# Abhishek Kataria

> Engineering at Block (previously Square)

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/abhishekkataria

During the course of my high school education I remember being told by a teacher that “The most important thing about technology is how it changes people”. This is ever so true in my case for the more I have stopped to ponder on the miracle of technology, the more I’ve grown intellectually and hence qualitatively. However, the more I used it, the more curious I grew to learn about it.

## Work Experience
### Staff Software Engineer @ Square
Jan 2022 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States
- Co-designed and built Block’s centralized data retention platform, automatically deleting 250K+ unused tables (~3 PB) and reducing storage costs by $500K+ annually.
- Architected a centralized encrypted-data vault platform replacing fragmented implementations across dozens of teams and standardizing secure data handling across the company.
- Technical lead and architect for Square’s 0→1 internal banking platform powering savings and financial services for 200K+ sellers, ~$400M in total balances, $3.86B in deposits, and ~91% CSAT (highest among Square products).
- Designed core banking primitives including account lifecycle, money movement, onboarding, savings automation, and regulatory controls across multiple countries.
- Led cross-org delivery across risk, compliance, treasury, legal, finance, audit and operations to launch regulated financial products.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Square
Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco, California, United States
- Co-led migration of a 50 TB Apache HBase cluster to Google Cloud Spanner, scaling write throughput to 2K QPS while improving reliability and reducing operational overhead.
- Designed backend systems powering sales and billing analytics for all Square sellers.
- Delivered critical reporting capabilities including Delivery Fulfillment (accelerated during COVID‑19), Cash App integrations, partial payments, fractional quantities, and compliance tooling for CCPA/GDPR.
- Built a distributed caching layer for seller transaction queries, eliminating search timeouts and resolving session-management CPU stalls.

### Software Engineer @ Square
Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco, California
- Designed a company-wide infrastructure ownership tracking system enabling automated host accountability across datacenter fleets.
- Built an automated patching system capable of upgrading the entire infrastructure fleet (10,000+ servers) safely at regular intervals. Some of the servers were not upgraded in 7+ years.
- Designed and deployed a cross‑coast redundant package mirroring system (rpm‑server) to improve reliability of infrastructure dependency distribution.

### Co-Founder, Global Chair of South Asians @ Block ERG @ Block
Jan 2016 – Present
Co‑founded and led ERG with 500+ members; grew to multiple city chapters, organized events with CEO/CFO/CTO/senior leaders/external speakers, sellers/artists/influencers, managed budgets, and built mentorship programs impacting 140+ people.

### Other things @ Block
Jan 2016 – Present | San Francisco, CA
- Welcome to Block presentation
- Presented in company wide town halls, eng all hands 
- On promo panel, reviewed dozens of promo packets
- Mentored dozens of engineers
- Conducted hundreds of interviews
- Campus recruiting

### Treasurer @ Rutgers University Department of Computer Science
Jan 2015 – Jan 2016
Treasurer of Computer Science Graduate Student Society, Rutgers University

### Part Time Lecturer @ Rutgers University
Jan 2014 – Jan 2016
- Addressing recitation classes for 2 classes each of 25 students explaining practical knowledge behind Computers & Applications (CS 110). It includes teaching programming in scratch, google docs, google sites, presentations, spreadsheets and databases 
- Handling lab sessions and guide students to understand and learn about Computers
- Coordinating with course instructors to grade exams and quizzes
- Provide individual mentorship.

### Software Developer Engineering Intern @ Amazon
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Seattle
SDE Intern in Amazon Fulfillment Team.
- Developed a mathematical model to estimate number of people working in Amazon Fulfillment Centers.
- Wrote Integration Testing for few services.
- Fixed some bugs, modified the service calls.
- Attended scrums, sprint planning.

### Student Trainee @ ONGC
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Chennai
Training under Infocom department in Communications and Data Processing domain.

### R&D Intern @ Cognizant Technology Solutions
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Chennai
- Developed a Video Testing Tool in Java
- Building various modules to test video frames for Audio-Video Sync, Blockiness, Blurriness and Freeziness into application software


## Education
### Master’s Degree in Computer Science
Rutgers University

### Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Anna University Chennai

### High School in Computer Science
Maharishi Vidya Mandir Senior Sec. School


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/abhishekkataria27
- Portfolio: https://substack.com/@abhishekkataria/posts

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Source: https://flows.cv/abhishekkataria
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/abhishekkataria/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-12