PROFESSIONAL DOSSIER
A comprehensive investigation into one developer's career trajectory
CAREER CHRONICLES
Data Science Intern
June 2025 - Sept 2025Crum & Forster • Philadelphia, PA
- Built an OCR pipeline (93% accuracy, 320+ apps/month) consulting with senior stakeholders, cutting review time by ~10 minutes/file and speeding underwriting by 20%.
- Decommissioned Pony ORM in 10 production microservices, implementing SQL context managers that eliminated connection issues, boosted performance by 20%, and improved reliability for 50+ business users.
- Created an automated API validation tool (10 services, 500+ payloads) that reduced testing by ~30 minutes/service, standardized edge-case coverage, and earned team-wide recognition.
PythonAWSLLMsOCRGenAI
Software Development Engineer II
July 2022 - May 2023Walmart Global Tech • Bangalore, India
- Maintained 5 critical microservices for Walmart US e-commerce, ensuring 2M+ daily transactions ran with 99.9% availability.
- Led rate limiting rollout validated with peak-traffic simulations and architect reviews; first to implement, cutting outages by 15% (~$15M) and publishing a blueprint adopted org-wide.
- Spearheaded integration of OpenTelemetry distributed tracing into service workflows, reducing incident resolution time by 20% and enabling faster root-cause analysis across the team.
JavaScriptMicroservicesOpenTelemetryGrafanaCI/CD
Software Development Intern
Jan 2022 - June 2022Walmart Global Tech • Bangalore, India
- Designed and built end-to-end integration of PowerSport Category vehicles into product catalogs, adding 1,200+ products and enabling targeted filtering that improved discoverability by 25%.
- Built and maintained Grafana and Splunk dashboards for 5 microservices, reducing detection time for service issues by 40% and improving uptime reliability.
- Orchestrated testing and deployment of 2 production services, aligning QA, product, and engineering teams to ensure seamless launches with minimal downtime.
JavaScriptGrafanaSplunkCI/CD
Marketing Intern
May 2021 - Aug 2021Ellipses Innovation • Bangalore, India
- Developed data-driven Instagram marketing strategy by analyzing engagement metrics and audience demographics — increasing follower growth by 35% and generating the company’s first recurring sales (20+ orders/week).
- Conducted competitor benchmarking and market research to refine content mix, posting frequency, and optimal posting times, improving campaign engagement rates.
AnalyticsSocial MediaMarket Research
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS
Master of Science in Engineering
Dec 2025Computer and Information Science • AI Concentration
University of Pennsylvania • Philadelphia, PA • GPA: 3.88/4.0
Bachelor of Technology
May 2022Computer Science and Engineering
PES University • Bangalore, India
AI/ML & NLP PROJECTS
Where ideas come to life
DreamBook — AI Diary Platform
Built AI diary platform digitizing handwritten, audio, and text entries using Google Cloud Vision, Speech-to-Text, and Stable Diffusion (DreamBooth + LoRA) — producing consistent comic-style illustrations.
Segment Based Abnormality Detection in EEG Recordings (IEEE, Aug 2022)
Achieved 90.78% classification accuracy (surpassing SOTA) using Empirical Wavelet Transform, Recursive Feature Elimination, and Linear SVM.
BART-to-Edge Translation
Optimized mBART/M2M100 with LoRA and layer freezing, reducing GPU memory by 50% and training time by 30%; enabled sub-1B parameter real-time Zh↔En translation on edge devices.
Lexical Simplification
Contextual word substitution pipeline improving text accessibility — reduced reading complexity by ~20% and improved comprehension in testing via POS tagging and frequency-based filtering.
Deep Learning for Text Summarization
Implemented extractive and abstractive pipelines; abstractive models improved semantic coherence while reducing repetition by ~25%.
DATA SCIENCE & ANALYTICS PROJECTS
Optimizing ANN for Learned Cardinalities
Tuned MSCN-based learned cardinality estimator; selected Adam + MLSE for smoother convergence, lowering median Q-error and standardizing workflows.
World Development Indicators Analysis
Modeled macro growth with regression on World Bank WDI data; achieved RMSE 2.7% (developed) and 4.3% (developing), producing sector-driven insights.
YACS — Yet Another Centralized Scheduler
Built master–worker scheduler with Random, RR, and Least-Loaded policies; added map-reduce dependencies and back-pressure to reduce idle CPU time.
SYSTEMS & INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
PennOS — Custom Operating System
UNIX-like OS with FAT filesystem, multi-level feedback queue scheduler, and preemptive user-space threading. Custom shell with built-ins and process control syscalls.
Mini-Compiler for JavaScript
Compiler for a JavaScript subset implementing lexical, syntax, and semantic analysis; generated optimized 3-address code with constant folding and DCE; scoped symbol table and type checking.
Elevator Control System
C-based simulation using an ordered doubly linked list for prioritized floor requests; direction-aware scheduling reduced average wait times.
CONTACT THE NEWSROOM
rakshar@seas.upenn.edu
raksharamesh0002@gmail.com
TECHNICAL ARSENAL
Programming
PythonTypeScriptNode.jsCGraphQLGitPostmanCI/CDJIRAConfluenceTableau
AI & Machine Learning
PyTorchNumPypandasscikit-learnEWTEMDRFELoRADreamBoothStable DiffusionBLEUBERTScore
Cloud & Infrastructure
AWS (CDK, Textract, Bedrock, BDA, Step Functions)Serverless FrameworkGoogle Cloud VisionSpeech-to-TextKubernetesIstio
Data Eng. & Observability
SQLPony ORMGrafanaSplunkPrometheusOpenTelemetryJaeger
Systems & Compilers
FAT filesystemMulti-level feedback queue scheduler
Product & Collaboration
Agile/ScrumMVP developmentUser researchA/B testing
LEADERSHIP DESK
Head Teaching Assistant / Product Manager
University of Pennsylvania • Aug 2024 – Present
- Directed product strategy for 5 cross-functional student teams (agile planning, feedback loops, stakeholder demos).
- Coordinated a team of 11 TAs; training, task allocation, daily operations; supported 100+ students & faculty.
- Managed course logistics: scheduling, grading workflows, resource planning; evaluated 20+ demos for market fit.
Chair — English Literacy Program
U&I Trust (Bangalore, India) • May 2022 – Jul 2023
- Directed program for 20+ underprivileged girls; designed lesson plans for conversational & written fluency.
- Led volunteer recruitment (+50% staff) and fundraising to fully cover annual costs.
Chair — ACM-W Student Chapter
PES University • Aug 2020 – Jul 2022
- Expanded membership 4×; secured sponsorships & VC funding for Women’s Day Ideathon (backed top 3 ideas).
- Organized 15+ workshops, hackathons, and speaker events promoting diversity in tech.
Event Lead / Organizer
PES University • Aug 2019 – Jul 2022
- Executed national technical & cultural fests (10,000+ attendees/year); managed logistics and budgets.
- Led sponsorships, vendor negotiations, and marketing; increased footfall ~20% YoY.
CLASSIFIED AD
Seeking: Complex problems at intersections of tech and humanity
Offering: Unlimited curiosity, and stubborn optimism
Interests: AI for accessibility • creative AI • large-scale system design