Md Hishaam Akhtar 🌈 Bisexual pride heart

Engineering @ Groww
I build with intent — caring deeply about how it works, but even more about whom it serves

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About

I’m an engineer driven by the urge to build — not just scalable systems, but ideas that question norms and tools that quietly empower. My work spans fast-moving teams and complex architectures, but what I care about most is building at the intersection of code and compassion. I’m especially drawn to how technology shapes human behavior — and how AI might one day support addiction recovery, mental health, and equitable education. Above all, I believe engineering should be inclusive by design: thoughtful, humane, and built to serve those most often left out.

Work Experience

Groww

Software Engineer · Jun 2023 – Present
Software Engineer Intern · Jan 2022 – Jun 2023

  • Expanded the Customer Engagement Platform to new mediums: Feed, Story, WhatsApp, and Email.
  • Migrated batch-based segmentation to real-time for faster campaign targeting.
  • Developed generic-triggered-service to send push alerts for stock news and price movements in realtime.
  • Optimized Apache Pinot for better resource consumption and query performance.

Trademarkia

Software Consultant · Feb 2021 – May 2021

  • Built a daily data pipeline and trademark search API for legal data retrieval and indexing.
  • Engineered an async geolocation scraper with automated data extraction and storage.
  • Implemented a multi-channel alert system for legal event notifications via email, SMS, and push.

Side Projects

Hermes – A Live Polling Platform [GitHub]

A WebSocket-based real-time polling tool supporting live voting and instant result rendering for high-concurrency use.

Iris – Wikipedia Link Traversal Tool [GitHub]

Scrapes and maps link paths between Wikipedia articles to reveal surprising knowledge trails across topics.

Sociocredz – Reward Point Donation Platform [GitHub]

Lets users donate unused loyalty points to NGOs — born from a hackathon idea to encourage everyday giving.

Keats – A Social App for Book Lovers [GitHub]

An Android app to facilitate small book clubs, reading prompts, and shared literary discussions.

Research

Real time captioning of sign language gestures in video meetings

Presented at ICCMDE 2021 · Read Paper
Translates sign language gestures into real-time text using MobileNetV2 and CNN. Designed to improve communication accessibility for the Deaf community.

Hackathons & Achievements

Hackcraft – People's Choice Award

Built an AI-powered live translation tool for Groww Help & Support, enabling multilingual chat support in real time.

Access Denied 2.0 – Winner

Co-created Sociocredz, a platform for donating unused loyalty points to NGOs — born during a 24-hour hackathon sprint.

VIT Hack – Finalist (Healthcare Track)

Developed a healthcare assistant app built for Flippr’s sponsored challenge at VIT Hacks — selected as a finalist in the track.

Udemy Instructor – 15,000+ learners

Created a hands-on Node.js course to help developers master backend fundamentals through practical, real-world examples.

Writing

Which Backend Stack Should You Learn?

A beginner-friendly guide on choosing a backend tech stack, published with GDG VIT.

Building a Data Lake on Google Cloud Platform

An in-depth breakdown of how we set up a scalable GCP-based data lake at Groww.

Education

VIT Vellore, B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering (2023)
CGPA: 9.01 · Relevant courses: Computer Architecture, Web Mining

Certifications

Machine Learning Specialization

DeepLearning.AI · Issued Jul 2025 · View Credential

Architecting with Google Compute Engine Specialization

Google Cloud · Issued Jun 2020 · View Credential

Graph Search, Shortest Paths & Data Structures

Stanford Online · Issued Apr 2020 · View Credential

Divide & Conquer, Sorting & Randomized Algorithms

Stanford Online · Issued Mar 2020 · View Credential

Resume

You can view or download my resume here:

View Resume

Contact

All opinions that may be listed here are my own and are not necessarily representative of my employers — past, present, or future.