shikhar.dev
Hi, I'm

Shikhar Srivastava

SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Cloud & AI Infrastructure • Distributed Systems • Backend • Transactions • Real-Time Systems

I build backend systems where correctness and latency both matter.

At Junglee Games (Flutter Entertainment), I built Node.js and TypeScript services for products serving millions and processing over ₹5 crore in daily transactions. I helped reduce matchmaking latency by about 50%.

In 2023, I left to go independent. I built and scaled Ludojack solo to ₹250,000 deposits per month. Then built MaxReel, an AI video platform that served 500+ creators. Its Cloud Run and Cloud Tasks pipeline used Firestore and FFmpeg workers to handle 100+ concurrent render jobs. Parallel model calls, streaming, and prompt caching reduced render time by about 40%, to 30 seconds-2 minutes.

I'm now expanding into applied AI, building on my backend and distributed systems experience. I'm open to senior backend engineering and AI infrastructure roles. Email me.

Resume (PDF) LinkedIn Say Hello WhatsApp GitHub
Delhi, India (Open to Engineering Roles)
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +91 7252915788

Core Architecture & Skills

Technologies and patterns I rely on when shipping production systems

Distributed Systems & Backends

Production microservices processing ₹5 Cr+/day in financial transactions and sub-50ms matchmaking.

Node.js TypeScript JavaScript Apache Kafka Event-Driven Architecture Transactional Ledgers Idempotency & Outbox Pattern WebSockets & Gateways

AI Systems & Retrieval

Hybrid search benchmarks, evaluation harnesses (Recall@5, MRR), and low-latency inference routing.

Hybrid Search (Qdrant + BM25) Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) Recall@k & MRR Evaluation Inference Routing & Prompt Caching Autonomous Agent Harnesses State Machines Python

Cloud & Platform Engineering

Serverless container orchestration, background task queues, and media rendering on Google Cloud.

GCP (Cloud Run, Tasks, Scheduler) Cloud Pub/Sub & Firestore Docker Kubernetes Linux Systems Asynchronous Workers

Databases & Storage

Relational ledgers, in-memory key-value tiers, and specialized vector indices for high read/write concurrency.

PostgreSQL Redis (Cache, Pub/Sub) MongoDB Qdrant (Vector DB) Firestore (NoSQL) ACID Transaction Boundaries Schema & Index Tuning

Media & Client Engines

High-performance media transcoding pipelines, 2D graphics rendering engines, and cross-platform clients.

FFmpeg Pipelines Video Transcoding & Streaming Skia 2D Canvas Engine Flutter Dart Unity (Game Loops & C#)

Reliability & Observability

Operating resilient services with metrics, distributed tracing, dead-letter recovery, and proactive alerting.

Prometheus Grafana OpenTelemetry Distributed Tracing & Logs Dead-Letter Queues (DLQ) Circuit Breakers & Backpressure Rate Limiting & Shedding SLO & Latency Budgets

Timeline

From my first PC to the projects I build today

Order:
October 2026 PROJECT

Compliance RAG Learning Bench

Python • Qdrant • BM25 • RRF

Hybrid search across gaming regulations and technical standards from India Code, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJ DGE), the UK Gambling Commission's Remote Gambling and Software Technical Standards (UKGC RTS), and Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) Standard 19: Standards for Interactive Gaming Systems (GLI-19).

  • Combined Qdrant vector search with BM25 keyword search and merged the results with Reciprocal Rank Fusion.
  • Split documents by heading and clause to keep legal sections with their content.
  • Built an evaluation harness for Recall@5 and Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR) across jurisdiction filtering and multi-query search.
View GitHub Repository
Python 3.13 Qdrant Vector DB BM25 Reciprocal Rank Fusion Recall@k & MRR
October 2026 PROJECT OPEN SOURCE

Theatre Vision

Web Video Companion

Expands web videos to fill the browser window without fullscreen, while keeping the site's player controls and captions.

View GitHub Repository View on Product Hunt
JavaScript Browser Extension Theatre Mode
November 2026

We are here

September 2026 PROJECT OPEN SOURCE

gg-friggin-ez

Fast and cheap LLM based profanity and toxicity filter

A multilingual toxicity and profanity filter for live game chat, with typical latency of 50-500 ms.

  • Tuned for high recall so the filter catches obfuscated text and romanized Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Bengali.
  • Runs without runtime dependencies and checks messages in real time.
View GitHub Repository View on Product Hunt
gg-friggin-ez - Fast & free profanity and toxicity screening via Jev & Laya | Product Hunt
TypeScript Node.js TypeSafe AI Jev High Recall Indic NLP Open Source Engine
JEV is the hype

TYPE 1 Decision Models

Can this be used for realtime moderation?

