# Nitya Tarakad > Software Engineer at Snowflake Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/nityatarakad Hi! My name is Nitya Tarakad and I graduated from Georgia Institute Technology with a Masters degree in Computer Science at Georgia Tech, specializing in Machine Learning. I am currently a software engineer at Snowflake. I hope to leverage my interests and skills as well as what I learn to build products and tools that will positively impact the world. I have had various experiences in learning, contributing, and innovating during my career and my time at Georgia Tech. Feel free to reach out to chat! ## Work Experience ### Software Engineer @ Snowflake Jan 2023 – Present | San Mateo, California, United States Cortex Search Universal Search Search Quality, Retrieval, Ranking, Product ### Co-Founder and Software Engineer @ Voca Speech Jan 2017 – Jan 2023 | Atlanta, Georgia Co-Founder and SWE at Voca Speech - Design, implement, and test core features for SpectroSam, a mobile application that helps children better their English articulation skills - Revamped and implemented backend database structure in SQL - Implemented functionality to access and update database with AWS Lambda - Started through Grand Challenges ### Software Engineer @ Neeva Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | Mountain View, California, United States Search Quality Acquired by Snowflake in May 2023 ### Head Teaching Assistant @ Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 Head Teaching Assistant for CS 3600, Georgia Tech’s Intro to Artificial Intelligence course - Managed entire hiring process of Fall 2021 team and facilitated all communication between the professor and TAs - Held office hours every week to help students understand the multiple concepts of AI - Organized and taught review sessions to explain new concepts and go over assigned projects - Graded projects and exams that assessed students' understanding of the course content ### Grand Challenges Student Scholar @ Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2017 – Jan 2021 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States Grand Challenges Student Scholar at Georgia Tech - Admitted to living learning community and program that helps students explore entrepreneurial solutions to global issues ### Graduate Teaching Assistant @ Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 Graduate Teaching Assistant for CS 3600, Georgia Tech's Intro to Artificial Intelligence course ### Undergraduate Teaching Assistant @ Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | Atlanta, Georgia Undergraduate Teaching Assistant for CS 3600, Georgia Tech's Artificial Intelligence course ### Undergraduate Student Researcher @ Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Technology Square Research Building, School of Interactive Computing - Designed a mobile application to help monitor lung health for asthma patients and their caretakers - Surveyed multiple AR games for children to gather more information on how a mobile AR application can be successful Supervisors: Dr. Rosa Arriaga and Karthika Priya Jayaprakash ### Undergraduate Student Researcher @ Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | TanDEm Lab School of Interactive Computing Researched how mental strength can be increased with Virtual Reality through fully immersive designs and activities. Advisor: Dr. Neha Kumar ### Developer @ Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Greater Atlanta Area HackGT 4: New Heights - Developed a game named "Synesthesia" that allowed the user to see his/her's arm movements on a monitor and allowed him/her to alter the music's (playing in the background of the game) frequency and volume - Used the Myo Armband to detect the user's arm movements on the screen and to allow the user to alter the music - Used Unity (coded in C#) to build the game ### Graduate Student Researcher @ Entertainment Intelligence Lab Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Atlanta, Georgia, United States Graduate Student Researcher at Entertainment Intelligence Lab in Georgia Tech Researched automatic story generation techniques Advisor: Mark Riedl ### Machine Learning Intern @ Apple Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Seattle, Washington, United States Machine Learning Intern within Siri NL Platform - Primarily focused on improving Siri Natural Language Process performance - Designed and implemented a dashboard for displaying detailed latency metrics for internal NL components - Contributed to the pipeline that collects and aggregates the metrics to populate dashboard - Implemented infrastructure optimizations that were defined as “essential features” - Researched modeling runtime improvements with mixed precision experiments using Python and internal tools Mentor: Alexander Clines Manager: Roger Zheng ### Software Engineer Intern @ Facebook Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Menlo Park, California, United States Software Engineer Intern within Feed and Stories Org - Worked on the Stories Creation Core team, specifically Stories Ecosystem - Implemented time indicators for Facebook Stories Gallery - Implemented a zoomable gallery feature on Facebook Stories, allowing users to transition between different layouts - Publicly tested core features and product infra improvements to gain user feedback and promote user experience Manager: Victor Wong ### Software Engineer Intern @ Facebook Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Menlo Park, California Software Engineer Intern within the WhatsApp Org - Worked with the WhatsApp iOS Team, specifically on Core Messaging - Developed and implemented status (stories) media infra performance improvements to benefit user experience of WhatsApp - Determined field stats to monitor if the status improvements implemented were positively impacting the user Manager: David Peña ### Software Engineer Intern @ Pacific Gas and Electric Company Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Developed iOS applications with PG&E's Enablement team, a sub-team in PG&E's Digital Catalyst Team. These applications allow PG&E employees and contractors to work more effectively and efficiently. I worked on an iOS application that implemented IBM Watson to allow field workers to look up information more efficiently. I also utilized Darknet and YOLO to detect PG&E poles, insulators, and telecom wires to optimize the company’s inspection process. Manager: Pranav Jhumkhawala ### Developer at Stanford's TreeHacks 2018 @ Stanford University Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Stanford, California Created an audio visualizer in Virtual Reality - Used ReactVR to program the objects in VR -Used the Spotify API for the music the objects would be moving in response with ### Lifeguard @ Menlo Swim and Sport Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Palo Alto, California I was a lifeguard at Menlo Swim and Sport, overseeing a swimming complex of 3 swimming pools. 200-300 swimmers swim in these pools, daily. ### Summer Intern @ Snapwiz Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Fremont, California I worked at Snapwiz, as a summer intern, for 2 summers. - Wrote code in Python to determine whether a site (URL) exists or not. - Reviewed and corrected code for a software that tested a customer's ability to program in Python. ### Developer @ Menlo School Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Atherton, CA iOS Development - Ruler App - Created an application, using Xcode, that measured the distance from one point to another, using the iphone's accelerometer. - Wrote code to compensate for the accelorometer's inaccuracy and make the distance measurement 80% accurate ### Co President of Menlo School's STEM Club @ Menlo School Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Atherton, CA - Led Menlo's Bridge to Engineering, Science and Technology (MBEST), teaching girls, ages 11-18, about STEM. - Organized Tech Tours at Facebook, Amazon and Zazzle. ### Co-Founder of Robotics Club @ Menlo School Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 | Atherton, CA - Co-founded the Robotics Club at Menlo School with 3 other girls. - Co-captained the Robotics team at FTC's 2016 Competition. - Won FTC's PTC Design Award and Inspire Award - Competed at FTC's NorCal Competition ### Developer @ Menlo School Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Atherton, CA Menlo Hacks I - Participated in Menlo School's Hackathon - Created a calendar application that notified users when tests and homework were due ### Producer @ Menlo Senior Appreciation Show Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Menlo School, Atherton, CA I partnered with 2 other graduating students to produce the Menlo Senior Appreciation show. ## Education ### Master of Science - MS in Computer Science Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 ### Bachelor of Science - BS in Computer Science Georgia Institute of Technology Jan 2017 – Jan 2020 ### High School Diploma Menlo School Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nitya-tarakad --- Source: https://flows.cv/nityatarakad JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/nityatarakad/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-23