- • Hey there! I'm Balaji, a 25-year-old who's been glued to screens since I could walk.
- • Currently grinding through my Master's in CS at Georgia Tech (ML track, because who doesn't want to teach machines to think?).
- • By day, I'm building conversation intelligence platforms at Observe.AI, making customer service smarter using AI.
- • By night (and weekends), I'm an indie hacker shipping products that solve real problems - from AI-powered creativity tools for kids to resume roasting bots that don't hold back.
Slide into my DMs: b0a04gl@proton.me | Call me maybe: +91 8056441286 | My corner of the web: hn/b0a04gl
What I'm Up To
SDE2 @ Observe.AI (aka the place that pays my bills)
May 2024 – Still here, still caffeinated
The AI platform I help build at Observe.AI
I work on the conversation intelligence platform that powers autonomous contact centers. We're using AI to transform how customer service works - automating calls with VoiceAI, providing real-time assistance to agents, and handling quality assurance automatically.
- Built data export platform enabling enterprise customers to extract conversation analytics to their data warehouses (Snowflake, S3) with custom scheduling and transformations -- achieved 90% QoQ customer adoption growth while reducing warehouse costs by $60K/year through query optimization.
- Re-architected API gateway with Kubernetes service discovery in Kong, eliminating external DNS/ALB hops -- reduced P95 latency by 55% (564ms→248ms) and hardened security by keeping internal traffic within EKS cluster.
- Built intelligent filter extraction and conflict resolution system for NL-to-SQL queries using disjoint-set union algorithm -- solved ambiguous entity parsing ('@filter1' syntax), aggregation vs. projection detection, and sequence ordering with client-side in-browser DB persistence for secure, performant multi-source data filtering.
- Engineered observability migration from NewRelic to VictoriaMetrics with agentic monitoring system (80% AI, 20% human-in-the-loop) for contextual alerting -- contributed to team reduction of incidents by 87% (15→2/quarter) with avg MTTD <15min, avg MTTR <100min for past quarter
Indie Hacker (aka nights and weekends)
📊 View Live DashboardForever – Because sleep is overrated
When I'm not at my day job, I'm building products that scratch my own itch. I love the entire process - from identifying problems to shipping solutions that people actually use. There's something magical about going from zero to one without corporate bureaucracy slowing you down.
My approach is pretty straightforward: build fast, get real feedback, iterate quickly. No fancy business plans or pitch decks - just solving problems for real users and seeing what sticks. So far, it's led to ccplay.com, ahaharesume.com, and fpaisa.sh - each one teaching me something new about product development, marketing, and what people actually want.
The indie hacker community has been incredibly supportive. There's something powerful about a group of people all building in public, sharing wins and losses, and helping each other grow. It's the perfect balance to my day job - complete creative freedom with direct user feedback.
Current stats: $200-$450 MRR, 15,650+ total MAU across projects. Check the live dashboard →
Grad School Grind
Georgia Tech | Jan 2025 – Present
MS in Computer Science, ML track (because neural nets are cool)
Cool Stuff I Built
cocomelonplay.comAI creativity platform for kids (ages 5-10)
Built co-drawing, interactive lessons, and story generation features. Measured 30% fluency, 56% narrative cohesion, and 12% originality improvements in user-generated content.
Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, GCP, LaTeX, Gemini Imagen, Shadcn/ui
Status: 650+ MAU, $200-$450 MRR, MVP built in 3 weeks
ahaharesume.comResume formatter + AI roasting tool
Resume formatting and AI-powered feedback tool. Launched in 2 days and scaled through organic word-of-mouth.
Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, GCP, LaTeX, GPT-4o, Shadcn/ui
Status: 15K+ MAU, $200+ in donations, built in 2 days
ballgorithmUnbeatable ping-pong AI in 80 lines
Fully code-golfed JavaScript ping-pong game with unbeatable AI. Built for fun and learning.
Stack: JavaScript, Canvas API
Status: 40K+ impressions on social media, built in 2 hours
kids playdateParent-driven playmate matching platform
Matches kids into groups of 4-5 based on weighted parent preferences and child interests for shared activities.
Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, Shadcn/ui
Status: Ongoing development
Random Thoughts
Typing 118 WPM Broke My Brain in the Right Ways (A Year-Long Journey)
March 2025 • 8 min read • Backend
How I went from 60 WPM to 118 WPM and accidentally rewired my brain for focus and how i got viral on Hacker News. Spoiler: it wasn't about the home row.
Built a Kids' App, Hit $900 MRR, Almost Burned Out (A 12-Week Reality Check)
February 2025 • 10 min read • Startup
The unfiltered story of building CCPlay from 'random idea' to actual revenue. Spoiler: kids are way cooler than adults.
Stop Letting ChatGPT Write Your Thoughts (An Authenticity Rant)
January 2025 • 6 min read • Opinion
Hot take: AI-generated content is making everyone sound the same. Here's why your messy, imperfect thoughts are infinitely more valuable.
My Journey
SDE2 (got promoted from SDE1)
Walmart Global Tech | Jan 2021 – May 2024
- Saved the company $40k/year by optimizing cloud resources (turns out running everything at max capacity isn't the way)
- Led a team of 3 devs to integrate LG and Samsung for some "Future Inventory" thing that made $2M. Not bad for a Tuesday
- Boosted dev productivity by 10% across 12 teams with a multi-tenant audit framework (because who doesn't love good logging?)
- Made a critical API 25% faster by switching to gRPC (REST is so 2020, amirite?)
Intern (aka coffee fetcher)
Samsung R&D | May 2020 – Aug 2020
- Profiled SmartThings mobile app performance, identified render bottlenecks -- reduced initial load time by 200ms through code-splitting and lazy-loading of non-critical UI components.
My Arsenal
Languages I Actually Use
Python (my first love), Java (for when I hate myself), JavaScript, TypeScript (JS but better)
Frameworks That Don't Suck
Spring (enterprise stuff), Next.js (React but easier), FastAPI (Python web done right)
AI/ML Toys
PyTorch, Hugging Face (transformers everywhere), vLLM, MCP, NumPy, Pandas (data wrangling)
Cloud & Data Stuff
AWS (when I have to), GCP (my preference), Snowflake, MongoDB, Elasticsearch
Tools I Live In
Git (obviously), Docker (containers ftw), Vim (fight me), Cursor (AI coding), asyncio, Pydantic, shadcn/ui
School Stuff
Master's in Computer Science
Georgia Institute of Technology | Jan 2025 – Present
ML track because neural networks are the future (or so they tell me)
Bachelor's in Information Technology
Anna University, Chennai | June 2017 – Jan 2021
AI specialization (was into AI before it was cool)
Hit Me Up
Email: b0a04gl@gmail.com
Phone: +91 8056441286
Hacker News: hn/b0a04gl (where I argue with strangers so you don't have to)
GitHub: github.com/bala-ji-cmd (where my code lives)
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/balaji (for the professional stuff)