# Nish Patwa

> Lead Software Engineer at Salesforce, based in the Greater Seattle Area. I build secure, highly available cloud platforms — from identity & access management at Salesforce to Azure data tooling at Microsoft and AWS automation at Intel.

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.

## Experience
### Lead Software Engineer, Salesforce (Bellevue, WA; Oct 2019 – Present)
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.
Tech: Go, IAM, LDAP, AuthN/AuthZ, SOX, Spinnaker, Puppet, Angular

### Software Engineer II, Microsoft (Redmond, WA; May 2018 – Oct 2019)
Full-stack engineer and Release Manager on Azure telemetry data tooling.
- Built a web-based data exploration and visualization tool that processes raw Azure service telemetry into dashboards and insights.
- Architected and developed the backend REST API and UX for an end-to-end data job scheduling and transformation pipeline in C# and Angular.
- As Release Manager, streamlined the release cycle — CI/CD pipelines, bug bashes, Agile process, deployment validation and hotfixes — partnering with PMs, UX designers and tech leads.
Tech: C#, Azure, REST APIs, Angular, CI/CD, Release management

### Cloud Software Engineer, Intel (Hillsboro, OR; Jul 2016 – May 2018)
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.
Tech: AWS, Python, Lambda, OpenStack, NLP, Automation

### DevOps Intern, Motorola (Dallas, TX; Jun 2015 – Jan 2016)
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.
Tech: Python, Docker, KVM, F5, Networking

### Research Programmer, InFoCusp (Ahmedabad, India; Aug 2013 – Jun 2014)
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.
Tech: Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Neural Networks

## Projects
- Chat Assistant for Software-Defined Infrastructure (2017) [Python, OpenStack, NLP, Kubernetes]: 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. https://github.com/nishpatwa/Assistant-for-Software-Defined-Infrastructure
- OpenStack API Errors Catalog (2017) [OpenStack, API, Docs]: 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. https://github.com/nishpatwa/openstack-exceptions
- Earthquake Prediction System (2015) [Spark, Scala, Machine Learning]: A forecasting system that predicts future earthquakes for a user-selected region by latitude and longitude, using Spark, Scala and machine-learning regression.
- eBidding Portal (2015) [Django, Web Services, SSL/TLS]: An online auction platform with auto-bidding, four web services, database replication, SSL/TLS encryption, GZip compression, distributed caching and single sign-on. https://github.com/nishpatwa/E-bidding-System
- Collaborative — Project Management Tool (2015) [JSP, Agile, Web]: A web-based tool that manages projects and automates task assignment across an organisation, built with an Agile process. https://github.com/nishpatwa/Collaborative-Software-Project-Management-Tool
- Real-Time e-Commerce Broker System (2014) [Java, Cryptography, Sockets]: A secure purchasing system where a broker hides the buyer's identity from the seller, guaranteeing authentication, anonymity, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation. https://github.com/nishpatwa/E-Broker-System
- Multithreaded Web Proxy Server (2014) [C, UNIX, Networking]: An always-on, multithreaded proxy server in C that serves many concurrent clients on behalf of the web server.
- Moving Object Tracker (2013) [C++, OpenCV, Computer Vision]: Real-time camera tracking that removes the background and follows moving objects using CamShift combined with a Kalman filter.
- Patch Management Orchestrator (2017) [Python, AWS SDK, Automation, High availability]: 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.
- Cloud Services Health-Check API (2017) [Python, AWS Lambda, Runscope, REST]: A serverless health-check REST API for managed cloud services, built with Python on AWS Lambda and monitored with Runscope.
- Hygiene Monitoring System (2014) [Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Healthcare]: A machine-vision application for a hospital ICU that raises a violation alarm when doctors or nurses aren't wearing the required gloves and gown.
- Golden Eagle — The World Wide Airline (2014) [Databases, Transactions, Multi-user]: A multi-user transaction-processing system backed by a database, supporting seat selection and booking and real-time flight tracking.
- E-Learning System (2013) [JSP, AJAX, jQuery, MySQL]: An online learning platform with tests, tutorials and faculty video lectures, downloadable material, comments and feedback.
- Concrete Cement Strength Prediction (2012) [Linear Regression, Data Science]: Predicted the strength of cement from the quantities of water and cement using a linear-regression model trained on historical data.
- Attendance Management System (2012) [Web, Reporting, Database]: Replaced paper-based attendance: faculty record attendance online and generate monthly and yearly analysis reports.

## Skills
- Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Azure, OpenStack, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, Serverless / Lambda
- Languages: Go, Python, Java, C#, C, Bash, JavaScript / Angular, SQL
- Identity & Security: IAM, LDAP, AuthN / AuthZ, SOX compliance, Ping Directory, Network Security
- DevOps & Delivery: Spinnaker, Jenkins, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Gerrit / Zuul, Git, Scrum / Kanban
- Data & ML: Machine Learning, Apache Spark, Computer Vision, InfluxDB, MongoDB, MySQL / SQL Server
- Engineering practice: Distributed Systems, High Availability, Performance & Scalability, REST API Design, Release Management

## Certifications
- Certified OpenStack Administrator — OpenStack Foundation · COA160003220100 (Dec 2016)
- Rackspace Certified Associate for OpenStack — Rackspace (Jul 2016)
- Advanced Java — HCL Infosystems

## Education
- The University of Texas at Dallas: M.S. Computer Science — Data Science (2014 – 2016)
- L D College of Engineering, Ahmedabad: B.E. Information Technology (2009 – 2013)

## Honors & awards
- Merit-based Graduate Scholarship — Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, UT Dallas (Sep 2015)

## Volunteering
- Manager, Comet Cupboard — The University of Texas at Dallas (Poverty Alleviation): The Comet Cupboard is a UT Dallas food-pantry initiative dedicated to providing nutritious food, free of cost, to students in need.

## Graduate coursework (UT Dallas)
Advanced Computer Networks (CS6390); Big Data Management and Analytics (CS6350); Database Design (CS6360); Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms (CS6363); Discrete Structures (CS5333); Machine Learning (CS6375); Network Security (CS6349); Object-Oriented Software Engineering (CS6329); Semantic Web (CS6315); Statistical Methods for Data Science (CS6313); Web Programming Languages (CS6301)

## Recommendation
"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." — Nisarg Vyas, Managed Nish directly · InFoCusp

## Links
- Website: https://nishpatwa.store
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishpatwa
- GitHub: https://github.com/nishpatwa
- Contact: https://nishpatwa.store/#contact