Yes!!!!!!!!!!

2026 PROJECT OPEN SOURCE

@captioncat/caption-engine • Node & Browser

A TypeScript package for rendering subtitles and animated captions. Published on npm under the MIT license.

  • Used an Entity Component System (ECS) for reusable layouts, keyframe animations, and per-frame Skia rendering.
  • Added FFmpeg multiplexing and adapters for OpenAI Whisper, ElevenLabs, and Sarvam transcription.
View GitHub Repository
TypeScript Skia Canvas FFmpeg ECS Open Source Engine

A big shift in how I approach engineering now.

Copilot and agents write code for me now, of course under my supervision and code reviews.

2025
AI/ML Journey learning and building
RAG chunk it up create embeddings save in vector db

ReLU · GELU

activation functions

Mixture of Experts · MoE

LoRA + matrix math

Transformer · GPT

Tokenizer · LM Head

Attention heads

Python is such a weird language! ML researchers chose the worst possible language to drive this field. I'm getting comfortable in Python real fast, though.

ReLU(x) = max(0, x)

GELU(x) = xΦ(x)

softmax(zi) = ezi / ∑jezj

Attention(Q, K, V) = softmax(QKT / √dk)V

LoRA: W = W0 + BA, rank(BA) ≤ r

Q · Query
K · Key
V · Value
The AI era my experiments with the thinking rock
2025-2026 PROJECT Cloud Platform

AI Video Generation Platform

I built an asynchronous service to route AI inference jobs and coordinate media generation.

  • Built GCP workers with Cloud Run, Cloud Tasks, and Firestore to handle 100+ concurrent FFmpeg render jobs.
  • Reduced render time by about 40%, to 30 seconds-2 minutes, with parallel model calls, streaming, and prompt caching.
GCP Cloud Run Cloud Tasks Firestore FFmpeg Model Routing
  • high-concurrency backend services
  • video streaming
  • media storage
  • serverless
  • nodejs
  • redis
  • managed kubernetes
  • scalable services
  • nosql/firestore
  • rest apis
  • caching
  • typescript
MaxReel UGC demo
MaxReel UGC demo
2023 PROJECT Solo Founder Journey

Ludojack

Real-Money Gaming Platform & Ledger

I built backend services for deposits, withdrawals, gameplay transactions, and ledger settlement. I owned the full journey, from engineering and architecture to marketing, running the product solo, and acquiring users.

  • Built ACID-compliant double-entry ledger reconciliation with Cloud Tasks and Cloud Scheduler.
  • Met with major banks and payment gateways to coordinate integrations and make deposits and withdrawals work end to end.
  • Added Redis locks, transaction idempotency, geo-fencing, and anti-collusion checks.
  • Handled hundreds of thousands of daily requests on Cloud Run without financial discrepancies.
Node.js TypeScript Cloud Run Redis ACID Ledgers
  • transactions and idempotency
  • fraud detection algorithms
  • high-concurrency backend services
  • GCP
  • serverless (cloud run)
  • redis
  • nodejs
  • realtime db
  • ci/cd stuff
  • scalable services
  • no-sql
  • rest apis
  • async tasks
  • cloud schedulers
  • user retention
2024 PROJECT

Monjack Games

Real-Money Gaming Platform

A real-money gaming platform that never launched. Dead before arrival. Sad face emoji

  • Indian banking issues led me to shelve the project after a few months of work.
2023 May

Quit to pursue building and launching independently as a solo founder

Jan 2022 - May 2023 SDE-2

Junglee Games: Howzat Fantasy and Mentoring

SDE-2 • Howzat Fantasy

I built and shipped app and game updates for Howzat Fantasy while mentoring Unity engineers.

  • Mentorship: Helped 4+ Unity engineers learn Node.js backend services and Flutter app development.
  • Bot simulations: Built a bot system that improved off-peak matchmaking fill rates by 80%.
  • Event streaming: Built Kafka pipelines for tournament updates, audit logs, and player analytics.
  • Built Flutter/Dart app lobbies and Unity/C# game features for Howzat Fantasy.
  • Added Redis balance caching with PostgreSQL transaction syncing to support thousands of concurrent bets per second without ledger discrepancies.
  • Added idempotency checks and distributed locks to prevent duplicate payments during traffic spikes.
  • Reduced server crashes by 25% by profiling the Node.js event loop, fixing memory leaks, and indexing queries.
Apache Kafka Bot Orchestration Node.js Flutter Microservices
  • redis
  • nodejs
  • serverless
  • high-concurrency backend services
  • managed kubernetes
  • kafka data streams
  • scalable services
  • postgres
  • rest apis
  • caching
  • typescript
  • flutter
  • dart
  • unity
  • c#

Met some super talented people at Junglee.

