kritik modi

founding engineer · lead ai · datatailr new delhi · ··:·· IST

kritik modi.

I'm on the founding team at Datatailr, split about evenly between two products. Half my time goes to our query engine, a high-speed federation engine that reads across everything at once. The other half goes to the platform quants and HFT traders run their strategies on, where I own the infrastructure and DevOps. I'm also the lead AI engineer here, so I run the AI features we're adding.

the work pick a node · scroll to pan
Two products at Datatailr, split about evenly: a query engine that federates over its sources, and the Datatailr platform, where the infrastructure Kritik owns supports the strategies quants and traders run on it. Above both, the AI features he leads, drawn dashed because they are still being added. ai features sources query engine answers infrastructure platform strategies

Two products, split about evenly, and the AI work sitting over both. Pick a node.

about

Two products, and the AI over both.

I've been at Datatailr since 2023, on the founding team, and my time splits about evenly between two products. The first is our query engine: a high-speed federation engine that answers across more than 100,000 tables without moving any of them.

The second is the Datatailr platform itself, which quants and HFT traders use to run their strategies without having to think about what's underneath. I work on the infrastructure and DevOps side of it: infrastructure-as-code across four clouds, the private networking on Azure, the DAG scheduler that runs batch work, and the deploy pipelines and monitoring around all of it.

I'm also the lead AI engineer here. We're adding AI features across the product and I run that work: retrieval, vector search, embeddings and MCP servers.

Before that I wrote Rust at Juspay on Hyperswitch, their open-source payment orchestrator. Before that, internships at IBM and Brane, and a GitHub Externship with Suborbital where I spent a few months writing WebAssembly runnables.

I didn't start in engineering. Most of my first paid work was posters, logos and UI for small companies, and I still take the visual side of a project when it needs one. I've also been doing competitive programming since school, which is where most of my problem-solving habits come from.

work 2020 — now
  1. 2023 — now

    Founding Engineer, Lead AI Datatailr

    Split across two products. Build the query engine, a federated SQL layer over 100K+ tables that took query times down about 90%. On the Datatailr platform itself, own the infrastructure and DevOps: multi-cloud infrastructure-as-code across AWS, Azure, GCP and Hetzner, private networking on Azure, and DAG-based batch orchestration, which took compute spend down about 75%. Now lead the AI work: retrieval, vector search and MCP servers.

  2. 2023

    Software Engineer Juspay

    Rust work on Hyperswitch, their open-source payment orchestrator: idempotency, retries and validation under high concurrency. Also built backend SDKs in five languages.

Earlier: internships and freelance

  1. 2023

    SDE Intern Datatailr

    Early work on the platform, before joining full time.

  2. 2023

    SDE Intern IBM

    RPA bots for supply-chain workflows. Automated 10+ tasks a week, with scheduling, retries and monitoring.

  3. 2022

    Freelance Developer Bflashy

    A Web3 Android app. Firebase auth and Firestore wired to Ethereum workflows, with POAP-style tokens for on-chain identity.

  4. 2022

    SDE Intern, GitHub Externship Suborbital

    20+ WebAssembly runnables in Rust, Swift, TinyGo and JavaScript, plus additions to the subo CLI.

  5. 2022

    SDE Intern Brane Enterprises

    Features and bug fixes in a cloud-computing app built in Flutter. 10+ UI components on the BLoC pattern.

  6. 2021

    SDE Intern Surya Software Systems

    Worked on Surya's RPC server and CLI, adding automatic generation of Postman collections from YAML.

  7. 2021

    Freelance Developer TradeX

    Integrated several stock APIs into an Android app for automated stock calls.

  8. 2021

    UI/UX Developer Kewl Motors

    Web UI for an EV brand, plus posters and brand collateral in Illustrator and XD.

  9. 2021

    Graphic Designer Neurotech Designs

    50+ social posters, logos and covers, plus 10+ UI elements for a wellness-tech company.

  10. 2020

    Designer & Content Writer ShubhChintak Technology

    50+ social posters and 50+ technical blogs for a web, SEO and DevOps agency.

  11. 2020

    Technical Content Writer Intellify

    30+ technical blogs for an IIT-Delhi education startup under the SOLVE Foundation.

Read the full résumé →

record peak ratings

2022

Smart India Hackathon

Won the 2022 edition with a fake-news detection system. Awarded by the Government of India.

2022

ACM-ICPC Regionalist

Qualified for the Kanpur–Mathura regionals, among the top 80 or so teams onsite.

2022

GitHub Externship

Selected from 14,000+ applicants, about a 0.6% acceptance rate.

Competitive programming

Platform Standing Peak
LeetCode Guardian · top 0.2% global 2488
CodeChef 6★ · best contest rank 11 of 3,000+ 2222
Codeforces Expert · top 0.5% global 1790
Meta Hacker Cup Round 2, 2024 · India rank #85
contact

Email is the best way to reach me.

kritikmodi@gmail.com