Open to opportunities

Varsha Bhade

@varshabhade

Message

I build scalable search infrastructure, distributed systems, and self-serve data platforms for fintech products.

India

Message

What I'm looking for

I'm looking to build scalable distributed systems, search infrastructure, and reliable self-serve platforms where I can own architecture, production delivery, and cross-team outcomes.

I've built search infrastructure and internal data platforms at Groww, supporting investment discovery for millions of active users.

As the sole owner of Groww's Search backend, I co-designed Quero, a multi-tenant Elasticsearch platform with zero-code onboarding, real-time schema validation, A/B experimentation, caching, and resiliency mechanisms. I also migrated legacy Search APIs to Quero and mentored two engineers through production delivery.

I improved global search payloads by 45% and p95 latency by 100ms, while reworking fuzzy-search queries and scoring to reduce Elasticsearch CPU by 27% and improve P95/P99 latency by 25%. I also led Smart Collection, turning natural-language queries into a filterable stock screener, and prototyped Tantivy and MiniSearch as resilience fallbacks.

More recently, I architected Groww's Feature Store UI and validation framework for batch and streaming features. Before Groww, I built merchant settlement automation at ZestMoney, reducing settlement turnaround from T+3 to T+1 and manual operational effort by 80%.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

SDE-II

Groww

Mar 2024 - Jun 2026 (2 years 3 months)

Architected Feature Store UI from scratch, enabling feature creation, validation, discovery, and update flows for SQL and SDK features. Designed Brix (Trino) as the compute engine for SQL batch features and built a Feature Validation Testing Framework to reduce production risks.

Java Spring Boot SQL Trino Elasticsearch Redis MySQL Docker Kubernetes GitHub Actions Airflow Prometheus Grafana Kibana New Relic Junit Microservices Distributed Systems Fault Tolerance Event Driven Architecture

SDE-I

Groww

May 2022 - Mar 2024 (1 year 10 months)

Sole owner of Search backend, architecture, OKR planning, and cross-team execution for Groww's core investment discovery platform. Co-designed Quero, a multi-tenant internal search platform on Elasticsearch, and led migration of legacy Search APIs to Quero.

Java Spring Boot Elasticsearch Redis MySQL Docker Kubernetes GitHub Actions Prometheus Grafana Kibana New Relic Junit Microservices Distributed Systems Fault Tolerance Event Driven Architecture

SDE-II

ZestMoney

Oct 2021 - Apr 2022 (6 months)

Designed and built the backend for Merchant Settlement Automation, reducing settlement TAT from T+3 to T+1 and cutting manual operational effort by 80%. Developed Zero Routing filters in Lender Selector Service to reduce lender rejection rates and improve credit disbursement efficiency.

Java Spring Boot SQL MySQL Microservices Distributed Systems Event Driven Architecture

SDE-I

ZestMoney

Oct 2020 - Oct 2021 (1 year)

Contributed to Settlement Service, Fund Transfer, and Lender core systems, supporting high-volume transaction flows and improving operational efficiency.

Java Spring Boot SQL MySQL Microservices Distributed Systems