Menlo Park, California, United States
Software Engineer on WhatsApp Web
I work on product features as well as product infrastructure (aka “the backend of the frontend”) for WhatsApp Web. I build features features related to end-to-end encryption, in-browser data persistence, localization/internationalization, and various other aspects of the JavaScript-based web client.
My team rebuilt WhatsApp Web’s architecture to allow it to operate independently of the phone. (This feature is called Multi Device, and was released in July 2021.)
Build and maintain features and client infrastructure on WhatsApp Web, including the web socket connecting WhatsApp Web with WhatsApp servers and the WhatsApp phone apps, end-to-end encryption for sensitive communication, and persisting data for use in product features.
Build and maintain the localization and internationalization features of WhatsApp Web (including translations pipelines, timestamps and layouts for right-to-left (RTL) locales).
Work with Developer Infra team to improve automation, build processes and developer experience.
Built an offline browser-based Full Text Search system for user messages, while maintaining strong guarantees on security and privacy of that data.
Built a heuristics-based multi-language tokenizer in JavaScript.
Built complex frontend React components for use in the new “Link with Phone Number” feature for logging in to WhatsApp Web.
Built infra and tooling around end-to-end (E2E) testing for WhatsApp Web, making it easier for developers to write E2E tests. Wrote extensive documentation and evangelized the framework to boost adoption and code coverage, improving our confidence in code changes and our releases.
Introduced a new WhatsApp Web Beta program to let users opt-in to receive new features. This program also gives developers a way to test new features and gather insights with a small group of testers before continuing with a wider public rollout.
2018 — 2018
Redmond, WA
Worked on the PowerBI Windows desktop application. Built functionality to support custom translations within a PowerBI project.
Users can export all custom strings (including column names, labels, etc.) from a PowerBI project. This file can be sent to translators.
Users can then import a file containing translations back into the PowerBI project.
When a PowerBI project is opened, the custom translated strings are displayed if available.
2018 — 2018
Menlo Park, CA
Context: Lead Ads is an advertisement format that allows users to send their information to advertisers so that the advertisers can contact users directly.
Consolidated and standardized user data validation across Facebook’s apps that show Lead Ads.
Created a new extensible framework on the server for consistent user data validation.
Updated iOS client to utilize this framework for validating user data on the server.
Conducted an experiment to validate the hypothesis that user behavior would not change significantly as a result of the change to the user experience (UX).
Launched the feature in April 2018 to cater to around 1 million users per day.
Convinced the management of the significant benefits of introducing Dynamic End Screens as a new feature.
As a first step, refactored the “end screen” of Lead Ads on iOS so that the UI Code lives on the server, resulting in single-source UI code across Facebook’s apps. This reduced the development overhead for making changes to the end screen, shrinking the release time from two weeks to six hours.
Investigated feasibility of two-step phone number confirmation to improve the quality of user data.
Built a fully-functional prototype on iOS.
Identified and documented UX implications and legal considerations related to this feature.
2017 — 2017
Menlo Park, California
Context: Facebook had launched a new “Instream Video Advertisement” placement type where short video advertisements are played in the middle of videos or in Facebook Live videos.
Worked on increasing demand for such advertisements by default-opting-in advertisers to use this feature on Ads Manager, one of the websites that advertisers use to publish ads on Facebook.
Developed the opt-in feature in the front-end of Ads Manager. When an eligible “Ad Set” is duplicated, the new Ad Set is opted-in, and a “tip” is displayed on the screen notifying the advertiser and giving them a chance to opt-out.
Implemented this feature using JavaScript (and Facebook technologies like React and Flux). Also, fixed bugs in the back-end using Hack, a Facebook technology based on PHP.
Okemos, MI
TechSmith did not have a full-fledged license-management system for its products (Camtasia and Snagit).
Implemented the concept of ‘Customer Accounts’ in the internal sales management website.
Improved the efficiency of the entire solution by cleaning bad-data from the database.
Reduced lead time for generating license reports from several days to a few minutes.
Automated “Configuration File” creation eliminating manual errors and improving data security.
Education
2015 — 2019
Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan
Bachelor’s Degree
2015 — 2019
2003 — 2015
Sri Kumaran Children's Home (CBSE)
High School
2003 — 2015