/portrait/about
Hi, I'm Vishnu.
I'm a Software Engineer III at FactSet, building data-intensive systems that financial professionals rely on every day. I joined as an intern in 2023 and progressed to III in three years, moving from shipping production features to owning critical pipeline components and contributing to architecture decisions.
I care about building systems that remain understandable when requirements change and scale exposes the shortcuts. The most important work is often unglamorous: making tradeoffs explicit, finding root causes, and designing for failure modes before they become incidents.
Outside work, I build products that turn frustrating workflows into useful tools. I also enjoy long walks, slow reading, and coffee that takes too long to make. I'm drawn to teaching—good engineering includes leaving both the codebase and the people around it clearer than you found them.
§01 · the stack
Tools I reach for —
and the opinion behind each.
Amber-bordered chips are tools I use daily. The rest are tools I've shipped real work with — not ones I've heard of.
languages
02- TypeScriptdaily
Strict mode from day one. `any` is a smell, not an escape hatch.
- Pythonshipped
When the problem is data-shaped, not request-shaped.
frontend
03- Reactdaily
Components as functions. State as the last resort, not the first.
- Next.jsdaily
Server components by default. Client ones earn their keep.
- Tailwinddaily
Utility-first. Extract a component the second the classes repeat.
backend
02- Node.jsdaily
The runtime, not the framework. Bun and Deno when it earns it.
- Expressshipped
Thin router, fat services. Middleware is a contract.
data & ai
02- Postgresshipped
The default. NoSQL earns its place; it doesn't assume it.
- LangChainshipped
Chains for glue, not for thinking. Prompts are still code.
infra
02- Dockershipped
For parity with prod, not for kubernetes cosplay.
- Gitdaily
Small commits. Honest messages. Rebase before review, merge after.
§02 · the practice
The obsession,
in numbers.
Daily reps. For a year. Unbroken. Algorithms aren't the work — but a year of uninterrupted daily practice is the kind of evidence I can't fake. It shows up in the work that is.
§03 · how i read code
A short list of
load-bearing beliefs.
§04 · the path
Three years, four titles,
one practice.
- 2023intern → engineer i
Joined FactSet as an intern. Cared less about being right than about being honest about what I didn't know yet. Converted to full-time within six months.
- 2024engineer i → engineer ii
Took ownership of a critical pipeline. Cut a recurring on-call page by chasing the actual root cause instead of papering it over. Learned that the boring fix is usually the right one.
- 2026engineer ii → engineer iii
Promoted. Starting to lead architecture conversations rather than just executing on them. Mentoring engineers who joined after me.
§05 · the work
Problems that
pull me in.
- systems where retrieval quality is the product
- pipelines where correctness is non-negotiable
- ai features with real users and real failure modes
- products where the data model is the hard part
- teams that argue about tradeoffs out loud
contact
Short emails get short replies fast.
Best way to reach me — email gets a reply within a day. Use the form for a longer pitch.