2022 PROJECT

Junglee Rummy

Millions of players • INR 5Cr+ daily GMV

Helped port web-based Rummy to Unity while building middleware APIs for matchmaking and game-state sync.

Unity Middleware APIs WebSockets Redis
November 2019 Feature Film

The White Tiger (Oscar-Nominated Netflix Movie)

Game Producer & Engine Developer • Unity & After Effects

Built an early-2000s split-screen FPS scene in 36 hours for Netflix's adaptation of Aravind Adiga's novel, starring Rajkummar Rao and Priyanka Chopra and directed by Ramin Bahrani.

Read the Full Story on LinkedIn
Netflix Unity C# 36-Hour Sprint After Effects
Jan 2019 - May 2023 Casual Real-Money Games

Casual Real-Money Games at Junglee Games

Pool King • Carrom Stars • Solitaire Gold

I worked on three major casual real-money projects at Junglee Games: Pool King, Carrom Stars, and Solitaire Gold.

Worked with talented engineering teams.
Pool King and Carrom Stars
  • Built deterministic physics and table collision detection for multiplayer 8-ball pool, with matchmaking for mobile players.
  • Added real-time socket communication and wallet callbacks for tournament entry and payouts.
  • Wrote parts of the JavaScript backend that ran on GameSpark.
  • Built fraud detection algorithms.
Solitaire Gold
  • Worked on Flutter/Dart app lobbies, the Node.js backend, and Unity/C# game features.
Unity & C# Flutter & Dart Multiplayer Sockets Physics Simulation Real-Money Gaming
BLR Bengaluru
DEL Delhi
Delhi!
December 2018 Career Milestone

Accepted the Junglee Offer & Moved to Delhi

Joining Junglee Games • Delhi NCR

After six months of interviews, I accepted an offer from Junglee Games. When I joined, it was a 90-person startup. I worked beside CEO Ankush as we built the games and systems.

  • This began four years of work on systems serving millions of players and supporting INR 5Cr+ in daily GMV.
Jun 2018 - Dec 2018 Cycling Simulation

VirtuGO (Suventure | Denmark)

Real-Time Virtual Cycling Physics Engine

I built physics and networking features for a virtual cycling platform used by Olympic athletes and esports competitors.

  • Modeled drafting, rolling resistance, aerodynamic drag, and gradients using data from indoor smart trainers.
  • Dived deep into high-performance physics calculations, network telemetry, and cross-continental collaboration with Danish engineering teams.
C# Unity Real-Time Physics
VirtuGO cycling demo

Met super cool people and worked with some really talented people

MTH Mathura
BLR Bengaluru
July 2018 Relocation

Moved to Bangalore

Joining Suventure for VirtuGO • Bengaluru, India

I moved to Bangalore to work on VirtuGO at Suventure while the Junglee Games interview process continued.

Life in Bengaluru

Hand-drawn blue bicycle

I cycled to work daily.

I helped build a virtual cycling product and experienced firsthand what we were building while skipping the infamous Bengaluru traffic.

Mid 2018 Special Interaction

Interacted with the Prime Minister

Selected from the Meerut region as a unique entrepreneur to interact with Prime Minister Narendra Modi via video conference.

Mid 2018 First Contact

Junglee Founders Played "Adventures of Baki"

The 6-Month Interview Marathon Begins

Junglee Games' founders played my indie game, Adventures of Baki, and contacted me about joining the company.

  • The interviews covered game systems, architecture, and problem-solving over six months.
May 2018 Graduation

Officially an Engineer!

GLA University, Mathura
Graduate emoji

I graduated from GLA University with a B.Tech in Computer Science. During college, I built a Chrome extension that reached 100k+ users and an indie mobile game.

Favourite subjects

Distributed Systems, Algorithms and Data Structures

MTH Mathura
HYD Hyderabad
November, 2017 Game Showcase & Guest Talk

Unite India 2017

Hyderabad, India

Adventures of Baki was selected for the first Unite India conference. I also gave a guest talk titled "Performance Optimization on mobile is an art."

HYD Hyderabad
MTH Mathura
Decided to learn C# and game development chose Unity
Jun 2015 - Oct 2017 PROJECT Indie Mobile Game

Adventures of Baki

Solo Indie Game Developer • Mobile Arcade

I built and published Adventures of Baki, a mobile arcade game, on my own while in college.

