Prasant is available for hire
Hire PrasantPrasant Chidella
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Engineer and Developer
Location
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Toptal Member Since
December 7, 2020
Prasant has been a software engineer for four years and has worked for companies like Microsoft and Amazon, where he built and maintained large scale web applications. He is passionate about solving complex problems that arise when building distributed systems and takes pride in writing simple, beautiful, and maintainable code.
Portfolio
Plaid
TypeScript, TypeScript 3, Node.js, PSD2, Fintech, APIs, API Integration...
TripActions
Java, Couchbase, MySQL, Jenkins, Chatbot Conversation Design, Chatbots...
Operant AI, Inc.
Go, Kubernetes, Java, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microservices, Apache Kafka...
Experience
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, Kubernetes, Git, Java, Go
The most amazing...
...thing I've developed is a service capable of sending and receiving large volumes of messages that can horizontally scale up to 1,000 requests per second.
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer
2022 - 2023
Plaid
- Integrated with more than 30 banking institutions in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia using various PSD2 API standards for AIS and PIS.
- Built a PoC for an AI-powered chatbot that allowed customers to interact with their bank accounts using a chat interface. The chatbot was built using Google's Dialogflow and connected to customer bank accounts using Plaids' APIs.
- Identified and fixed several data consistency issues caused by bugs in code.
Technologies: TypeScript, TypeScript 3, Node.js, PSD2, Fintech, APIs, API Integration, Integration, Go, Microservices, RESTful Microservices, RESTful Services, Agile, Express.js, JavaScript, Databases, HTTP, JSON, API Development, Open Banking APIs, Financial Services, API Design, Plaid, Payment APIs, Postman
Senior Software Engineer
2021 - 2022
TripActions
- Built the trains platform at TripActions that allows customers to book train tickets across the US, UK, and several countries in the EU through multiple inventory providers.
- Extracted a user management service from a monolith as part of the effort to split up the monolith into a microservice architecture.
- Was part of the API design committee responsible for defining the standards for the RESTful API design across all services at TripActions.
- Was part of the team that built Cati, TripAction's virtual assistant. This was a chatbot built using IBM Watson Assistant that was responsible for fully automating 38% of all support requests and partially automating 50% of support requests.
- Contributed to the hiring efforts by taking several technical interviews.
- Mentored and onboarded several new engineers to the team.
Technologies: Java, Couchbase, MySQL, Jenkins, Chatbot Conversation Design, Chatbots, IBM Watson, Spring, REST APIs, API Design, SOAP, Dialogflow, Twilio API, Twilio, API Integration, API Development, Microservices, SQL, NoSQL, Git, Agile Software Development, A/B Testing, APIs, Software Architecture, Back-end, Amazon Web Services (AWS), New Relic, Architecture, Amazon RDS, Agile Sprints, Cloud, Integration, Software Design, Scalability, Leadership, Agile, RESTful Services, RESTful Microservices, Databases, Spring Boot, HTTP, JSON, Postman
Back-end Developer
2020 - 2021
Operant AI, Inc.
- Created the initial MVP for Operant AI's Kubernetes cluster monitoring platform. This was a service written in Go, exposing REST and GraphQL APIs to be consumed by a CLI client, monitoring agents, and a front end.
- Built OperantAI's CLI client that allows customers to manage the deployment of agents in the Kubernetes cluster being monitored. In conjunction with Istio sidecars, these agents would capture monitoring data and send it to our back end.
- Set up the entire initial infrastructure for OperantAI's MVP in AWS and Confluent. This included setting up the Kubernetes cluster, the MySQL instance, the deployment pipelines, the Kafka cluster, etc.
- Acted as a technical lead in addition to the IC work, managing another back-end engineer and a front-end engineer.
Technologies: Go, Kubernetes, Java, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microservices, Apache Kafka, Istio, Envoy Proxy, Amazon EKS, MySQL, GraphQL, GitHub, SQL, Git, Agile Software Development, APIs, REST APIs, Software Architecture, Back-end, GitHub Actions, Architecture, Amazon RDS, Agile Sprints, Authentication, Auth, OAuth 2, Cloud, Software Design, Leadership, RESTful Services, RESTful Microservices, Databases, HTTP, JSON, API Development, API Design, Postman
Software Engineer (Go)
2020 - 2021
MessageBird
- Developed a messaging service to send and receive messages over multiple platforms (WhatsApp, Twitter, Apple Business Chat (ABC), etc.), designed for high throughput, reliability, and scale.
- Integrated with the Apple Business Chat API, allowing customers to send messages over the ABC.
- Refactored services to enable local development, improving developer productivity.
- Made enhancements to the internal logging library, enabling indexing and filtering of logs.
- Added ability to send messages with buttons and attachments over multiple platforms.
Technologies: Agile Software Development, Telegram Bot API, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger API, WhatsApp API, Docker Compose, Docker, Google Cloud SQL, MySQL, Google Pub/Sub, Beanstalkd, Grafana, Prometheus, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Kubernetes, Go, MessageBird, Microservices, SQL, Google Cloud Spanner, Git, APIs, REST APIs, Software Architecture, GitLab, Redis, Back-end, GitLab CI/CD, Helm, New Relic, Architecture, API Integration, Agile Sprints, Cloud, Integration, Software Design, Scalability, Agile, Google Cloud, Social Media APIs, RESTful Services, RESTful Microservices, Google, Databases, HTTP, JSON, API Development, Twilio, API Design, Postman, WhatsApp
Software Engineer
2019 - 2019
Amazon.com
- Enabled a new scheduled delivery shipping option for the "large items" category, allowing customers to schedule delivery times.
- Enabled the "Unified delivery of services" feature for the "large items" category. This allowed Amazon to upsell services with products and saved customers up to 90% on delivery fees.
- Served as a regular member of the on-call rotation responsible for incident response.
Technologies: A/B Testing, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Java, Microservices, NoSQL, Git, Agile Software Development, APIs, REST APIs, Software Architecture, Back-end, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Architecture, Agile Sprints, Cloud, Software Design, Agile, RESTful Services, RESTful Microservices, Databases, HTTP, JSON, API Development, API Design, Postman
Software Engineer
2016 - 2019
Microsoft
- Developed a configurable API Gateway service that acts as a proxy to back-end services and abstracts authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and load balancing in addition to enabling other services to build async job processing APIs.
- Participated in the re-architecture of Azure Backup to transition it into a "platform" that enabled third parties to easily integrate with Azure Backup and build backup and recovery capabilities for their customers.
- Migrated Azure Backup to new services for secret management, encryption, and inter-service authentication as part of a company-wide project. Designed and built custom tooling to create and manage configurations, improving automation and reliability.
- Developed the "Soft Delete" feature in Azure Backup, which allowed customers to restore backups deleted within 14 days. This provided customers additional security against accidental deletions, rogue admin scenarios, ransomware attacks, etc.
- Served as a regular member of the on-call rotation responsible for incident response.
- Wrote automated test "runners" for our services that performed E2E tests at regular intervals.
- Created a suite of plugins to perform admin operations to ease our managing services.
- Performed fault analysis for an API gateway microservice to identify gaps in the service's design and make it more reliable.
Technologies: C#.NET, .NET, Azure Table Storage, Azure Queue Storage, Azure Blobs, Azure, C#, Microservices, NoSQL, Git, Agile Software Development, APIs, REST APIs, Software Architecture, Back-end, Architecture, Agile Sprints, Cloud, Software Design, Scalability, Agile, RESTful Services, RESTful Microservices, Databases, HTTP, JSON, API Development, API Design, Postman
Experience
Messaging Service
A messaging service written in Go, capable of sending and receiving messages over multiple platforms (WhatsApp, Twitter, Apple Business Chat, etc.) designed for high throughput, reliability, and scale. I was one of the developers that designed and built the service.
API Gateway Service
Designed and developed a highly configurable and extensible API Gateway service that acted as a proxy to other back-end services and abstracted responsibilities like authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and load balancing. In addition, it enabled other services to build asynchronous job processing APIs and manage the lifecycle of the jobs.
Automating support with a Chatbot
While working at TripActions, a travel management company, I was part of a team that built a chatbot capable of handling customer support requests. The Chatbot's goal was to minimize the load on the customer service agents and allow the support organization to scale with the company's growth.
The Chatbot was built using Twilio and IBM Watson Assistant and integrated with our back-end APIs to automate several tasks for customers, like booking tickets, canceling or modifying tickets, checking refund statuses, etc., and providing them with personalized service based on the data we had. The Chatbot could fully "automate" around 38% of all incoming support requests. We heavily relied on A/B testing and data analysis to measure impact and prioritize features.
The Chatbot was built using Twilio and IBM Watson Assistant and integrated with our back-end APIs to automate several tasks for customers, like booking tickets, canceling or modifying tickets, checking refund statuses, etc., and providing them with personalized service based on the data we had. The Chatbot could fully "automate" around 38% of all incoming support requests. We heavily relied on A/B testing and data analysis to measure impact and prioritize features.
Skills
Languages
Go, Java, C#, SQL, C#.NET, Perl, Python, R, Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Clojure, GraphQL, TypeScript, Python 3, TypeScript 3
Tools
Git, Grafana, Apple Business Chat, GitLab, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub, MessageBird, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Docker Compose, MATLAB, Amazon EKS, Helm, Postman, Plaid, Istio, Envoy Proxy, Jenkins, IBM Watson, Dialogflow, Mongoose
Paradigms
Microservices, Agile, Agile Software Development, Functional Programming
Storage
JSON, NoSQL, Azure Queue Storage, Azure Blobs, MySQL, Azure Table Storage, Redis, Databases, Google Cloud, Google Cloud SQL, Google Cloud Spanner, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Couchbase, Amazon DynamoDB, PostgreSQL
Other
API Design, Cloud, Integration, Software Design, Scalability, RESTful Microservices, RESTful Services, Beanstalkd, Google Pub/Sub, A/B Testing, APIs, Software Architecture, Back-end, Chatbots, Architecture, API Integration, Agile Sprints, HTTP, WhatsApp, Software Development, Prometheus, GPU Computing, GitHub Actions, Payment APIs, Chatbot Conversation Design, SOAP, Financial Services, Fintech, Open Banking APIs, PSD2, Amazon RDS, Authentication, Leadership, Google
Frameworks
.NET, Spring Boot, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Spring, OAuth 2, Express.js, NestJS
Libraries/APIs
WhatsApp API, Facebook Messenger API, Telegram Bot API, REST APIs, PAW, API Development, Social Media APIs, jQuery, Node.js, Twilio API, Auth
Platforms
Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, Kubernetes, AWS Lambda, Docker, NVIDIA CUDA, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), New Relic, Apache Kafka, Twilio
Education
2012 - 2016
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
IIIT Delhi - New Delhi, India
Certifications
FEBRUARY 2024 - PRESENT
WhatsApp Business Platform for Developers
Coursera
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