Open to opportunities

Kunal Kakade

@kunalkakade1

Message

Founding Full-Stack & AI engineer who builds production platforms end-to-end from architecture to code.

India

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking to own a product end-to-end—architecture through code—building production systems that scale, shipping AI-enabled experiences and resilient async workflows with strong engineering ownership.

I’m a full-stack and AI engineer with 8+ years building production software. I’ve been the first engineer at Kitt, building a corporate-travel SaaS from the first commit—web dashboard, React Native (Expo) app, and Node/TypeScript services—while owning architecture, infrastructure, and technical direction.

At Kitt, my work is live at scale: AED 1.8M in confirmed bookings so far and up to 100K concurrent users. I built provider-facing booking APIs, multi-tenant policy and approval workflows, conversational travel search, and an async booking pipeline using SQS, PDF e-ticketing, SES email, and Stripe payments—plus MongoDB spend-analytics dashboards finance teams use.

Previously at Fancraze, I helped run an ICC cricket collectibles platform by cutting MongoDB costs ~46% while maintaining throughput, and I shipped event-driven personalized coupons in real time. Earlier at Rakuten, I worked on search-as-a-service and delivered production improvements like the ZeroHit Resubmit plugin and automated KPI reporting tools; I also contribute to open-source, including the OpenAlice broker adapter for Indian equities.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Founding Engineer

Current

KittHQ

Sep 2024 - Present (1 year 10 months)

Built a corporate-travel SaaS from the first commit, including a Next.js dashboard, a React Native (Expo) app, and Node/TypeScript services on AWS Lambda. Owned the architecture and technical direction, integrating multiple global travel providers and launching booking, approvals/workflows, conversational search, and finance spend analytics.

Travelfusion Next.js React Native TypeScript AWS Lambda AWS S3 Puppeteer Stripe MongoDB REST APIs TravelFusion

Senior Software Engineer

Fancraze

Jul 2021 - Jul 2024 (3 years)

Worked on ICC’s official cricket digital-collectibles platform, including a peer-to-peer marketplace, fantasy games, and fan utilities. Built core services and systems on Node.js and Python, including cost-reduction work for MongoDB and high-concurrency features like a live leaderboard.

Python AWS Lambda MongoDB Event Driven Systems Leaderboards ELK Stack Real Time Coupon Delivery KYC

Software Engineer

Rakuten Tokyo

Oct 2017 - Jun 2021 (3 years 8 months)

Built search-as-a-service capabilities for Rakuten’s e-commerce platforms (Ichiba, Books, and more). Shipped features across the search stack and developed tools like a search retry plugin and automated KPI matrix reporting.