AI-native engineer · 7 years shipping · Hyderabad

Akash.GR

Seven years shipping production software — building AI-native SaaS at scale and agentic systems in production. Backend instincts, product taste, and the discipline to read every line that ships.

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Role

Tech Lead · Product

Seven years shipping

Based in

Hyderabad

India

What I build

From spec to production — six things I take end-to-end.

Seven years of shipping software. The last two, every product I touch is AI-native by default. I'm comfortable across the stack — backend, frontend, data, infra — and most comfortable when the work is technically real and the audience is real too.

AI-native SaaS

Multi-tenant platforms with agentic features baked into the core flow — not bolted on after the fact.

Next.js 14
TypeScript
Postgres
Claude · Groq
Redis
AWS

Agentic workflows & copilots

LLM + tools + memory + guardrails. Domain agents that ship work, not chatter.

Claude Sonnet/Opus
GPT-4o
MCP
function calling
LangGraph
vector DBs

Internal AI tooling

Code assistants, knowledge agents, eval harnesses for teams that ship every week.

Python
FastAPI
LlamaIndex
Pinecone
Redis
evals

Multi-tenant networks

Alumni networks, marketplaces, community platforms — where I cut my teeth across three years at Vaave.

Node.js
MySQL
subdomains
tenant isolation
RBAC

Real-time products

Streaming UIs, WebSockets, presence, observability — chat & live dashboards.

SSE
WebSockets
Redis pub/sub
Postgres LISTEN/NOTIFY
edge runtime

Backend platforms

APIs that age well. Schema-first. Audit trails. Boring on purpose, fast in production.

Node/TS
Python
Postgres
Redis
OpenAPI
Docker

The shape of me

A stack that grew with the work.

I started backend. Got pulled into product. Then AI rewrote what “engineer” means — and I leaned all the way in. None of the depths below are claims; they're things I can defend, with receipts in the work I've shipped.

012 yrs

Generative AI

Agentic workflows · Claude · Groq · OpenAI
Engineer-in-the-loop coding (Cursor, Claude Code)
Prompt engineering, eval harnesses, guardrails
Streaming UIs · function calling · RAG

“I haven't typed code by hand in six months. I read every line that ships.”

027 yrs

Engineering

Python · Node.js · TypeScript · Java
FastAPI · Express · Next.js (App Router)
MySQL · PostgreSQL · Redis · multi-tenant
AWS · Docker · GitHub Actions · observability

“Backend-first instinct. SQL is a love language. Production is sacred.”

033 yrs

Product

Roadmap · pricing · onboarding loops
Customer research → spec → ship cadence
PMF instincts on AI-native SaaS
Tight feedback loops with sales & success

“I design for the quiet Tuesday six months after launch — not the demo.”

042 yrs

Leadership

Team Lead · 6 ICs across product + AI
Hiring, mentoring, performance reviews
Writing-first culture (decisions in markdown)
Calm in incidents, honest in 1:1s

“Clear goals, lots of autonomy, honest feedback, no surprises.”

Brief me

Got something ambitious? Let's talk.

I'm not actively interviewing — I love what I'm building at Hoopstr. But I'm always up for a real conversation about an AI product worth shipping. Advisory, fractional, or a deep partnership.

Fastest

Talk to Akash AI

Live LLM, my voice. Ask anything.

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Direct

hello@akashgr.com

Email — I read everything.

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Social

Best for intros and warm DMs.

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Architectural geometry — long lines and light

Origin

It started with shipping.

Bengaluru, 2019. A full-stack intern at Xelpmoc, writing whatever the problem needed. That was the year I learned what shipping feels like — the quiet Tuesday when a real person uses something you built.

Craft

Engineer in the loop. Agent on the keys.

Seven years on, I read every line I ship — even when an agent writes it. The best AI products aren't built by people who fear the tools or worship them. They're built by engineers with taste, in the loop, calling the shots.

Principle

Build work that compounds.

Ship things that earn interest. Decisions future-me can still defend. Products that get sharper the longer they run. That's the kind of work I want to keep doing.

In my words

“Demos are easy. The real bar is how the product feels on a quiet Tuesday.”

Akash GR

The journey, at a glance

One career. Many time zones.

Seven years across four companies, six roles, and three Indian cities — shipping software to users on every continent but Antarctica.

years shipping

companies

roles

countries reached

How I work

Four things I believe about making software.

Plan deeply. Ship decisively.

A plan you can defend beats two weeks of hacking. I spend real time on the what and the why — narrow the problem, write it down, pressure-test it. Then I get out of the way and ship.

Engineer, amplified.

Seven years of writing code, and I ship faster now than I ever have — because I pair with AI every day. Claude for the thinking, Copilot for the grunt work, me for the taste. I still read every line I ship.

Design for the Tuesday.

Demos are easy. What matters is how the product feels six months in, on a quiet Tuesday, when no one's watching. That's the bar I build to.

Lead by writing.

Clear docs over long meetings. Decisions future-me can audit. A team should be able to onboard from Notion alone — and the engineers I've worked with are the real output of my career.

Where I've been

Seven years of shipping — into ever larger rooms.

Full-stack intern → backend engineer → product engineer → tech lead. Same curiosity, bigger surface area, and now an AI-first stack.

Education

PES University
Master of Computer Applications (MCA), Computer Science · 2017 — 2020
PES Institute of Technology & Management, Shivamoga
Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA), Computer Science · 2014 — 2017

Hs
Hoopstr
Mar 2026 — Present
Tech Lead · Product
Hyderabad · On-site
Leading product on Hoopstr — the AI-powered platform I spent 3+ years building at Vaave, now in its next chapter. Same product, bigger ambition: setting the roadmap, hiring well, staying close to the code, and shipping agentic systems with an engineer-in-the-loop discipline.
- 1,200+institutions
- 35corporates
- 28countries
- 6continents
Va
Vaave
Aug 2022 — Mar 2026 · 3 yrs 8 mos
Team Lead · Product → Senior Product Engineer → Product Engineer
Remote / Hyderabad
Three years and eight months building the alumni network platform that became Hoopstr. Grew from IC to team lead — learned to scale a product team without losing the craft, and shipped the AI features that turned a static network into an activation engine. Continued the work as tech lead at Hoopstr.
- 3.8 yrstenure
- IC → Leadgrowth
- AIfirst features
Sg
Solid Systems Global
Apr 2021 — Jul 2022 · 1 yr 4 mos
Software Developer (Backend)
Bengaluru
Heads-down backend work. Where I learned to love SQL, to think in data models, and to respect production.
- Backendfocus
- SQLdeep dive
- Proddiscipline
Xm
Xelpmoc Design & Tech
Dec 2019 — Apr 2021 · 1 yr 5 mos
Software Engineer → Full Stack Intern
Bengaluru · On-site
My first real shipping job — across multiple venture studios. Wrote whatever language the problem needed, and learned to ship before it was perfect.
- Multistudios
- Full-stackscope
- Shipfirst mindset

Ask me anything

Skip the scroll. Just ask.

A live AI chat trained on my work and voice — not a chatbot pretending to be helpful. It only answers about me.

Akash AI

first-person · streaming · grounded in real work

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hey — I'm Akash AI. Ask me about my work, how I build, or whether we'd be a fit. What brings you here?

Get in touch

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Working on something ambitious — product, AI, engineering leadership? I love a good conversation. The inbox below is always open.

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Hyderabad · Open to conversations globally.