technology Solutions, 2006 - NOW]

Asscociate Director - Large E-Commerce Site Transformation [2021 - Present]

• Designed and spearheading a large frontend techonology transformation initiative for one of the largest e-commerce web application. The web application is being transitioned from legacy technologies of Backbone / Marrionette to modern Vue3 and SSR based frontend stack.
• The design is keeping in mind large number of existing vertical domains thereby implementation is being done in a pure domain-driven design model.
• Design is trying to enable some flavours of micro-frontends so that disparate teams could go live without having hard dependencies on other teams
• The overall design also entails creating a multi-theme design system from scratch (without relying on any external design frameworks)

Sr. Architect - Large Store Transformation [2019 - 2020]

• Designed the end-to-end flow of an Hybrid Mobile Web Application destined to provide one consolidated experience capturing features from more than 40 legacy applications
• Designed & implemented GraphQL based middleware providing sophisticated schema for an React/Relay based Hybrid Web Application and also having totally type-safe Typescript resolvers integrating with multiple micro-services based Enterprise backends
• Designed & implemented a Google Kubernetes Engine based cloud-native deployment pipeline that also interfaced with other Google Cloud services like Stackdriver & BigQuery for tracing and monitoring
• Implemented various proof-of-concepts to migrate one of the critical native store application from iOS to Android dealing with low level Secure Socket Programming & AES encrypted message passing via an adhoc wire protocol
• Implemented advanced techniques in Relay’s runtime and network manager to deal with better client performance with respect to lazy loading and automated remote logging/monitoring.

Sr. Architect - Global Technology Office - Applied Research Initiatives [2018 - 2019]

• Collaborated with academia for research engagements which entailed doing extensive literature study (especially going through foundational research papers), evaluating relevant source code libraries/implementations, and coming up with novel approaches to become a research proposal.

• Worked on a proposal for Model-based Resiliency Validation of Cloud-Native Distributed System to come up with a stochastic model which can then be plugged into a home-grown failure injection platform.

• Implemented a Haskell based solution leveraging Hidden Markov Models based probabilistic inferencing algorithms

• Involved in literature-study and proof-of-concepts of following other research proposals:

  • Bringing dependent type theory to model and reason Description Logic-based Knowledge Representation and Reasoning systems
  • Evaluating automatic Ontology generation approaches based on the foundations of Statistical Relational Learning
  • Evaluating proposal on using Fluid Session Types for various use cases

• Contributed to ScalaZ, an open source library in Scala for Typed Functional Programming

Architect - Global Technology Office - Solutions and Accelerators [2012-2018]

• Worked on creating Knowledge Graph Models using Semantic Web Technologies (RDF & OWL) and other innovative techniques involving logic programming (Datalog & mini-Kanren), rules-engines, & other platforms (Stanford DeepDive) for various use-cases both internal and customer specific.

• Used Scala and Spark to do data analysis on the complete Stack Overflow Q&A dataset and created various Skills Clusters using Graph Algorithms. Which then was leveraged for an home-grown Skills and Competencies Ontology & related tool to help Human Resources in talent supply chain.

• Designed, setup, and maitained internal tools to improve developer productivity like source control repositories, CI/CD pipelines, docker registries for the overall company and deployed in a large Kubernetes cluster fully hosted in on-premise datacenters.

• Designed & implemented a generic Gamification Platform with rich analytical and presentation views. The technologies used were PHP, Angular, and Mongo DB for the client application and Drools as the central rules-engine driving the backend. Involved in pre-sales & evangelisation of the same for multiple customers.

• Contributed to HNix, an open source project for Haskell re-imlementation of the Nix expression language

Sr. Associate - Global Technology Office - Consulting [2011 - 2012]

• Worked as lead consultant and developed features for the web dashboards of a large NY based Investment Bank’s R&D division. Used extensively ExtJS widgets & a web-components based design that integrated with multiple other 3rd party scripts while ensuring strict performance requriements from customer.

• Worked as a consultant for a large mobility customer creating their massive web platform for converged experience of one of US’s biggest media houses. The platform used advanced JavaScript to deliver streaming media content as well as lots of form based configuration screens having complicated business rules. Along with lead developer also tasked to manage teams across geographies for a seamless delivery.

Associate [2006 - 2011]

• Developed an enterprise mashup platform which worked similar to Yahoo Pipes but produced deployable mashups. Used Adobe Flex as one of the technologies to create the platoform.

• Involved in a project to create web based knowledge management portal by one of the largest casual dining chain of US. Used a home-grown JavaScript framework which used copy-on-write techniques for performant user interfaces.

• Involved in a legacy modernisation project where one large restaurant chain were migrating from C++ based point-of-sale systems to .NET Framework. Migrated code from complex legacy C++ codebase to modern .Net v2 implementations as part of a Windows CE native application to run in highly resource constrain registers. Had to consider critically both space and time complexities.

Education

B. Tech [Computer Science & Engineering], 2002 - 2006, Kalinga Institute of Technology and Science, Bhubaneshwar, India.