  • Built the game's physics, levels, character animations, sound, and touch controls.
  • Published it to app stores with localized leaderboards and performance optimizations for low-end phones.
Indie Game Dev C# Mobile Game Design
Jan 2018 PROJECT Indie Mobile Game

Baki Jump

Firebase • WebSockets • Mobile Multiplayer

Baki Jump was my first real-time multiplayer game, built with Firebase and WebSockets.

  • Used WebSockets for real-time communication between players.
  • Added score and high-score challenges for players.
November 2015 Google Recognition

Flipper: Chrome Web Store's Best of 2015

Google Best of 2015 • National Dailies • WebUser UK Magazine

In November 2015, the Chrome Web Store selected Flipper as one of the Best Web Apps of 2015 and featured it on the store homepage.

  • Reached more than 100,000 users.
  • Covered by Times of India, Dainik Jagran, GLA Times, and UK magazine WebUser.
Best of 2015 Google Web Store 100k+ Users Press Feature
KOT Kota
MTH Mathura
July 2014 Education

Joined GLA University

B.Tech • Computer Science and Engineering

I joined GLA University in Mathura for a four-year undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering.

2014 - Jan 2015 PROJECT

Building & Launching "Flipper - A Beautiful New Tab"

Google Chrome Extension

After returning from Kota and starting college in 2014, I resumed the new-tab project, rebuilt it, and launched it on the Chrome Web Store in January 2015.

  • Added bookmark search, custom themes, and offline storage.
  • Used Firebase Authentication for user sign-in and real-time sync.
  • Stored user data in Google Cloud Storage buckets.
  • Replaced Chrome's default new tab page with a customizable dashboard.
Chrome Extension JavaScript Client-Side Cache
2013 Curiosity & Hacking

Discovering Web Extensions & The Kota Intermission

All-Nighter Web Hacking • Stack Overflow • IIT-JEE Prep

In 2013, I found the Chrome Web Store and started learning how browser extensions worked.

  • I stayed up all night learning HTML, JavaScript, and jQuery, then decided to build my own extension.
  • I used Stack Overflow while planning a new-tab dashboard.
  • I paused the project to prepare for IIT-JEE in Kota, then returned to it after college began.

What is this jQuery thingy?

How does Chrome load extensions?

Are they simply zipped files?

2010 Personal Utility

Easy Stocks

Visual Basic Stock Watchlist App for Papa

Built a Visual Basic desktop watchlist for my dad so he could check stock prices without visiting finance websites.

  • Added data tables and search filters for stocks.
  • This was my first app built to solve someone else's daily need.
2009 First Ever Program

First Program: Windows Vista-Style Calculator

Visual Basic on Windows XP

I wrote my first program in Visual Basic: a Windows Vista-inspired calculator for my Windows XP computer.

  • Added arithmetic, memory storage, button handlers, and a glossy gradient interface.
  • Seeing my code produce a working interface got me interested in programming.
Notepad++ logo Notepad++ became my go to code editor
2008

Symbian Game Modding

Nokia • WinZip • Asset Extraction

I started modifying Nokia Symbian games such as Angry Birds and Need for Speed after learning that .jar and .sis packages could be opened with WinZip.

  • Extracted sprites, sounds, textures, and configuration files to change game assets and behavior.
  • Repacked, re-signed, and installed modified builds on Symbian phones for friends.
2007

Got My First Computer

My first desktop ran Windows XP with an Intel Pentium processor and 256 MB of RAM.

  • I explored system files, registry settings, BIOS menus, batch scripts, and disk formatting.
  • That curiosity led me to learn how software and hardware work.

Projects

A few products and side projects

Theatre Vision

Theatre Vision browser extension preview showing a video expanded within the browser window

A browser extension that expands web videos to fill the browser window without fullscreen, while keeping the site's player controls and captions.

GitHub Product Hunt

MaxReel

AI video generation with asynchronous GCP workers and FFmpeg rendering.

Compliance RAG Bench

Hybrid regulation search with Qdrant, BM25, RRF, Recall@5, and MRR evaluation.

View on GitHub

gg-friggin-ez

Fast multilingual game-chat moderation, tuned for high recall.

View on GitHub

CaptionCat

Open-source TypeScript caption rendering with Skia and FFmpeg.

View on GitHub

Ludojack

Real-money gaming platform with wallet, payment, and ledger services.

Flipper

A Chrome new-tab extension, featured in the Web Store's Best of 2015.

Chrome Web Store

Casual Real-Money Games at Junglee Games

This group covers Pool King, Carrom Stars, and Solitaire Gold, three casual real-money mobile games.

Pool King on Google Play