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Portrait of Nish Patwa

Nish Patwa

Lead Software Engineer at Salesforce · Identity & Access Management · ex-Microsoft, Intel · AWS · Azure · OpenStack

Bellevue, Washington, United States·Contact info

1,000+ followers · 500+ connections

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  • Salesforce
  • The University of Texas at Dallas

Open to conversations

Senior, Staff & Lead engineering roles · IAM · Cloud platforms

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Certified OpenStack Administrator

10+ years across Salesforce, Microsoft and Intel · Azure · AWS · OpenStack

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About

I'm a Lead Software Engineer at Salesforce in Bellevue, WA, where I lead Identity & Access Management (IAM) work — automated (de)provisioning, identity lifecycle management, SOX compliance and self-service access platforms built with Go, Angular, Spinnaker and Puppet.

Before Salesforce I was a Software Engineer II at Microsoft, building full-stack data exploration and visualization tooling over Azure service telemetry and running releases as Release Manager; and a Cloud Software Engineer at Intel, automating highly available services on AWS and OpenStack. Earlier I worked on DevOps at Motorola and machine learning and computer vision at InFoCusp.

I hold an M.S. in Computer Science (Data Science focus, 3.82 GPA, merit scholarship) from The University of Texas at Dallas and a B.E. in Information Technology from L D College of Engineering. I'm a Certified OpenStack Administrator. I care about details — verifying to 100% even when the spec allows a margin for error — and about shipping things that work, on time.

Top skills

Identity & Access Management • Go • AWS • Azure • OpenStack • Distributed Systems

Featured

Recommendation

Nish's mathematical and algorithmic acumen is top-notch… He is very sincere and dedicated to work, and delivers results in time. One of his qualities that stands out from his peers is his ability to provide attention to details, and his unyielding attitude to achieve perfection in the work.
Nisarg Vyas · Direct supervisor at InFoCusp, 2013–2014

Project · 2017

Chat Assistant for Software-Defined Infrastructure

A chatbot that acts as a virtual cloud operator — it understands plain English and turns it into OpenStack client commands to create, list and delete cloud resources, and can even deploy a fresh OpenStack cloud.

Project · 2017

OpenStack API Errors Catalog

Catalogued and categorised the 4xx/5xx API errors across six core OpenStack services — Nova, Neutron, Swift, Cinder, Glance and Keystone — so every persona knows what can go wrong.

Experience

  1. Lead Software Engineer

    Salesforce · Full-time

    Oct 2019 – Present · 7 yrs 2 mos

    Bellevue, WA

    Leading Identity & Access Management (IAM) engineering.

    • Lead projects on automated (de)provisioning, identity lifecycle management and end-to-end onboarding of applications that rely on user identities in LDAP.
    • Led and drove a self-service portal — a stand-alone IAM platform — built with Go, Angular, Spinnaker and Puppet.
    • Delivered the solution enabling SOX compliance for applications onboarded to IAM, and built common AuthN/AuthZ solutions across multiple teams.

    Skills: Go · IAM · LDAP · AuthN/AuthZ · SOX · Spinnaker · Puppet · Angular

  2. Microsoft

    Full-time · 1 yr 6 mos

    Redmond, WA

    Software Engineer II

    1. Software Developer

      May 2018 – Oct 2019

      • Full-stack engineer on a web-based solution for data exploration and visualization that consumes and processes raw Azure service telemetry into rich visualizations, dashboards and insights.
      • Architected and developed the backend REST API and UX for end-to-end data job scheduling and a transformation pipeline, using C# and Angular.

    2. Release Manager

      May 2018 – Oct 2019

      • Streamlined the entire release cycle — building the CI/CD release pipeline, scheduling bug bashes, managing the Agile process, validating deployments and releasing hotfixes.
      • Drove successful releases to production through continuous engagement with Product Managers, UX designers, developers and tech leads.

    Skills: C# · Azure · REST APIs · Angular · CI/CD · Release management

  3. Cloud Software Engineer

    Intel · Full-time

    Jul 2016 – May 2018 · 1 yr 11 mos

    Hillsboro, OR

    Deployed and automated scalable, highly available services on AWS and OpenStack.

    • Ran production services on AWS using ECS, EC2, Lambda, CloudFormation, S3, CloudWatch, Systems Manager, Route 53 and ELB.
    • Built “Patch Management Orchestrator”, a Python/AWS SDK framework that patches Linux and Windows fleets within scheduled maintenance windows without downtime.
    • Developed a health-check REST API for managed cloud services with Python, Serverless Lambda and Runscope monitoring.
    • Created a chat AI assistant that uses NLP to turn plain English into OpenStack API calls for provisioning and managing cloud resources.

    Skills: AWS · Python · Lambda · OpenStack · NLP · Automation

  4. DevOps Intern

    Motorola · Internship

    Jun 2015 – Jan 2016 · 8 mos

    Dallas, TX

    Server health monitoring and full-stack infrastructure deployment.

    • Built web apps for monitoring server health with HTML/AJAX, Python, SQL and shell scripting.
    • Worked across every stage of deployment: racking 2U servers, OS and hypervisor installs, IP/VLAN configuration, F5 load balancing and Docker/KVM application deployment.

    Skills: Python · Docker · KVM · F5 · Networking

  5. Research Programmer

    InFoCusp · Full-time

    Aug 2013 – Jun 2014 · 11 mos

    Ahmedabad, India

    Machine learning and computer vision R&D.

