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Rishi Diwan
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Pune, Maharashtra, India
Toptal member since December 23, 2020
Bio
Rishi is a passionate coder and solutions architect. He has expertise across the entire spectrum of software design, implementation, and innovation. Rishi built a secure internet scale digital document locker, certified by Microsoft to scale to one billion users. He has worked with enterprise software, helped start-ups grow from the ideation stage, and expanded several companies into their first million in revenue. He enjoys solving engineering problems and utilizing the FOSS ecosystem.
Portfolio
Quantification by Design Inc.
Python, Django, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Vue, Amazon Web Services (AWS)...
WeAreEight Ltd
GraphQL, JavaScript, Django, PostgreSQL, Python, TypeScript, MySQL...
UInclude, Inc
Python, JavaScript, Flask, REST APIs, React, Full-stack Development...
Experience
- Python - 10 years
- JavaScript - 10 years
- MySQL - 10 years
- Team Leadership - 5 years
- Large Language Models (LLMs) - 1 year
- RAG Architecture - 1 year
- Agentic AI Systems - 1 year
- Agentic Workflow Design - 1 year
Preferred Environment
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ubuntu, MySQL, MongoDB, Flask, Python, Cron, Amazon EC2, API Integration, Django, Django REST Framework, Django ORM, REST, Cloud Infrastructure, Full-stack, PostgreSQL, CSS, Git, Back-end
The most amazing...
...project I've built is a highly secure internet scale digital document locker, certified by Microsoft in being able to scale to one billion users.
Work Experience
Full-stack Developer
2025 - 2026
Quantification by Design Inc.
- Architected and stood up a new line of business, which included an entire agentic AI pipeline and accompanying UI.
- Migrated their unscalable and expensive EC2-based architecture to a fully managed containerized system that auto-scales on demand.
- Guided decisions actively around long-term technical investments, and implemented several of the same.
Technologies: Python, Django, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Vue, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AI Agents, Agentic AI, Agentic Coding
Back-end Developer
2024 - 2024
WeAreEight Ltd
- Implemented several large features for their Shopify app, integrating them across React Storefront UI, LiquidThemes, Django back end, and Shopify admin embed.
- Automated i18n parsing and translation using Amazon Translate and i18next.
- Integrated Shopify markets global pricing via both the Admin GraphQL and Storefront GraphQL APIs.
Technologies: GraphQL, JavaScript, Django, PostgreSQL, Python, TypeScript, MySQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), APIs, eCommerce, Software as a Service (SaaS), Shopify, REST APIs, Test-driven Development (TDD), Behavior-driven Development (BDD), HTML, CSS3, HTML5, Shopify Customizations, Shopify Design, Shopify Plus, Testing, Stripe, Stripe Subscriptions, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), React Query, Asyncio, Concurrency, Amazon RDS, Serverless Architecture, Webhooks, AWS IoT, FastAPI, Python 3, GraphQL API, GitHub Actions, GitHub, System Architecture, Code Review
Full-stack Developer
2024 - 2024
UInclude, Inc
- Integrated a 3rd-party API for application tracking in Python.
- Updated their React-based smart editor with a workflow to search and push content to a 3rd-party application tracking system written in TypeScript.
- Introduced unit testing to the system and added the 1st suite of tests for their TypeScript and Python codebases.
Technologies: Python, JavaScript, Flask, REST APIs, React, Full-stack Development, API Integration, Front-end Development, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Node.js, Applicant Tracking Software (ATS), Back-end Development, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Front-end, Databases, IT Audits, HTML, CSS3, HTML5, Testing, Stripe, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Serverless Architecture, AWS IoT, Python 3, GitHub, Code Review
Developer
2024 - 2024
SHARIK KHAN
- Ironed out all the issues involved with the new product, including memory leaks, request crashes, IP blocking, and performance, in Node.js.
- Created a test suite for the entire automation process for the TypeScript codebase using Mocha.
