# Nihanth Subramanya

> Building visual intelligence at Black Forest Labs

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

"Watch the world change, or be a part of it."

I've been a technologist forever, writing code since I was 12. Over the years I have worked on desktop apps, operating systems, developer tooling, Web browsers, privacy and security, VPNs and networking tech, and more.

Since 2022 I’ve been working on AI graphics, currently with Black Forest Labs - creators of the FLUX family of generative models.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Black Forest Labs
Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States

### Software Engineer @ Playground
Jan 2022 – Jan 2025
At Playground, we imagined and built next-generation tools for creating and editing graphics using AI.

Some highlights of my work:
- Built image rendering and compositing pipelines for an infinite-canvas graphics editor
- Built a system for managing concurrent asynchronous image generations
- Built, tuned, and scaled a system for classifying images into categorized "Rising" feeds using CLIP
- Implemented notifications with smart grouping for interactions on user-generated content (likes, follows)
- Productionized and scaled from UI to inference: ControlNet, outpainting, Dreambooth, etc.
- Fixed artifact-causing issues in sampling algorithms in HuggingFace's open-source diffusers library
- Built a system for showing an animation of intermediate steps during image generation
- Tamed Google Cloud services to be cost efficient at scale
- Interviewed candidates, helped onboard+mentor new hires, helped with planning and prioritization, etc.

### Software Engineer @ Mighty
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022
Mighty was a Web browser that ran in the cloud and consumed almost no resources on your computer.

Some highlights of my work:
- Set up nightly builds and automatic-update channels; deployed new releases as part of a rotation
- Figured out how to bundle Widevine DRM to make Netflix work
- Built solutions for bridging local networks including VPNs with the cloud browser
- Implemented Precision Touchpad gestures with Direct Manipulation API on Windows
- Custom non-client-area rendering to make Mighty look and feel exactly like Chrome on Windows

### Senior Software Engineer, Networking Platform @ Mozilla
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Berlin, Germany
- Led the rollout of DNS over HTTPS in Firefox in Canada, including designing, building, and shipping new regional configuration infrastructure.
- Led an effort to define and gather operational metrics, and increase per-lookup usage of DNS over HTTPS across our user population.
- Hacked on Firefox's networking stack

### Senior Software Engineer, Firefox Desktop @ Mozilla
Jan 2016 – Jan 2021 | Berlin, Germany
Hacked on Firefox and related software:
- DNS over HTTPS rollout
- Tracking Protection and Site Identity
- Firefox Monitor - service for insight into exposure in data breaches
- OpenWPM - instrumentation and automation for identifying trackers
- WebExtensions and Experiments

### Firefox Engineering Intern @ Mozilla
Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area
Captive portal detection in Firefox:
- UI to notify the user of an active captive portal and direct them to the login page

Error pages:
- Refactored and unified code and styles as part of a larger effort to make error pages consistent through the browser

### Firefox Engineering Intern @ Mozilla
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco Bay Area
Search UI enhancements:
 - Implemented new UI for in-content searchbars
 - Automated tests for UI and interactions
 - Shipped in Firefox 42

Search hijacking mitigation:
 - Replaced newtab URL pref with a JavaScript API.

### Google Summer of Code Student @ Instantbird (under Mozilla)
Jan 2014 – Jan 2014
Asynchronous logging and indexing of chat history files and UI for searching them.

### Google Summer of Code Student @ Instantbird (under Mozilla)
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013
Created an algorithm to rank contacts based on both how frequently and how recently they have been talked to. A user interface was created to display this list in an easily accessible tab.

### Contributor @ CyanogenMod
Jan 2010 – Jan 2012
Contributed features and device compatibility improvements, including screenshot sharing, support for wildcards in phone number blocklisting, and patching the build system to correctly package resources for LDPI devices. Created tools and documentation for UI theming. Contributed to root exploit packaging and automation.


## Education
### Bachelor of Engineering - BE in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nhnt11
- Portfolio: http://nhnt11.com
- Portfolio: http://nhnt11.medium.com/
- GitHub: https://github.com/nhnt11

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Source: https://flows.cv/nihanth
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/nihanth/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-10