Currently

Building watsonx.data, an enterprise lakehouse, at IBM India Software Labs, Kochi.

  • Go
  • Kubernetes
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • AWS
  • Azure

Aromal S, Software Engineer

I build software
systems that scale.

Software engineer with 3+ years building multi-tenant platforms, secure networking and data infrastructure, mostly in Go.

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Aromal S sitting in front of rows of red incense bundles

When I'm not engineering

I spend my free time photographing Kerala's snake boat races, from the riverbank and from the sky, and cycling through the paddy fields.

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  • Sports photography

    Vallam Kali, Kerala's snake boat races, shot from the water's edge.

  • Aerial photography

    UAV pilot, framing races and landscapes from directly above.

  • Cycling

    Out through the paddy fields on my Aspect 930.

Experience

4.5+ years in software: 3+ years full-time at IBM, a global MNC, and before that, internships at three startups and an apprenticeship with Kerala Police, starting with MERN in 2021.

Total experience
4 yrs 11 mos
Full-time
3 yrs 3 mos
Internships
1 yr 9 mos

Internships & apprenticeship

Kerala PoliceGovernment2 mosKatha AdsStartup1 yr 2 mosTurnkey Tech SolutionsStartup1 moIncredible VisibilityStartup4 mos
’22’23’24’25’26

  1. 2023

    Aug 2023 - Present

    3 yrs 3 mos

    IBM India Software Labs

    Kochi, Kerala · Full-time, hybrid

    Building IBM watsonx.data, a cloud-native lakehouse that runs analytics and GenAI workloads on open data formats.

    Software Engineer, Mid-SeniorPromoted

    Sep 2024 - Present

    • Led the move from single-tenant to multi-tenant databases, cutting infrastructure cost by about 98%.
    • Built a secure multi-tenant reverse tunnel in Go with mTLS, Yamux multiplexing and Redis-backed registration.
    • Contributed to Bring Your Own Cloud on Azure, extending Console APIs across a split control and data plane.
    • Cut Milvus hybrid vector search response times by up to 80% for large GenAI lakehouse workloads.
    • Built durable provisioning workflows on Temporal with idempotent activities, retries and task-level status.
    • Owned SOC 2, FIPS and FedRAMP readiness across 5+ core components as Developer Security Focal.
    • Go
    • Temporal
    • Redis
    • Azure
    • Kubernetes
    • Milvus

    Software Engineer

    Aug 2023 - Sep 2024

    • Helped integrate Apache Spark (IBM Analytics Engine) natively into the platform.
    • Shipped Bring Your Own JAR, letting customers plug JDBC drivers like SAP HANA into Presto engines.
    • Built REST APIs integrating Presto, Spark, Db2, Netezza and Milvus.
    • Re-architected Parquet ingestion, fixing 15+ high-impact defects and enabling high-throughput bulk loads.
    • Built a Go SDK and published the OpenAPI reference on IBM Docs.
    • Remediated critical CVEs surfaced by dependency, static analysis and container scans.
    • Go
    • Presto
    • Apache Spark
    • PostgreSQL
    • Docker
    • OpenAPI

    On-call SME for production issues at enterprise customers including Adobe, Scuderia Ferrari and EY.

  2. 2023

    Jul 2023 - Aug 2023

    2 mos

    Kerala Police

    Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala · Apprenticeship, on-site

    Software Developer

    Jul 2023 - Aug 2023

    • Built an internal application with machine learning features for the CBCID Special Branch, guided by an IPS officer.
    • Worked across the front end and a Django REST Framework API.
    • Python
    • Django REST Framework
    • Machine learning

  3. 2022

    May 2022 - Jun 2023

    1 yr 2 mos

    Katha Ads

    Kochi, Kerala · Internship, hybrid

    Katha is a Malayalam audio news app with 200K+ downloads. Katha Ads is its WhatsApp-first hyper-local ad platform, reaching 1.2 crore+ readers.

    Software Engineer Intern IIPromoted

    Nov 2022 - Jun 2023

    • Integrated an AI text-to-speech engine for automated news narration.
    • Built B2B web apps with Next.js and Tailwind CSS.
    • Wrote the analytics SQL, reports and dashboards for an ad platform with an audience of 1 crore+.
    • Designed schemas, indexes and query plans on MySQL.
    • Built the in-app FIFA World Cup 2022 prediction game.
    • Next.js
    • MySQL
    • Tailwind CSS

    Software Engineer Intern

    May 2022 - Oct 2022

    • Built Rails APIs on MySQL with Redis caching for the Katha news app.
    • Wrote and maintained 60+ web scrapers in Ruby with Nokogiri.
    • Moved heavy work to Sidekiq background jobs and built mailers on AWS SES.
    • Added speech synthesis with Google Cloud SSML and translation with Azure.
    • Ruby on Rails
    • Redis
    • Sidekiq
    • AWS SES

  4. 2022

    Apr 2022

    1 mo

    Turnkey Tech Solutions

    Pune, remote · Internship

    Client work for Embifi, a B2B checkout financing and lending startup.

    Software Engineer Intern

    Apr 2022

    • Built and tested serverless APIs on AWS Lambda in Python and JavaScript.
    • Built the MVP web app in React and Tailwind CSS.
    • Modelled data on MySQL (AWS RDS) and MongoDB Atlas.
    • Shipped in Jira sprints, iterating on client feedback.
    • AWS Lambda
    • Python
    • React
    • MongoDB

  5. 2021

    Aug 2021 - Nov 2021

    4 mos

    Incredible Visibility

    Kollam, Kerala · Internship

    Technical Intern, MERN Stack

    Aug 2021 - Nov 2021

    • Built web apps and server-side services with MongoDB, Express, React and Node.js.
    • Worked on the site for Blind Weight, a numberless scale for eating disorder recovery.
    • Built PlayMyPlaylist at an internal hackathon: a real-time PWA music guessing game.
    • MongoDB
    • Express
    • React
    • Node.js

Side projects

Toolbox

The languages, frameworks and platforms I have shipped production work with.

Languages

  • Go
  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Ruby
  • Java
  • C
  • Solidity

Backend

  • Node.js
  • Express
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Django
  • Flask
  • FastAPI
  • Temporal
  • OpenAPI

Frontend

  • React
  • Next.js
  • Tailwind CSS

Data

  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • MongoDB
  • Redis
  • Presto
  • Apache Spark
  • Milvus

Cloud & DevOps

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • IBM Cloud
  • Cloudflare
  • Linux

Tools

  • Git
  • GitHub
  • Jira
  • Claude