# Chamila Amithirigala > Senior Staff Software Engineer at Amplitude Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/chamila Hey there! A little bit about me: I worked on scaling GoFundMe's backend during an enormous period of growth (in the years up to and including COVID) and I've worked InVision Freehand, a multiplayer web app. Now, I work at Amplitude, where I have a special opportunity to work cross-functionally, to help our customers make better decisions with data! I specialize in API development, but I've also worked extensively on databases, async infrastructure (queues, notification systems, etc), DevOps, and React. I excel at being glue (https://noidea.dog/glue), untangling ambiguity, and bringing people together on technical initiatives. I like to focus on technical writing, building engineering culture, and growing people through mentorship. I also love participating in and organizing company hackathons! In my free time, I enjoy running, hiking, swimming, and food (both cooking and the restaurant scene). I love being part of the outdoor San Francisco community, I volunteer at races and park/beach cleanups. Feel free to reach out if you want to chat about hackathons, mentorship, running, or things to do in the San Francisco Bay Area! ## Work Experience ### Senior Staff Software Engineer @ Amplitude Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States ### Staff Software Engineer @ Amplitude Jan 2022 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States ### Staff Software Engineer @ InVision Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area Led org-wide initiatives, including mentioning across the Freehand experience and document thumbnail improvements. In addition, I mentored engineers on my team and filled in as Interim Engineering Manager for 2 months. ### Lead Software Engineer @ InVision Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area Led feature development on Freehand, our collaborative whiteboard product. Worked with my org (15+ engineers) to build core features for the whiteboard and create the add-ons library. My team focused on improving engagement (time spent in Freehand documents) and re-engagement (getting users to return to their Freehand documents). We ran experiments around improving templates, commenting, and notifications. Won two different hackathons for Object Snapping (elements snap to align with existing elements on canvas) and Sticky Comments/Reactions (comment/reaction markers "stick" to the elements behind them). ### Software Engineering Manager @ GoFundMe Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Redwood City, California, United States As an engineering manager, I supported my team through mentorship, advocacy, and close collaboration. I worked with product to prioritize impactful and challenging projects for the team. In addition, I initiated and organized the first company-wide hackathon to address tech debt (dubbed "Deletathon"). I continued to be a tech lead for several projects, particularly the Campaign Create revamp (which was an overhaul of the GoFundMe fundraiser creation flow). ### Senior Software Engineer @ GoFundMe Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Redwood City, California Backend tech lead on the Mobile team for various projects, including Notifications (primarily push, additionally email and SMS) and Profiles. ### Software Engineer @ GoFundMe Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Redwood City, California Owned end-to-end feature and project development, including the Causes product and other growth-related features. ### Graduate Teaching Assistant @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Siebel Center Graduate teaching assistant for Computer Architecture (CS 233), a course of ~400 students, for 3 semesters. ### Teaching Assistant @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Siebel Center Undergraduate Teaching assistant for Computer Architecture (CS 233), a course of ~400 students, for 4 semesters, as well as Undergraduate Teaching Assistant for Systems Programming (CS 241) for a summer semester. ### Research Assistant @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Loomis Laboratory - Chemla Lab ### Resident Project Advisor @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 Resident Advisor and Teaching Assistant for ~30 incoming freshmen in the Illinois Engineering First-Year Experience (IEFX) program. ### Software Engineering Intern @ LinkedIn Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco, CA Worked on background audio playback, the video player, and accessibility for the LinkedIn Learning iOS app. ### Software Engineering Intern @ LinkedIn Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Mountain View, CA Worked on the LinkedIn iOS app. Developed the Find Nearby feature for the My Network tab. Our team applied for a patent "Transmitting data among mobile devices" (US patent ID 10182463), which was issued Jan 15, 2019 for our work on the Find Nearby feature. ### Optimization and Advanced Analytics Engineering Practicum @ Caterpillar Inc. Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Champaign, IL I was responsible for improving an internal data visualization tool. I shipped performance improvements (~2x speedup) and various user-requested features including adjustable panels, real-time dashboards, and automatic label placement for scatter plots. ### Accompanist @ First United Lutheran Church Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 For my first job, I was a musical accompanist (pianist) for children’s choirs and worked with children aged 2-5 to teach music and lyrics. Although the skills I used in this job are completely different from what I do today as a software engineer, I’ve kept it in my LinkedIn profile because it was delightful to work with kids and share in the love of music! 🎶 ## Education ### Master of Science (M.S.) in Computer Science University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Computer Science University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ### Valedictorian North High School ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/amithir2 --- Source: https://flows.cv/chamila JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/chamila/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-31