01
"Build it from scratch, then you truly understand it."
Kafka, Git, a shell, a compiler, a Transformer — I rebuild the tools I depend on.
Meerthika
AI Engineer
Intelligenceshouldfeelhuman.
02
"Open source is how we learn out loud."
200+ students later, the best way to grow is still a public pull request.
03
"Efficient AI is kind AI."
Smaller, faster, pruned models reach more people on more devices.
about me// 01
Crafting systems with curiosity.
I’m an AI engineer who learns by taking systems apart and rebuilding them by hand.
I graduated as the department Gold Medalist in Computer Science from Kamaraj College of Engineering & Technology, passed JLPT N4 in Japanese, and spent the last few years going deep on the layers most people skip — kernels, distributed logs, compilers — before climbing back up to neural networks.
Today I build AI systems that are grounded, fast and trustworthy: RAG pipelines over live data, Transformers written from first principles, and lately, efficient models through pruning and sparsity (MIT 6.5940 is my current obsession). I founded RootSprout to make open source approachable, contribute to CNCF’s Flatcar Linux, and I’m an Aspire Leaders Program Fellow.
200+students taught open source
900+YouTube learners
5×hackathon winner
15+tech communities
my technical toolkit:
JLPT N4PyTorchTransformersLLMsRAGModel PruningTinyMLBlockchain SecurityPythonGoCJavaSpring BootKafkaAWSKubernetesLLVMElasticsearch
lab log & journey// 02
Where systems met production.
A chronological record of roles, internships, open-source work and community contributions.
Jul — Sep 2026fellowship
Aspire Leaders Program Fellow
@ Aspire Institute- Selected for a global leadership program for first-generation changemakers.
Aug 2025 — Sep 2026founder
Founder & Open Source Developer
@ RootSprout- Built core systems from scratch — Kafka, Git, shell tools and an LLVM-based compiler.
- Led open-source sessions for 200+ students with 15+ communities (FOSS United, Cybrian, She Builds).
- Speaker at Tamil Nadu’s largest Women in Tech conference.
Jan — Apr 2026internship
Software Development Engineer Intern
@ ITJOBXS- Serverless Java on AWS Lambda + API Gateway, cutting idle server costs by ~30%.
- EC2, ALB & Auto Scaling deployments with CloudWatch monitoring.
Sep 2025 — Jan 2026internship · on-site
Back End Developer
@ Helping Minds World- Spring Boot banking APIs; fixed N+1 queries for ~60% fewer SQL calls.
- Improved API response times by 30–40% with @Transactional integrity.
Aug — Dec 2025part-time
Open Source Contributor
@ CNCF · Flatcar Container Linux- QEMU installer acceleration script for arm64 Macs.
- Refactored containerd config for sysext-managed defaults & drop-in overrides.
Jul — Dec 2025internship
Software Engineering Intern
@ Paroscale Technologies- Raft-integrated, highly available KV store in Go.
- High-throughput client read/write APIs.
Jan — Dec 2025freelance
Content Creator
@ YouTube- Explaining low-level systems to 900+ subscribers.
Jul 2025product
Developer
@ Vircsam- Launched Season Cycle (productivity timer) and Studier (schedule app).
Campuscommunity
Volunteer & Community Lead
@ FOSS United Madurai- Organised 3 FOSS workshops and grew a 60+ member open-source community.
portfolio// 03
Selected Work.
Full-stack & AI projects engineered for precision and real-world impact.
Konnichiwa Transformer
PyTorch & Attention & Tokenization & From scratch
“Attention Is All You Need,” rebuilt piece by piece to translate Japanese → English.
FlashFeed AI
Kafka & RAG & Spring Boot & Elasticsearch & WebSockets
A live news firehose you can actually talk to — streaming ingestion with RAG chat on top.
Medy
Groq & Sarvam & 3D Avatar & n8n & AR/VR
An AI companion for people on the autism spectrum. Runner-up, Codefrei AI Hackathon.
PhishGuard
BERT & DNN & Random Forest & Gmail Pub/Sub & Flask
A five-model ensemble that flags phishing emails the moment they land. Winner, TechDivathon.
SalonHub
Microservices & RabbitMQ & OpenCV & Ollama Gemma 2B
Distributed salon platform with local-LLM hairstyle recommendations.
playground & CLI tools// 04
Lab Experiments.
Systems built from first principles — logs, shells, compilers, and protocols.
Kira-Kafka
tinkererC & mmap & zero-copy & partitions
A tiny, educational Kafka: topics, brokers, disk-backed logs and thread-to-core mapping.
