
Krishan Saini
Verified Expert in Engineering
Architect and Full-stack Developer
Chandigarh, India
Toptal member since September 7, 2021
A technical leader with solid experience in large-scale distributed software development and team management, Krishan has worked with multiple startups and established companies, including Priceline.com, VMware, Microsoft, and Veriown. Krishan is a language-agnostic developer committed to delivering unparalleled solutions while leveraging his expertise in back-end web development.
Portfolio
Experience
- Node.js - 11 years
- MongoDB - 7 years
- Express.js - 7 years
- Agile - 7 years
- JavaScript - 7 years
- Socket.IO - 7 years
- Docker - 5 years
- GraphQL - 4 years
Preferred Environment
MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Git, Agile, Linux, Cursor AI
The most amazing...
...thing I've done is single-handedly develop a logistics management app similar to Uber—but for trucks—which captured one-fourth of India's transport segment.
Work Experience
Node.js Developer
Gartner - Enterprise Tech & Architecture
- Reduced monthly cloud infrastructure cost by 20% by re-architecting batch data jobs and right-sizing compute, with no drop in throughput.
- Replaced 3 manual or legacy processes with a single automated workflow, removing 20 hours/week of recurring ops effort.
- Provisioned and versioned AWS infrastructure with Terraform, making environments reproducible across deployments.
- Configured CloudWatch and EventBridge for monitoring and alerting to surface pipeline failures earlier.
- Integrated PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch into the data layer to support relational, document, and search workloads.
Full-stack Engineer
99 peaks PTE LTD
- Designed and developed scalable Node.js and GraphQL back-end services supporting high-traffic user workflows and real-time data processing.
- Implemented cloud-native architecture on AWS using DynamoDB and CI/CD pipelines, improving system performance and deployment reliability.
- Led back-end feature delivery and mentored junior engineers, ensuring clean TypeScript code standards and faster release cycles.
Technical Architect
OnCall AI
- Designed the core architecture for a HIPAA-focused AI healthcare platform, including Node.js APIs, AWS infrastructure, Twilio VoIP, and React Native apps.
- Managed a 6-10 member cross-functional team to deliver mobile, back-end, admin, QA, and DevOps workstreams for a production healthcare application.
- Implemented AWS-based call recording, transcription, and data-processing workflows to support AI-assisted clinical documentation after provider calls.
Technical Architect
Courtmesh
- Architected and built an AI-driven legal intelligence SaaS platform processing millions of court documents with scalable ingestion and search pipelines.
- Designed a multi-tenant back-end architecture with role-based access control, secure document workflows, and high-performance API layers on AWS.
- Led engineering delivery from MVP to production launch, optimizing infrastructure costs and improving system performance at scale.
GraphQL Developer
Priceline - Main
- Developed the core GraphQL APIs, which are being used by their Hotels team. Also integrated GraphQL CDN to improve the APIs performance using caching.
- Added a GraphQL wrapper in front of all the microservices used in the Priceline Hotel app.
- Deployed a GraphQL wrapper without hampering the current implementation.
Senior Node.js Developer
Priceline
- Contributed to planning and implementation and coordinated the release of the latest major version of Priceline's hotel detail pages.
- Introduced developers to TypeScript, its benefits, and tooling.
- Contributed to creating REST APIs for the company's hotels' detail pages.
Technical Lead
Trantor Software
- Worked with clients like VMware for one year and Microsoft's project Veriown for three years.
- Architected, coded, and maintained mostly Node.js-based microservices, in high availability and highly scalable cloud deployed on Kubernetes.
- Managed the cloud team following Scrum methodology and ensuring continuous and reliable delivery of value to all the clients of microservices.
- Built a robust Infrastructure as code setup using Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes; tested by recreating the entire development cloud every two weeks at Agile sprint’s end.
- Used Kafka as the messaging queue for providing at least one execution of critical operations.
- Set up CI/CD pipelines using Bamboo for 100% hands-free build, test, and deployment.
