Hi, my name is

Pratik Desai

Senior Software Engineer

Building scalable systems at the intersection of Fintech, Payments & Cybersecurity

FintechPaymentsCybersecurityDistributed Systems

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About Me

From mechanical engineering to scaling distributed systems - my unconventional path in tech.

7+ Years

From mechanical engineering to scaling payment systems processing millions of transactions - my journey has been anything but conventional. I thrive at the intersection of complex technical challenges and business impact.

Over 7+ years, I've evolved from a curious engineer to a founding team member at a startup, and now to building enterprise-grade security platforms. At TartanHq, I was there from day zero - turning ideas into a revenue-generating platform in just 3 months. At Mastercard, I architected solutions reaching 10M+ users across Africa.

Today at Securonix, I'm scaling SIEM infrastructure from 1M to 2M+ transactions per second. What drives me? The challenge of building systems that are not just technically elegant but create real business value.

Years Experience

Companies

$66K/mo

Revenue Generated

10M+

Users Impacted

Pune, India

IBS Intelligence Award Winner

My Journey

2014

Engineering Graduate

B.Tech from Shivaji University - Where the journey began

2019

Tech Transition

CDAC ACTS Pune - Pivoting into software development

2019-21

First Tech Role

Volante Technologies - IBS Intelligence Award for VolPay

2021-24

Startup Builder

TartanHq - Founding engineer, built Perks from day 0

2024-25

Enterprise Scale

Mastercard - Architecting solutions for 10M+ users

2026

Present

Securonix - Scaling SIEM platform to 2M+ TPS

Work Experience

7+ years of building scalable systems across fintech, payments, and cybersecurity.

Senior Software Engineer

Securonix

Cybersecurity | SIEM | UEBA Platform

Jan 2026 - PresentRemote

Scaling high-throughput SIEM platform from 1M to 2M+ TPS through system redesign and performance optimization◃
Built a fully local, cloud-parity dev environment for distributed systems, reducing developer setup and testing time◃
Designing next-gen alerting, tracing, and logging for large-scale security analytics◃

JavaSpring BootKafkaSparkHadoopHBaseRedisAWSKubernetes

Product Engineer

Mastercard

Fintech | Digital Payments

Mar 2024 - Dec 2025Pune, India

▹Engineered multi-region resiliency for instant clearing product, onboarding 5+ clients
▹Architected contactless payment solution for Africa expansion targeting 10M+ users
▹Designed event-driven library accelerating financial auth processing by 30%
▹Implemented JUnit integration tests reducing database-related issues by 30%

JavaSpring BootKafkaPostgreSQLAWSPCFgRPCSplunk

Founding Software Engineer

TartanHq

AI-Powered Enterprise APIs | B2B SaaS Startup

Jul 2021 - Mar 2024Bangalore, India

Joined as founding engineer, playing day-0 role in product development◃
Built Perks platform from ground up, acquiring real customers in 3 months◃
Implemented HRMS Connect onboarding 30,000 users, generating $66,000/month revenue◃
Led optimized cart feature development, reducing user dropout by 20%◃
Achieved 50% AWS cost reduction through efficient resource management◃
Migrated payment service from Monolithic to Microservice architecture◃

JavaSpring BootKafkaRedisMySQLDynamoDBAWSDockerKubernetes

Software Engineer (Backend)

Volante Technologies

Enterprise Banking | Payment Infrastructure

Feb 2019 - Jul 2021Pune, India

▹Engineered Direct Cover and bulk payment features for VolPay - recognized as top payment platform by IBS Intelligence Award
▹Designed configurable approval process enhancing workflow efficiency and security
▹Integrated advanced security protocols, reducing fraud incidents by 15%

JavaSpring BootMySQLSQL ServerKafkaReactDockerAWS

Featured Projects

A selection of projects that showcase my expertise in building scalable, production-ready systems.

Payment Wallet System

Featured

Engineered a distributed Multi-Service Payment Wallet system using Java Spring Boot, Spring Security, Kafka, and Redis. Improved transaction processing efficiency by 20% (P95 latency: 200ms to 160ms) and reduced SMS notification latency by 30%.

20%

Latency Reduction

160ms

P95 Latency

JavaSpring BootKafkaRedisSpring Security

TalkToPDF

Featured

Built a RAG-based document interaction tool using LangChain, Claude AI/OpenAI, and vector databases. Implemented semantic search with context-aware retrieval for natural language PDF querying with multi-document support.

Multi

Documents

Yes

OCR Support

PythonLangChainClaude AIOpenAIStreamlitVector DB

Perks Benefits Platform

Featured

Created Perks from the ground up at TartanHq, successfully bringing in real customers within just 3 months. Implemented HRMS Connect to onboard 30,000 concurrent users.

$66K

Monthly Revenue

30K+

Users

JavaSpring BootRedisAWSMicroservices

Marvel - Class Management System

Featured

Built a comprehensive class management platform handling attendance tracking, notes distribution, and video content delivery. Initially hosted on Raspberry Pi with GitHub Actions CI/CD, later migrated to on-premise server with Google Cloud reverse proxy. Maximized open-source tools to minimize costs while maintaining production-grade reliability.

Minimal

Hosting Cost

Self-Hosted

Infrastructure

JavaSpring BootDockerRaspberry PiGitHub ActionsGCPNginx

View more on GitHub

Technical Skills

Technologies and tools I use to build scalable, reliable systems.

Languages

JavaPythonTypeScriptJavaScriptSQLBash

Backend & Frameworks

Spring BootSpring SecurityHibernateJUnitgRPCREST APIs

Cloud & DevOps

AWSGCPDockerKubernetesJenkinsCI/CDGitHub Actions

Databases

PostgreSQLMySQLRedisMongoDBDynamoDBHBase

Messaging & Streaming

Apache KafkaNats.ioAWS SQSEvent-Driven Architecture

Tools & Monitoring

GitSplunkDynatraceJIRASonarQubePostman

Constantly learning and exploring new technologies. Currently diving into: AI/ML, LLMs, RAG Systems, and Distributed Computing at Scale

What People Say

Recommendations from colleagues and leaders I've had the privilege to work with.

“Pratik is an exceptional backend engineer with deep expertise in Java, Spring, and building scalable, reliable systems. What stands out most about Pratik is not just his technical strength, but his positive attitude and willingness to go the extra mile for the team. He is someone you can always count on - whether it's solving a complex problem, supporting teammates, or ensuring delivery quality.”

Hiren Savalia

Team Lead HoAT Delivery at Bank of America | Mastercard | Oracle

View all recommendations on LinkedIn →