Karan Bhalodiya

Led multiple high-performing engineering initiatives across the Pelago platform from its inception, encompassing the core transactional system (0-to-1 build), global marketplace expansion, and user retention/growth features.

• Led a team of 5 engineers to design and deliver customer retention and growth systems, increasing annual retention from ~1% to 8–10% (10× improvement).
• Built revenue-generating growth loops (referrals, gift cards, affiliate APIs), contributing $1M+ GMV in FY 2024–2025.
• Architected a distributed communication platform integrating SendGrid, Twilio, and Firebase with retry, idempotency, and failure recovery via Kafka.
• Designed event-driven workflows using Celery + Redis to process ~50K+ async jobs/day with ~200ms processing latency.
• Led LLM-based feature development (itinerary generation, content automation) — reduced manual content effort by 60%, improved delivery speed by 2×.
• Introduced AI-assisted engineering workflows (code review, test generation, security checks), improving team throughput by 35%.
• Led integration of multiple global inventory providers (BeMyGuest, GlobalTix, Rezdy, Viator) — enabling expansion to 60+ countries, 3,200+ destinations, and 190K+ products.
• Designed and implemented a personalised promotion engine using ML-driven targeting — increased bookings 30× over 6 months, reduced coupon abuse by 30%.
• Designed a state-machine-based booking and payment system integrating Stripe and KrisFlyer Miles wallet.
• Developed a multi-currency checkout system supporting 12+ currencies for global market expansion.

Joined to build an internal developer platform as DataRobot scaled to 500+ engineers globally; focused on CI/CD reliability, cost optimisation, and developer tooling.

• Built an automated code review workflow system on AWS Lambda integrating Jira, GitHub, Jenkins, and Slack — reduced PR review time from 72 hours → under 24 hours.
• Reduced AWS expenditure by ~40% through internal productivity tools and automated dev workflows.
• Developed a flake detection and quarantine system, slashing infrastructure expenditure by ~$750/day.
• Built developer-facing dashboards (Spring Boot + Vue.js) for build health, PR status, and flake visibility.

Designed & developed microservices-based RESTful APIs using NodeJS and MongoDB for Shopback GO.

• Designed microservices-based RESTful APIs for the Shopback GO mobile platform, supporting millions of daily transactions at launch.
• Created a reusable shared module library and enforced standards via code reviews — maintaining 94%+ code coverage.

• Introduced Git flow, Docker containerisation, and full CI/CD pipelines, accelerating release velocity by 60%.
• Led migration from monolithic architecture to microservices, cutting deployment time by 3× and enabling faster feature releases.

• Built RESTful APIs (Flask, MongoDB, Celery, Redis) for a real-time health monitoring platform handling sensitive medical data.
• Optimised data transmission using Protobuf and gzip compression, reducing response time by ~300ms.