- Used Azure media services to process media (videos) and provide encrypted streaming.
- Mentored colleagues and automated enforcing coding standards using static analysis and rigorous test-driven development.
- Developed an admin panel application build using Angular UI.
Associate Technical Lead
Trantor Software
- Built a robust infrastructure as code setup using Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes; tested by recreating the entire development cloud every two weeks at the Agile sprint's end.
- Used Azure media services to process videos and provide encrypted streaming.
- Mentored colleagues and automated enforced coding standards using static analysis and rigorous test-driven development.
- Developed an admin panel application build using Angular UI.
Senior Software Engineer
Yapapp India Pvt Ltd
- Integrated a complete chat functionality using Socket.IO and Redis.
- Used WebRTC and handled conference calls and dual calling for web and mobile.
- Built an Axis Bank UPI integration for payments through the app.
- Migrated the legacy code to ES2016 standard and deployed it on AWS Lambda.
- Served primarily as a Node.js developer and DevOps engineer.
- Dockerized the service workers on AWS to achieve high scalability while reducing costs.
- Converted some of the high-load worker threads into AWS Lambda projects to achieve better scalability.
Software Engineer
Click Labs
- Contributed to a project called Instavans, a logistics management application similar to Uber, where companies can hire trucks for their shipments.
- Acted as the sole back-end developer. The company received funding of $2 million during my tenure.
- Created RESTful APIs for diverse platforms like the web, Android, and iOS.
- Conducted real-time tracking of all transport vehicles across India.
- Created algorithms for efficient shipment routing with minimum ETA and maximum profits.
- Integrated payment gateways like Paytm and the Axis Bank payment gateway.
- Integrated analytics and stats into the admin panel so the clients can do better business analysis.
Experience
Priceline
• Developed the core GraphQL APIs used by the Hotels team.
• Integrated GraphQL CDN to improve the APIs' performance using caching.
• Added a GraphQL wrapper in front of all the microservices used in the Priceline hotel app.
• Deployed a GraphQL wrapper without hampering the current implementation.
• Contributed to the planning and implementation, as well as coordinated the release of the latest major version of Priceline's hotel detail pages.
• Introduced developers to TypeScript, its benefits, and tooling.
• Created REST APIs for the company's hotel detail pages.
Microsoft and Veriown
RESPONSIBILITIES
• Architected, coded, and maintained Node.js-based microservices in a highly-available and highly-scalable cloud deployed on Kubernetes.
• Managed the cloud team following Scrum ensuring continuous and reliable value delivery to all the clients of microservices.
• Mentored colleagues, facilitated training, and automated the enforcement of coding standards using static analysis and rigorous test-driven development.
• Implemented Git for version control and Mocha and Chai for unit testing.
• Built a robust infrastructure as a code setup using Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes.
• Processed media (videos) and provided encrypted streaming.
• Set up CI/CD pipelines for 100% hands-free building, testing, and deployment.
VMware | Customer Connect
RESPONSIBILITIES
• Architected, designed, and built UI applications and solutions for SaaS products.
• Participated in internal and cross-team meetings, technical design reviews, functional specification reviews, project estimates, schedules, test plans, and code reviews.
• Oversaw the development and maintenance of cross-platform UI component libraries.
• Improved the UI development process, methods, and techniques.
• Led and mentored a team of nine UI engineers.
• Provided technical guidance and architectural solutions to cross-functional teams.
SmarTruck for Instavans
This innovative product involves working with large shippers and 4th-party logistics service providers (4PLs) to bring their carriers on board synergistically. SmarTruck focuses on providing real value to enterprises by offering their carriers both an app and a web-based TMS.
For almost a year, I was the only developer on this project, which then received $2 million in funding.
RESPONSIBILITIES
• Contributed to the real-time tracking of vehicles across India.
• Created algorithms for efficient shipment routing with minimum ETA and maximum profits.
• Integrated payment gateways like Paytm and the Axis Bank payment gateway.