    • Developed machine learning algorithms — neural nets, classifiers and regression — on user activity data.
    • Built “Hygiene Monitoring System”, a machine-vision application for a hospital ICU that raises an alarm when doctors or nurses aren't wearing the required gloves and gown.

    Skills: Machine Learning · Computer Vision · Neural Networks

Education

  1. The University of Texas at Dallas

    M.S. Computer Science — Data Science

    2014 – 2016

    • GPA 3.82 · Merit-based Graduate Scholarship, Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & CS
    • Machine Learning, Big Data, Algorithms, Network Security, Semantic Web, Advanced Networks
    • Open-source community · Big Data Club · Manager, Comet Cupboard food pantry (volunteer)

  2. L D College of Engineering, Ahmedabad

    B.E. Information Technology

    2009 – 2013

    • GPA 7.96 / 10
    • Projects in computer vision (OpenCV object tracking), e-learning platforms and data prediction

Licenses & certifications

  1. Certified OpenStack Administrator

    OpenStack Foundation · COA160003220100

    Issued Dec 2016

  2. Rackspace Certified Associate for OpenStack

    Rackspace

    Issued Jul 2016

  3. Advanced Java

    HCL Infosystems

Skills

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWSAzureOpenStackKubernetesDockerLinuxServerless / Lambda

Languages

GoPythonJavaC#CBashJavaScript / AngularSQL

Identity & Security

IAMLDAPAuthN / AuthZSOX compliancePing DirectoryNetwork Security

DevOps & Delivery

SpinnakerJenkinsPuppetChefAnsibleGerrit / ZuulGitScrum / Kanban

Data & ML

Machine LearningApache SparkComputer VisionInfluxDBMongoDBMySQL / SQL Server

Engineering practice

Distributed SystemsHigh AvailabilityPerformance & ScalabilityREST API DesignRelease Management

Projects

  1. Chat Assistant for Software-Defined Infrastructure

    2017

    A chatbot that acts as a virtual cloud operator — it understands plain English and turns it into OpenStack client commands to create, list and delete cloud resources, and can even deploy a fresh OpenStack cloud.

    PythonOpenStackNLPKubernetesShow project

  2. OpenStack API Errors Catalog

    2017

    Catalogued and categorised the 4xx/5xx API errors across six core OpenStack services — Nova, Neutron, Swift, Cinder, Glance and Keystone — so every persona knows what can go wrong.

    OpenStackAPIDocsShow project

  3. Patch Management Orchestrator

    2017

    Associated with Intel

    A Python framework built on the AWS SDK that patches fleets of Linux and Windows machines inside scheduled maintenance windows on AWS, keeping services highly available.

    PythonAWS SDKAutomationHigh availability

  4. Cloud Services Health-Check API

    2017

    Associated with Intel

    A serverless health-check REST API for managed cloud services, built with Python on AWS Lambda and monitored with Runscope.

    PythonAWS LambdaRunscopeREST

Volunteering

  1. Manager

    Comet Cupboard — The University of Texas at Dallas

    From Sep 2014 · Poverty Alleviation

    The Comet Cupboard is a UT Dallas food-pantry initiative dedicated to providing nutritious food, free of cost, to students in need.

Recommendations

Received

NV

Nisarg Vyas

Managed Nish directly · InFoCusp

I had a privilege to mentor Nish when he was an employee at InFoCusp in 2013-2014. I was his direct supervisor during his tenure. We worked on some challenging data analysis and machine learning projects together, and Nish handled them very well. Nish's mathematical and algorithmic acumen is top-notch, and hence he understood the requirements of the projects very quickly, and finished all the deliverable in time. He is very sincere and dedicated to work, and delivers results in time. One of his qualities that stands out from his peers is his ability to provide attention to details, and his unyielding attitude to achieve perfection in the work. For some of the Verification and Validation tasks, he made sure that things are matched complete 100%, (even when the specs allowed us some margin for error). He also has excellent observation skills and a keen eye to spot errors, this makes him an excellent tester / code debugger as well.

Courses

  1. Advanced Computer Networks

    CS6390 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  2. Big Data Management and Analytics

    CS6350 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  3. Database Design

    CS6360 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  4. Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms

    CS6363 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  5. Discrete Structures

    CS5333 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  6. Machine Learning

    CS6375 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  7. Network Security

    CS6349 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  8. Object-Oriented Software Engineering

    CS6329 · The University of Texas at Dallas

  9. Semantic Web

    CS6315 · The University of Texas at Dallas

Honors & awards

  1. Merit-based Graduate Scholarship

    Issued by Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, UT Dallas · Sep 2015

    Received a merit-based graduate fellowship from the Computer Science Department of UT Dallas.

Test scores

  1. Machine Learning

    May 2016

    A

  2. Semantic Web

    May 2016

    A

  3. Advanced Computer Networks

    May 2016

    A-

  4. Object Oriented Software Engineering

    May 2016

    B+

  5. Statistical Methods for Data Science

    Dec 2015

    B

  6. Big Data Analysis and Management

    May 2015

    A

Languages

  • English
  • Hindi
  • Gujarati

Get in touch

Recruiting for a senior or lead engineering role, or want to talk identity, cloud or distributed systems? Send a message — it comes straight to me.