Ishaan Bhalla
Full-Stack Engineer & Independent Consultant specializing in rapid MVP development and AI-first solutions that drive positive change
About Me
I'm a Full-Stack Engineer and independent consultant driven by curiosity, creativity, and a deep belief in tech's potential for good. With a focus on agentic AI systems, scalable cloud architectures, and fast, end-to-end product development, I thrive on turning early concepts into real, working products.
Over the years, I've collaborated with early-stage startups and growing teams, often stepping into multiple roles across design, engineering, and product. That range has shaped how I approach problems—balancing speed with depth, and always building with intention and impact in mind.
Education
San Jose State University, San Jose, CA
Rajiv Gandhi Technical University, India
Experience
Founding Engineer (Contract)
Cognovi
July 2024 - Present
- At Cognovi, I stepped in to tackle a big challenge: making mental health AI feel more trustworthy and insightful. We were building tools that detect cognitive distortions in user input — a powerful idea, but the outputs weren’t always consistent or reliable.
- I designed and deployed an agentic system that improved how the AI interprets and responds to emotional content, leading to more meaningful journaling experiences. I also built a custom evaluation framework to measure AI performance — not just in accuracy, but in emotional tone and helpfulness.
- On the product side, I led full-stack development (Next.js frontend, Express + OpenAI backend), and containerized the app for rapid deployment on AWS, cutting dev time in half.
Full Stack Data Engineer (Contract)
Albert Invent
October 2023 - July 2024
- Albert was growing fast — with distributed teams shipping features rapidly, UI consistency became a bottleneck. Developers were duplicating effort, and product quality started to drift.
- I partnered with the CTO to build “Maya,” a shared frontend framework using HTML web components and vanilla JS, giving the team a clean, reusable system that cut dev time in half and brought design coherence across the app.
- Alongside that, I built backend services in Go and optimized data pipelines using Ray and S3, reducing processing errors and speeding up retrieval across Postgres and DynamoDB.
Full Stack Engineer
SWAY
September 2022 - October 2023
- When I joined SWAY, the product was in its early stages and needed clear technical direction. I worked closely with the CEO to shape the foundation — from designing the database schema to building modular components and crafting a cohesive frontend experience.
- Using React, TypeScript, and GraphQL, I optimized key flows that improved performance by 40% and significantly reduced query times. These upgrades played a big role in growing user engagement and satisfaction.
Data Engineer
Virtusa
May 2019 - August 2021
- Virtusa’s machine learning teams needed cleaner, faster data — but the pipelines were breaking under scale. I designed Spark-based ETL flows and Kafka queues that could handle 2x more load, then restructured their AWS stack to support real-time workflows.
- The result: faster data ingestion, more reliable model training, and happier analysts.
Projects
AI Voice Agent
Medha
AI Voice Agent
An AI-powered voice assistant that can perform tasks and answer questions about my experience.
AI Job Search Assistant
Seeker
AI Job Search Assistant
An agent-powered job search platform that streamlines job discovery and outreach using OpenAI.
Git Guide
Git Guide
Github Knowledge Interface
An interactive and modern guide to mastering Git. Developers learn Git through an engaging and interactive interface.
Skills & Technologies
Programming
- Python
- TypeScript / JavaScript
- Go
- C++
AI & ML
- OpenAI API
- LangChain
- Agentic AI
- Vector Embeddings
- Perplexity Sonar API
Frontend
- Next.js
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- Material-UI
- Three.js
Backend
- Node.js
- Express
- FastAPI
- GraphQL
- WebSockets
Databases
- PostgreSQL
- DynamoDB
- MySQL
- Supabase
Data Engineering
- Spark
- Kafka
- Redis Queue
- ETL Pipelines
DevOps & Cloud
- AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda)
- Docker / Kubernetes
- Terraform
- GitHub Actions / CI/CD
Other Skills
- Agile Development
- AI-Powered UX
- HIPAA Compliance
- Test-Driven Development