• Implemented analytics and stats for the admin panel.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Panjab University - Chandigarh, India
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, Socket.IO, Chai, REST APIs, React, API Development, Stripe, Claude API, WebRTC, Handlebars, Vue, Twilio API, jQuery, PostgREST, Stripe API, Java APIs
Tools
Mongoose, Git, Mocha, Jira, Postman, Docker Compose, GitHub, Oh My Zsh, Zsh, NGINX, Bitbucket, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Claude, BigQuery, Ansible, Terraform, Kibana, GitLab, Atlassian, Zapier, Qualtrics, Expo, RingCentral, Amazon Connect, Bamboo, Confluence, MQTT, Sequelize, Amazon OpenSearch, AWS Glue, AWS Step Functions
Languages
JavaScript, GraphQL, CSS, CSS3, HTML, HTML5, TypeScript, SQL, ECMAScript (ES6), Python, Java, TypeScript 3, PHP, TypeScript 2, Sass, Less, Bash, Bash Script, XML
Frameworks
Express.js, OAuth 2, Hapi.js, Serverless Framework, Angular, Angular Material, Next.js, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Flutter, React Native, Tailwind CSS, Swagger, Bulma, AngularJS, Jest, Django, Material UI, NestJS, CakePHP 3
Paradigms
Agile, Serverless Architecture, Microservices Architecture, Microservices, API Architecture, REST API Architecture, API/Services Architecture, Functional Programming, Functional Reactive Programming, Imperative Programming, Imperative Reactive Programming, Database Design, Back-end Architecture, Scalable Application, REST, DevOps, Automation, Mobile Development, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), HIPAA Compliance
Platforms
Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Ubuntu, Alpine Linux, Software Design Patterns, Firebase, Vercel, iOS, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, VMware Tanzu Application Service (TAS) (Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF)), Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Ubuntu 16.04, Twilio, Azure, Voiceflow
Storage
MongoDB, NoSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), JSON, Neo4j, Database Structure, Elasticsearch, Redis, MySQL, Redis Cache, PostgreSQL, Relational Databases, Amazon DynamoDB, Data Pipelines, Azure Cosmos DB, Graph Databases
Industry Expertise
Insurance
Other
Scrum Master, Lambda Functions, Serverless, Full-stack, APIs, Algorithms, RESTful Microservices, Software Engineering, Front-end Development, Back-end, API Integration, CI/CD Pipelines, JSON REST APIs, SSH, WebSockets, Web Security, Cloud Security, Security Design, Database Schema Design, Architecture, Back-end Development, Back-end Performance, Data Structures, Monorepos, Web Development, Leadership, Team Leadership, Remote Team Leadership, Technical Leadership, Software Design, Scalable Architecture, Full-stack Development, OpenAI GPT-4 API, eCommerce APIs, Integration, Front-end, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Payments, Containerization, Data Modeling, Software Architecture, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), DNS, Customer Support, Client Communication, Troubleshooting, Workflows, Workflow, Agentic AI, Multi-agent Systems, Multi-agent Orchestration, Supabase, Interviewing, Team Management, Code Review, Communication, SaaS, Web Scraping, LLM Integration, AI-assisted Development, Anthropic, Multitenancy, User Experience (UX), Vibe Coding, CTO, Firebase Cloud Functions, Technical Architecture, Education Technology (Edtech), Platforms, Geolocation, Proof of Concept (POC), Contact Centers, Booking Systems, EventBus, ESLint, Cosmos, Cloud Services, Large-scale Distributed Systems, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), LangChain, Localization, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Integration, AI Voice Agents, Analytics, Dashboards, Metabase, Vite, AI Agents, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), EMR, Temporal, Machine Learning, Screeners, Row-level Security (RLS), Data Extraction, Security, Scraping, Real-time Tracking, VoIP, SIP, Call Tracking, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), SOAP, Software Development Toolkits (SDK), eCommerce, API Design, CSS3 Animation, Cursor AI, Apollo Server, Qdrant, HIPAA
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring