available · New York is work, Delhi is home, open to relocate

Software engineer building privacy-safe community products, and the tools around them.

Vaibhav Garg is a software engineer at ThotExperiment. He scales chat, discovery, and moderation for Headero, and his public work includes a real-time log viewer, offline-first Android apps, and a blood-donation system.

Interview my resume Read the case studies

github/vgarg1998 linkedin/vaibhavgarg1998 email

prod — what I carved out of the monolith

$ kubectl get deploy
NAME           LANG     STATUS
gateway        node     Running
chat           go       Running
discovery      go       Running
sessions       spring   Running
views-notify   go       Running
global-feed    go       Running
admin          node     Running own HPA

$ ls lambda/
expiry-cron  deletion-cron  otp-cron

$ _

Role-fit modeHiring for… the page re-orders around your role.

fit › Go and Spring Boot services on Mongo and Redis at 10 ms p50, a fintech real-time API that replaced Hadoop batch jobs, and a Go + WebSocket log console on the side.

Impact, as a dashboard

every tile cites where the number came from

LATENCY●

10 ms

p50 at the service

src: Go discovery · Spring sessions

LATENCY●

1.5s→50ms

discovery feed latency

src: Mongo aggregations · Redis scoring

ENGAGEMENT●

9 → 20

weekly minutes in app

src: Firebase · view→notify loop

OPEN SOURCE●

public repos since 2017

src: github.com/vgarg1998

TEACHING●

350+

students mentored in DB design

src: Northeastern TA

SECURITY●

S3 keys held by pods

src: IRSA on EKS

SECURITY●

services de-vulnerabilised

src: Checkmarx · Black Duck

SHIPPED●

production Flutter features

src: Travel mode · Global Feed

01 · Lead case study · Mar 2025 — presentThotExperimentHeadero is ThotExperiment’s production platform: a forward dating app for adults, built around safety and privacy. Made in New York.Discovery, chat, and moderation for Headero, in production.

1 › Split the hot APIs into Go and Java services behind a Node gateway
2 › Isolated chat and admin on Kubernetes with HPA, probes, GitLab CI/CD
3 › Discovery on Mongo aggregations + Redis scoring: 1.5 s → 50 ms feed
4 › Rekognition moderation on EKS, and Travel mode shipped in Flutter

open architecture explorer →full case study →

flutter→node gateway→chat · godiscovery · gosessions · springviews · go

Public work

three picked for Backend · all case studies →

SOLOAUG 2025Smart Log ViewerLive logs, with pause, filters, and a socket that stays up.go · react · websockets · nginx SOLOOCT 2024Flow log processorPort, protocol, and tag counts, plus a log of every bad line.java · csv · java.util.logging TEAMOCT 2023HemoWinDonors, workers, contests, and appointments on the desktop.java 11 · swing · mysql

also ›bhavyadancecalgary.com — site for my sister’s dance studio ↗studies & earlier work (2018–2023) →

git log --career

a1f09e2 (HEAD → next) open to backend / platform roles

9c3d4b7 2025 feat: split Node monolith into Go + Spring services @ ThotExperiment

7e21aa0 2024 docs: MS Computer Science, Northeastern · TA for 350+ students

55b8c1d 2020 feat: batch → real-time gRPC orchestrator @ TransUnion

3a0f6e9 2019 chore: Student Achiever Award · hackathon podium · 3 research papers

0000001 2016 init: B.Tech, VIT Vellore

Work

bright = relevant to Backend

ThotExperimentSoftware Engineer03/2025 — present · NYC, USA

▸Split the Node monolith: chat, discovery, sessions and views extracted into services behind a Node gateway; admin isolated on its own K8s HPA; expiry, deletion and OTP crons moved to Lambda — chat spikes and nightly jobs no longer stall user APIs.
▸Built Go discovery (Mongo aggregations, Redis ranking) and Spring Boot sessions (Mongo source of truth, Redis cache-first) — 10 ms p50 at the service, 50 ms p50 end-to-end on scroll.
▸Shipped a Go view → notify → profile-open loop (TTL + WebSocket) that doubled weekly time-in-app (Firebase: 9 → 20 min), and a Rekognition worker that replaced hours of manual photo review with near-real-time approval.
▸Developed Travel mode in production Flutter — map destination pin, travel-aware discover/profile APIs, free preview vs paid full access.
▸Pushed Global Feed in production Flutter — nearby, preference-matched public posts (Go geo feed, 24h TTL) with tap-through to profile.
▸Hardened AWS on EKS: IRSA for Rekognition (pods hold no S3 keys), internal NLB + security groups so Lambdas reach session APIs only inside the VPC, presigned S3 so the media bucket stays private.