- Spoke to and chose the right proxy services for the automation service.
- Used Pupetteer to pull data from different websites in Node.js.
Technologies: Algorithms, Proxies, APIs, Data Handling, Software Development, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Puppeteer, Real-time Data, TypeScript, Automation, Web Servers, Docker, Web Scraping, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), REST APIs, Data Scraping, Scraping, Website Data Scraping, Testing, Concurrency, AWS IoT, GitHub, System Architecture
Senior Python Developer
2022 - 2023
Lyrasis
- Optimized the back-end async jobs to not slow down the database engine. This was accomplished primarily by optimizing SQL queries and changing certain aspects of how the jobs ran.
- Architected and implemented the changeover of how their Docker containers ran in EC2 machines to running in AWS Fargate. Terraform was already used in the project and was leveraged to manage the Fargate infrastructure.
- Reimplemented the data feed generation mechanism integral to a library ecosystem where catalogs of books are exchanged on a daily basis between different libraries. The outdated and newer protocols could be used interchangeably after that.
- Updated and managed their in-house library card authentication system with new features and ensured it remained up to date with Python frameworks, including adding unit tests to the repository.
- Updated and maintained their authentication system written in Django with PostgreSQL, utilizing the ORM, Admin Interface, and Rest APIs.
Technologies: Python, Flask, Docker, AWS Fargate, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Pytest, Tox, Unit Testing, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Cron, Amazon EC2, API Integration, Django, Django REST Framework, Django ORM, REST, React, Cloud Infrastructure, Full-stack, PostgreSQL, TypeScript, CSS, Git, Back-end, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Terraform, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Test-driven Development (TDD), Ansible, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), AWS SDK, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), REST APIs, SQL, Front-end Development, Microservices Architecture, Jira, Agile, Pydantic, SQLAlchemy, Front-end, SAML-auth, OAuth, DevOps, Alembic, Bootstrap, Databases, Software Architecture, IT Audits, HTML, CSS3, HTML5, Shopify Design, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Event-driven Programming, Message Queues, Testing, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Asyncio, Concurrency, Amazon RDS, Serverless Architecture, Webhooks, AWS IoT, AWS IAM, Web Security, Abstract Syntax Trees (AST), Python 3, GitHub Actions, GitHub, System Architecture, Code Review
Technical Lead
2015 - 2021
Ignite Solutions
- Served as a technical lead and was responsible for all technical decisions made in a technology consulting company. I had a large hand in developing scalable processes for managing the technology across multiple clients and projects.
- Researched and implemented a homegrown image recognition software using OpenCV in a cross-platform manner. The software could be used on mobile devices, and it was mainly used for recognizing images in books.
- Devised economical and efficient ways for clients to achieve their initial MVP status while growing and changing rapidly as a startup specialty consulting company.
- Managed team estimations for entire projects, keeping tasks on time and ensuring slippages or inaccurate estimates were known well beforehand. Also managed the teams and end-to-end delivery of projects.
- Set up Shopify eCommerce shopfronts, some with a customized theme while others needed custom third-party integrations via the Shopify Admin API.
- Architected a web-scale (800 million) infrastructure for DigiLocker. This included secure and redundant storage of files, PII for all users, and a scalable arch for managing live sessions for viewing and annotating documents.
- Architected and implemented a website scan engine that scaled out to scan 100 million websites, filtered them down to scan three million every half hour, and stored the results for every scan as history.
- Engineered the complete migration of a running business from an unscalable low-code solution to a scalable custom code deployment with no service disruption. This included two apps, a website, an administration panel, a back end, and a database.
- Completed R&D on NLP-based chatbots. Implemented an end-to-end workflow to create chatbots as shopping assistants. This was accomplished using Spacy.
- Architected a complete migration of a very complex enterprise dashboard to an Angular stack as a complete rewrite.
Technologies: Azure Table Storage, Solution Architecture, Web Architecture, Code Architecture, Team Leadership, Docker, AWS Fargate, Amazon DynamoDB, RabbitMQ, Elasticsearch, Google Cloud, Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, jQuery, JavaScript, Python, APIs, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS Lambda, Cron, Amazon EC2, API Integration, Django, Django REST Framework, Django ORM, REST, Full-stack Development, React, Cloud Infrastructure, Full-stack, PostgreSQL, TypeScript, Chrome Extensions, CSS, Git, Back-end, Technical Leadership, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Terraform, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Test-driven Development (TDD), AWS CloudFormation, Serverless, Ansible, Shopify, Liquid, Web Scraping, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), AWS SDK, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), REST APIs, SQL, Front-end Development, Angular, Microservices Architecture, Jira, Agile, SQLAlchemy, Front-end, Celery, OAuth, DevOps, Scrapy, Selenium, NoSQL, Payment APIs, Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, Scraping, Website Data Scraping, Databases, Software Architecture, IT Audits, Bubble, HTML, Matplotlib, CTO, Mobile Development, PHP, CSS3, HTML5, Shopify Customizations, Shopify Plus, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Event-driven Programming, Message Queues, Testing, Stripe, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google App Engine, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Next.js, Concurrency, Asyncio, Amazon RDS, Serverless Architecture, RPC, Webhooks, AWS IoT, React Redux, AWS IAM, Web Security, Python 3, AWS Batch, GraphQL API, GitHub, System Architecture, Code Review
Full-stack Developer
2011 - 2015
Ignite Solutions
- Developed a scalable messaging system using WebSockets for the server to pass events to the clients in real-time. I wrote code in Node.js. These events would begin as database entries and be propagated through the back end via ZeroMQ.
- Created a companion screen app using jQuery and Dojo that was capable of launching apps within itself and manage lifecycles as a marketplace.
- Took over a legacy codebase in PHP and cleaned up thousands of redundant code lines under the hood while implementing new features on the same codebase. This codebase is now robust and still runs the business.
- Delivered an Instagram clone in the early days of iOS which was built to store and upload very high quality pictures without having memory issues.
Technologies: Python, AngularJS, Architecture, jQuery, JavaScript, Node.js, ZeroMQ, APIs, AWS Lambda, Cron, Amazon EC2, API Integration, Django, Django REST Framework, Django ORM, REST, Full-stack Development, Cloud Infrastructure, Full-stack, CSS, Git, Back-end, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), SQL, Front-end Development, Agile, Front-end, OAuth, DevOps, NoSQL, Bootstrap, Databases, Software Architecture, IT Audits, HTML, Mobile Development, PHP, CSS3, HTML5, Event-driven Programming, Message Queues, Express.js, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google App Engine, Concurrency, RPC, Webhooks, AWS IoT, Web Security, System Architecture
Research Assistant
2010 - 2010
La Trobe University
- Wrote the embedded code for a smart switch which was to meter and transmit the usage of the appliance attached to the switch.
- Completed a POC for the Zero Emissions House project for the Australian Government at La Trobe University.
- Drafted, collaboratively, the protocol that would be used for the smart switches to transmit information and even be controlled remotely.
Technologies: C, Microsoft Visual C++, Embedded C, Object-oriented Programming (OOP)
Junior Software Developer
2007 - 2008
Max Secure Software
- Researched singlehandedly the new anti-virus division based on which the product was later developed.
- Converted the research POC into a marketable anti-virus product with the team.
- Improved the quality of the anti-virus product to make it the flagship product of an established company.
Technologies: Microsoft Visual C++, Assembly, Cybersecurity, Object-oriented Programming (OOP)
Experience
Enfold Digital Locker
An internet-scale digital locker service; originally built to be the preferred digital document locker for the Indian subcontinents' denizens through a government initiative and the goal was to be able to scale for a billion people and terabytes of data, where a microservices architecture in Python built atop Microsoft Azure's cloud allowed for this to be certified as scalable to the aforementioned level by Microsoft itself.
As the architect of the system I had a large hand in the infrastructure and code design philosophies, specifically targeted at scale and security, and as a developer I assisted in implementing the design.
As the architect of the system I had a large hand in the infrastructure and code design philosophies, specifically targeted at scale and security, and as a developer I assisted in implementing the design.
Web Uptime Tracking
A website uptime tracking service built to look through large sections of the internet and continuously track the uptime of websites.
Initially, this began with 80 million websites, which was reduced to a modest 3.6 million "valid" websites. Each of which was monitored every half hour for their uptime statistics and stored for later processing and statistical analysis.
I architected, implemented, and operated the entirety of the web scan engine.
Initially, this began with 80 million websites, which was reduced to a modest 3.6 million "valid" websites. Each of which was monitored every half hour for their uptime statistics and stored for later processing and statistical analysis.
I architected, implemented, and operated the entirety of the web scan engine.
Crowdsourced Animal Fund Raiser
This company already had an established codebase with a small business running on it. With minimal funding, they were ready to invest their capital in a system rewrite as the current codebase was badly written and had a host of issues plaguing them.
I was the technical lead on the project. As a team, we decided the investment capital was better spent on growing their customer base than re-writing the system. We fixed every bug we could find and completed "under the hood" refactors of the codebase to ensure the best standards were followed throughout their business layer.
We also introduced a rule-based throttling system to their email campaign engine to allow their marketing campaigns to remain in the "non-spam" category.
Following this, an entire line of business was introduced around eCommerce within four weeks. This allowed for a lean method of testing the given business and iterating without breaking the bank.
This was a crucial decision that helped them spend on their customer acquisition and retention, pushing them towards their first million in revenue. This was a pivotal point as now they are growing over 300% YoY. Their first million is but a blip in the past.
I was the technical lead on the project. As a team, we decided the investment capital was better spent on growing their customer base than re-writing the system. We fixed every bug we could find and completed "under the hood" refactors of the codebase to ensure the best standards were followed throughout their business layer.
We also introduced a rule-based throttling system to their email campaign engine to allow their marketing campaigns to remain in the "non-spam" category.
Following this, an entire line of business was introduced around eCommerce within four weeks. This allowed for a lean method of testing the given business and iterating without breaking the bank.
This was a crucial decision that helped them spend on their customer acquisition and retention, pushing them towards their first million in revenue. This was a pivotal point as now they are growing over 300% YoY. Their first million is but a blip in the past.
Library Circulation
https://thepalaceproject.org/Multiple repositories were part of this project, mostly in Python and there was a front end with React as well where I fixed multiple scaling issues with the codebase, including unscalable SQL queries, job scheduling, and business logic optimizations.
The project included updating a legacy open-source codebase from Python 3.5 to Python 3.11, adhering to strict typing with Mypy. I worked with a team of five, fixing bugs, building features, architecting solutions, and delivering milestones.
The project included updating a legacy open-source codebase from Python 3.5 to Python 3.11, adhering to strict typing with Mypy. I worked with a team of five, fixing bugs, building features, architecting solutions, and delivering milestones.
Shopify App
A Shopify app that allowed the grouping of products and provided several features, such as tiered discounts, free items, and conditional traversing of the list based on user interaction with that group of products.
Agentically-driven Prior Authorization Application
http://go.dopriorauth.comServed as a senior engineer on Do Prior Auth, a HIPAA-regulated multi-tenant SaaS that automates insurance prior authorizations for infusion pharmacies (Django, Celery, Vue 3).
I worked across the stack and well into the infrastructure. I led the platform's move off Elastic Beanstalk onto ECS Fargate, with autoscaling driven by Celery queue depth, and owned the Terraform that runs it end-to-end. Alongside that, I did the SOC 2 groundwork: audit trails and tightened S3 and IAM. Most of my product work was on the AI side. I built the intake pipeline that takes clinical documents in whatever form they arrive — fax, upload, email — and uses OCR and LLMs to pull them into structured, reviewable data, with a fallback between models so a single provider outage doesn't stall the queue. On top of that, I built a clinical rules engine that predicts likely denials before submission: it maps a patient's diagnoses and prescribed drugs against FDA-approved indications, joining several public medical datasets into one cross-referenced graph and reconciling the messy coding differences between them.
I worked across the stack and well into the infrastructure. I led the platform's move off Elastic Beanstalk onto ECS Fargate, with autoscaling driven by Celery queue depth, and owned the Terraform that runs it end-to-end. Alongside that, I did the SOC 2 groundwork: audit trails and tightened S3 and IAM. Most of my product work was on the AI side. I built the intake pipeline that takes clinical documents in whatever form they arrive — fax, upload, email — and uses OCR and LLMs to pull them into structured, reviewable data, with a fallback between models so a single provider outage doesn't stall the queue. On top of that, I built a clinical rules engine that predicts likely denials before submission: it maps a patient's diagnoses and prescribed drugs against FDA-approved indications, joining several public medical datasets into one cross-referenced graph and reconciling the messy coding differences between them.
Education
2009 - 2011
Master's Degree in Computer Science
La Trobe University - Melbourne, Australia
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, Django ORM, React, REST APIs, Stripe, Asyncio, GraphQL API, OpenAI API, Liquid, Pydantic, SQLAlchemy, React Query, jQuery, ZeroMQ, Puppeteer, Shopify API, Matplotlib, React Redux, Vue
Tools
Git, Ansible, Cron, GitHub, RabbitMQ, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS SDK, Terraform, Jira, Bubble, Shopify Plus, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS IAM, AWS Batch, Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), AWS Fargate, AWS CloudFormation, Microsoft Visual C++, Pytest, Celery
Languages
Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL, HTML, CSS3, HTML5, Python 3, CSS, PHP, C, Embedded C, Assembly, GraphQL
Frameworks
Flask, Django, Alembic, Bootstrap, Django REST Framework, Scrapy, Selenium, Tailwind CSS, Next.js, Angular, AngularJS, CakePHP, Express.js
Paradigms
REST, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Agile, DevOps, Event-driven Programming, Testing, Serverless Architecture, Web Architecture, Microservices Architecture, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Microservices, Test-driven Development (TDD), Unit Testing, Automation, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Mobile Development
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Amazon EC2, AWS IoT, Shopify, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google App Engine, Azure, Ubuntu
Storage
PostgreSQL, Databases, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MongoDB, MySQL, NoSQL, Redis, Azure Table Storage, HBase, Google Cloud, Elasticsearch, Amazon DynamoDB
Industry Expertise
Project Management, Cybersecurity
Other
Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Team Leadership, Code Architecture, Solution Architecture, Architecture, APIs, API Integration, Cloud Infrastructure, Back-end, Technical Leadership, Algorithms, Front-end, Data Scraping, Scraping, Website Data Scraping, Software Architecture, Message Queues, Concurrency, Amazon RDS, Webhooks, Web Security, GitHub Actions, System Architecture, Code Review, Large Language Models (LLMs), Gemini API, Vibe Coding, Cursor AI, Agentic AI Systems, Agentic Workflow Design, Web Scraping, Full-stack Development, Full-stack, Chrome Extensions, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Front-end Development, IT Audits, CTO, Shopify Customizations, Shopify Design, Abstract Syntax Trees (AST), RAG Architecture, Business Information Systems, Neural Networks, Serverless, Tox, Proxies, Data Handling, Software Development, Real-time Data, Web Servers, Applicant Tracking Software (ATS), Back-end Development, SAML-auth, OAuth, CI/CD Pipelines, Payment APIs, eCommerce, Software as a Service (SaaS), Stripe Subscriptions, RPC, FastAPI, AI Agents, Agentic AI, Agentic Coding, ECS
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