Akash Ungarala
Senior Software Engineer
I build resilient, high-scale backend systems. 9+ years architecting real-time platforms processing billions of events across broadcast media, fintech, gaming, and ad tech.
About
Systems that scale when it matters most
9+ years building backend systems where failure isn't an option. Real-time broadcast captioning for 8M+ viewers. Ad platforms processing 2B+ daily events. Observability tools trusted by 50+ engineering teams. I design systems where uptime and throughput are non-negotiable.
Great backend systems are invisible: fast, consistent, resilient under load. I combine Python's expressiveness with TypeScript's type safety to build services teams can maintain and scale. I own problems end-to-end — architecture, deployment, and on-call.
Recently built CaptionExchange at Fox — a distributed microservices platform with sub-5-second failover for live broadcasts. Drawn to real-time data, event-driven architectures, and systems that work the first time, every time.
Core Expertise
Tech Stack
Languages & Frameworks
Distributed Systems
Cloud & Infrastucture
Platform & DevOps
Data & Observability
Background
Experience & Education
Architected CaptionExchange, a real-time AI/human captioning platform serving 8M+ concurrent viewers with sub-5-second failover for live broadcast operations.
- Designed fault-tolerant captioning orchestration layer reducing failover from 3 minutes to <5 seconds through predictive routing and automated provider switching
- Architected high-concurrency WebSocket gateway handling 10K+ simultaneous connections with sub-100ms p99 latency for real-time audio and caption exchange
- Led technical design reviews and mentored 2 engineers on distributed systems patterns, improving team velocity by 25%
- Established CI/CD with Semgrep security scanning and 90%+ test coverage, reducing production incidents by 60%
Designed centralized SLO tracking platform processing metrics from 200+ services, reducing Mean Time to Detection by 40% across 50+ engineering teams.
- Built real-time observability dashboard integrating OpenTelemetry traces from 500+ microservices with automated breach detection via SNS
- Led proof-of-concept for high-cardinality metrics using Amazon Managed Prometheus, reducing alert noise by 50% and saving 20 engineering hours/week
- Drove Terraform standardization across 12 observability services, reducing deployment failures by 70% through enforced CI/CD gates
- Owned full stack: FastAPI backend, React frontend, PostgreSQL, AWS Lambda infrastructure with Terraform
Owned AdTech backend platform for Pokemon GO serving 80M+ monthly users with 99.99% uptime, processing 2B+ daily events for location-based ads.
- Designed event-driven pipeline using Celery and Cloud Spanner, reducing p99 latency from 800ms to 200ms for in-game reward delivery
- Optimized Spanner query patterns and indexing strategy, cutting analytics query latency by 60% for 50M+ daily events
- Reduced production defects by 40% through TDD adoption and hardened CI/CD gatekeeping; mentored junior engineers on testing strategies
- Built WebAR ad telemetry and tiered reward systems powering contextual ads for millions of players globally
Re-architected identity resolution services scaling 4x (5K to 20K+ writes/sec) while reducing infrastructure costs by 30%.
- Engineered event-driven data pipelines processing 5TB+ daily via BigQuery and PostgreSQL, powering 200+ enterprise partner integrations
- Reduced query latency by 30% through database optimization and implemented RBAC security using Auth0 for partner API access
- Orchestrated complex ETL workflows using Apache Airflow DAGs with automated deployments via Spinnaker
- Designed Flask-based microservice templates adopted company-wide, reducing service bootstrap time from 2 weeks to 2 days
Built Dialogflow conversational AI prototypes deployed across 400M+ Google Assistant devices.
- Developed chatbot prototypes using Python and Node.js, collaborating with product teams to define integration patterns for enterprise customers
- Implemented webhooks processing natural language requests with real-time dynamic responses
Built enterprise Django portal with MySQL backend serving 10K+ users for PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric Company).
- Developed user management modules and CRUD operations with efficient SQL triggers and stored procedures
- First production engineering role — foundation in full-stack development, database design, and API integration
Portfolio
Featured Projects
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Let's build something together
Looking for senior and staff-level roles where I can architect systems at scale. Real-time platforms, distributed systems, high-throughput pipelines — I own hard problems end-to-end.
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Current availability
Remote (US) or Hybrid (NC, SC)