Northeastern UniversityGraduate Teaching Assistant09/2023 — 12/2024 · Boston, USA

▸Mentored 350+ students in 3NF database design, integrity constraints and complex SQL.
▸Wrote 10+ advanced ERD scenarios applying full database-design principles, lifting scores by 10%+.
▸Resolved Android questions on layout distortion across screen sizes, touch responsiveness vs the main thread, and activity state.

TransUnionSoftware Developer · Fintech11/2020 — 12/2022 · Remote

▸Built a Java + gRPC orchestrator on Apache Camel that folded several Hadoop batch jobs into one real-time API, with pluggable, parallel routing across SOAP/REST/gRPC — near-instant results and lower infra cost.
▸Built a universal validation library so REST APIs validate against XML-defined rules with no code changes.
▸Built a Spring Boot API gateway with JSON sanitisation, validation, rate limiting and retries at 70%+ JUnit coverage.
▸Evaluated Kuma Mesh for traffic management and observability; recommended against adoption over weak community support.
▸Mitigated Maven library vulnerabilities across 9 services through reviews and Checkmarx / Black Duck scans.

TransUnionSoftware Intern02/2020 — 04/2020 · Chennai, India

▸Built a REST gateway for tracking transit events on JPA, with the Strategy pattern for role-specific data and paginated queries for large datasets.

Stack

LANGUAGES

GoJavaTypeScriptJavaScriptPythonDart

CLIENTS

FlutterAndroidReactSwing

SERVERS & DATA

Node gatewayGo / Java microservicesSpring BootExpressgRPCMongoDBRedisPostgreSQLMySQLFirebaseRoom / SQLite

PLATFORM

Kubernetes / EKSHPAGitLab CI/CDAWS LambdaRekognitionIRSADocker ComposeNginxPrometheusGrafana

EARLIER

OpenCVTensorFlowFace detectionPageRank

How I work

Principles, each backed by a decision I actually made.

01 / isolate the blast radiusChat traffic and nightly crons shouldn't share a fate with login. So chat got its own Go service, admin its own HPA, crons went to Lambda.

02 / say no to shinyI evaluated Kuma Mesh for traffic management and recommended against it — community support was too thin to bet production on.

03 / no keys in podsIRSA over static credentials, internal NLBs over public endpoints, presigned URLs over public buckets. Least privilege by default.

04 / config over codeA validation library driven by XML rules meant new API checks shipped without a deploy.

05 / measure the user, not the box10 ms at the service is nice; 50 ms end-to-end on scroll and 9 → 20 min time-in-app is what mattered.

06 / own it end to endTravel mode and Global Feed: the Go API and the Flutter screen, both mine, both in production.

Writing

1 published · 2 in draft

Splitting a Node monolith without stalling user APIsGateway-first extraction, one service at a time.architecture · read →

Cache-first sessions: Mongo as truth, Redis as speedHow sessions hit 10 ms p50 without lying to users.spring · redis · draft

No keys in pods: IRSA, internal NLBs and presigned S3Locking down AWS on EKS without slowing the team.aws · security · draft

/now

looking › backend / platform roles, remote or relocating from Delhi

building › Discovery, chat and moderation for Headero at ThotExperiment

on the side › Smart Log Viewer, a Go + WebSocket log console

Beyond code

GOLDNational gold medal — archerySame skill as p99 tuning: calm, repeatable, small corrections.

68Three research papers · 68 citationsPublished during B.Tech at VIT

3RD2nd runner-up, HelloWorld 2.0 hackathonGravitas tech fest, VIT

2019Student Achiever Award, VITUniversity Day

EDUM.S. CS, Northeastern · B.Tech, VITCS5520 Mobile Apps · CS5500 · CS5010 Program Design · CS5200 Databases

verified certs ›Java · HackerRank Python · HackerRank SQL · HackerRank Data Analysis w/ Python · IBM Intro to Data Science · U-M

$ echo "let's talk" | mail vaibhav

Have a system that's
outgrown itself?

gargvaibhav2011@gmail.com Message on LinkedIn