Balaji Arumugam

• 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 with VoiceAI and real-time assistance.
• 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@gmail.com | Call me maybe: +91 8056441286 | My corner of the web: hn/b0a04gl

What I'm Up To

Senior Dev @ Observe.AI (aka the place that pays my bills)

June 2023 – 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.

Basically became the system reliability guy - went from 15 monthly fires to just 2 (and cut alerts from 800 to 150, because who needs that stress?)
Made everything 30% faster by throwing Kafka and Elasticsearch at the problem (sometimes brute force works)
Gave a talk at PlatformCon 2025 about building platforms that don't suck - apparently people liked it
Built this sick MCP server that powers our Command+K search thing. It's like Spotlight but for enterprise data
Maintaining some internal libs that everyone uses but nobody wants to touch (classic)

Indie Hacker (aka nights and weekends)

📊 View Live Dashboard

Forever – 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: $420 MRR across projects, 5,944 total MAU, building in public for 847 days straight! Check the live dashboard →

Grad School Grind

Georgia Tech | Jan 2022 – May 2025 (hopefully)

MS in Computer Science, ML track (because neural nets are cool)

Cool Stuff I Built

ccplay.com[Actually finished this one]

Built a creativity platform for kids where AI helps them draw. Turns out 5-10 year olds are way more creative than most adults (shocking, I know).

Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, GCP, LaTeX (don't ask), Gemini Imagen, Shadcn/ui

The numbers: 10k+ MAU, $800 MRR, built the MVP in 3 weeks of pure caffeine

ahaharesume.com[Weekend project that got out of hand]

Made a resume tool that roasts your CV with AI. Because sometimes you need a machine to tell you your resume sucks.

Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, GCP, LaTeX, GPT-4o, Shadcn/ui

The numbers: 15k+ MAU, $200 MRR (from donations), built in 2 days (yes, really)

ballgorithm.b0a04gl.site[Accidental weekend build]

An AI ping pong game that's basically unbeatable. I was just chasing ball physics, not best practices. The rallies basically never end.

Stack: JavaScript, Canvas API, AI Physics

The numbers: 40k+ MAU, $0 MRR (it's free!), built in 1 weekend

fpaisa.sh[Work in progress, like my life]

Financial planning tools for people who can't adult properly. Peer expense comparison and financial sims.

Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, Shadcn/ui (keeping it simple)

Status: 31 MAU, $0 MRR, MVP done in a week, haven't marketed it yet (classic me)

My Journey

Senior Dev (got promoted somehow)

Walmart Global Tech | Jan 2021 – May 2023

Saved the company $400k/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 $24M. Not bad for a Tuesday
Boosted dev productivity by 50% across 12 teams with a multi-tenant audit framework (because who doesn't love good logging?)
Made a critical API 65% faster by switching to gRPC (REST is so 2020, amirite?)

Intern (aka coffee fetcher)

Samsung R&D | May 2020 – Aug 2020

Made the SmartThings app 800ms faster by turning it into a PWA. Turns out web tech is pretty good these days.

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 2022 – May 2025 (fingers crossed)

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)