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Vikas Mastud

@vikasmastud

Senior software engineer focused on scalable backend, data platforms, and AI/ML systems delivering measurable performance gains.

India

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a backend/data-platform role where I can lead measurable performance improvements, ship reliable pipelines, and apply AI/ML (RAG/vector search) to real products—within a team that values clear design, testing, and ownership.

I’m a Senior Software Engineer with 6+ years of experience building backend systems, data platforms, search optimization, and AI/ML products. I work deeply across the stack—using Python, Go, Spark, Kafka, ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, and AWS—to turn complex requirements into reliable, high-throughput services.

In my most recent role at Nielsen, I designed a scalable billing event capture system for the MCP Customer Dashboard using Kafka and ClickHouse, and added end-to-end request tracing across MCP services with Grafana dashboards. I also migrated 7 legacy ingestion pipelines to Apache Spark, cutting end-to-end processing time to under 4 hours by moving database-bound logic into in-memory distributed computation.

Earlier at ValuePitch, I led a team of 5 engineers to deliver data-driven backend, search, and automation solutions aligned with business goals—reducing query cost by 60% and increasing Search API throughput by 3x while keeping cluster cost growth around 18%. I’ve also built practical AI/ML workflows like RAG-based healthcare coding recommendations with Qdrant and automated PDF extraction using a custom-trained NER model, eliminating manual processing workload.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Software Engineer (Backend)

Current

Nielsen

Nov 2024 - Present (1 year 7 months)

Designed a scalable billing event capture system using Kafka and ClickHouse and added end-to-end request tracing with Grafana dashboards. Migrated 7 legacy ingestion pipelines to Apache Spark and reduced end-to-end processing time to under 4 hours.

Kafka Clickhouse Apache Spark Grafana Elasticsearch Go Python Kubernetes AWS Vector Search

Software Engineer (AI/ML + Backend)

Pegasus InfoCorp

Feb 2024 - Nov 2024 (9 months)

Built a RAG-based ICD/CPT recommendation POC using open-source models and Qdrant for healthcare coding workflows. Improved ICD matching latency by ~20% and enhanced rule-based matching with stronger segmentation logic for unstructured text.

Qdrant Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)NLP Machine Learning Python SQL Vector Search Elasticsearch Healthcare Coding

Senior Software Engineer

ValuePitch

Jul 2021 - Oct 2023 (2 years 3 months)

Led a team of 5 engineers to deliver data-driven backend, search, and automation solutions aligned with business goals. Reduced query cost by 60% and increased Search API throughput by 3x, while cutting migration time by 88% and automating PDF extraction with a custom NER model.

Python Go SQL Elasticsearch Elasticsearch Relevance Tuning Apache Spark Kafka NER AWS

Software Engineer

ValuePitch

Jul 2020 - Jul 2021 (1 year)

Automated image table extraction using OCR and document pre-processing, removing manual intervention from document workflows. Built a CI/CD tool integrated with a Hangout bot to trigger Helm-based release workflows and streamline deployments.

Image Processing Python CI CD Helm Kubernetes Docker Automation Testing SQL Document Processing

Data Scientist Intern

ValuePitch

Jan 2020 - Jun 2020 (5 months)

Created datasets and extracted structured features from thousands of legal judgments using Python, regex, and pre-trained language models. Supported early-stage NLP/ML workflows for downstream modeling and experimentation.

Python NLP Regex Pre Trained Models Data Extraction Machine Learning SQL Spark