$ ./kira produce --topic lab
→ partition 2 · offset 4096
✓ zero-copy sendfile()
Ge-Git
tinkererC & SHA-1 & object store
Git, from the inside — blobs, trees and commits in a content-addressed store.
$ gegit commit -m "hi"
[main 3f9a2c1] hi
1 tree, 2 blobs written
Cow-Compiler
language nerdC & LLVM IR & parsing
A compiler for CowLang — a minimalist language that moos its way into LLVM IR.
$ cowc hello.moo -o hello.ll
define i32 @main() {
; moo.
Exsh
tinkererC & fork() & execvp() & pipes
A Unix-like shell with parsing, pipes, redirection and process management.
$ ls | grep .c > files.txt
exsh: 2 procs · exit 0
CTP
protocol paltermios & socat & CRC & ARQ
A serial datalink transport protocol with framing, CRC checks and ACK-based retransmission.
$ ctp send /dev/ttys004
frame#12 crc ok · ACK
frame#13 crc ✗ · retry
QueueBank
builderSpring Boot & JPA & Executors & locking
A concurrent banking simulator: pessimistic locks, idempotency and worker queues.
$ curl -X POST /transfer
🔒 row lock acquired
✓ idempotent · 201
PingFix
authorGo & Gin & community voting
Report and resolve local issues together — also published as a research paper.
$ go run ./cmd/pingfix
[GIN] POST /issues 201
votes: 42 · verified ✓
achievements & awards// 05
Trophies & Honors.
Gold medal academic record and high-stakes hackathon victories.
Kamaraj College of Engineering & Technology
Gold Medal & First Rank
Highest CGPA in the department — first class with distinction.
Blockchain Security
Winner · Cybersecurity Hackathon
Built a decentralized security and vulnerability auditing platform.
Panimalar Engineering College
Winner · TechDivathon
Real-time AI email phishing detector with a 5-model ensemble.
Highway Accident Detection & Mitigation
Winner · Buildathon
Sensor-driven crash detection with automated emergency response.
watch demo / details →CareerBuddy
Winner · Ideation
Matching peers with shared career goals for mutual growth.
watch demo / details →St. Joseph’s College of Engineering
Runner-up · Codefrei AI Hackathon
Medy — an AI companion and learning world for people with ASD.
watch demo / details →publications & field notes// 06
Writing & Research.
Books, journal papers, and deep dives on system architecture & efficient AI.
book
Published on Amazon
Inside NGINX
High-Performance Web Server Through Source Code
A tour of NGINX’s event-driven core: connection handling, HTTP phases, reverse proxying and non-blocking I/O, straight from the source.
paper
Intl. Journal of Advances in Electronics & Computer Science
An Integrated Platform for Reporting and Resolving Local Issues
PingFixx — structured, accountable community issue tracking.
featured field notes & articles:
Pruning Algorithms to Sparse Hardware
Neural Network Pruning
Demystifying Neural Network Efficiency
TinyML and Efficient AI Computing
Building the “Attention Is All You Need” Transformer — every piece of math
Hard Links, Symbolic Links & How Linux Stores Filesystems
Files, Inodes and Directory Internals
Copy Fail: a 4-Byte Page Cache Write via AEAD Misuse
UUID Versions, Trade-offs & How PostgreSQL Stores Them
reading log & library// 07
The Bookshelf.
A peek into what shapes my thinking — sci-fi, systems, physics & life strategy.
Red Rising
Red Rising
"Amazing. Must read."
Golden Son
Golden Son
"Couldn’t stop — straight into Morning Star."
Morning Star
Morning Star
"Gorydamn! A space Game of Thrones."
Iron Gold
Iron Gold
"Slower, but the world keeps growing."
Dark Age
Dark Age
"Brutal and brilliant."
Fourth Wing
Fourth Wing
"Dragons. Enough said."
Assassin’s Apprentice
Assassin’s Apprentice
"Farseer begins — quietly devastating."
Royal Assassin
Royal Assassin
"Fitz deserves better."
Assassin’s Quest
Assassin’s Quest
"A perfect, aching finale."
Our Mathematical Universe
Our Mathematical Universe
"What if reality is just math?"
Something Deeply Hidden
Something Deeply Hidden
"Many-worlds, made friendly."
A Brief History of Time
A Brief History of Time
"Where the curiosity started."
The Richest Man in Babylon
The Richest Man in Babylon
"Opportunity is a haughty goddess."
The Art of Persuasion
The Art of Persuasion
"Make your enemy your friend."