Resume

I build things that work, and teams that want to.

Started in nanotechnology, found my way to software. Spent six years at Paper building AI-powered education tools and leading the teams behind them — first as an engineer, then as a manager. Most proud of a human-in-the-loop system that served 3M+ students and saved $1M+ a year in operations.

Experience

Technical Cofounder

Title Collections
  • Building the technical foundation and product from scratch
  • Multi-tenant architecture with sovereign data guarantees

Software Development Manager

Paper
  • Helped individuals grow in happy and high-performing teams
  • Contributed to SDLC and engineering standards, hiring pipelines, incident response
  • Implemented feature experiments, iterating most to measurable impact
  • Managed chaos through restructurings without losing velocity or morale

Tiger Team Manager

Paper
  • Started 5 projects from scratch, shipped 3:
  • Human-in-the-loop AI system — $1M+ annual savings
  • LLM observability and stat-based prompt engineering
  • AI tutor Chrome extension

Senior Backend Developer

Paper
  • Optimized code and queries as we scaled from thousands to millions of users
  • Built features as the only backend dev supporting 5 frontend contributors
  • Started onboarding/mentoring new hires, setting team conventions

Backend Developer

Paper
  • Deep dives into system design, architecture, and APIs
  • Fell in love with EXPLAIN, tied test coverage to inner peace
  • Cloud and serverless for small services (image compression, PDF conversion)

Full-stack Developer

Paper
  • From first production code to first end-to-end feature
  • Learned product building and its associated processes in tech

R&D Intern

TandemLaunch
  • Hunted academic papers for unapplied knowledge with commercial potential
  • Communicated findings to entrepreneurs in residence

Education

M.Eng — Electrical & Computer Engineering

University of Victoria

Statistics, Information Theory, AI, Cybersecurity, FPGAs, Photovoltaics, Nanotechnology.

B.Tech — Nanotechnology

Amity University

Publications

Solution-Processed Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles for Thin Film Optoelectronic Neuromorphic Devices

S. Dawka, P. Duan, S. Maitra, R. Sapkota, C. Papadopoulos

ECS Meeting Abstracts, 2024

Thin Film Photodetectors Based on Zinc Oxide Nanoinks

S. Dawka, P. Duan, R. Sapkota, C. Papadopoulos

ECS Transactions, 108(6), 2022

Multi-functional thin film coatings formed via nanogrinding

R. Sapkota, J. Zou, J.E. Bobak, S. Dawka, C. Papadopoulos

Applied Nanoscience, 8, 1437–1444, 2018

DOI: 10.1007/s13204-018-0812-y

Skills

TECHNICAL
Languages
PHP, Python, JS, Go
Frameworks
Laravel, Vue, FastAPI
Adaptability
Can RTFM
PRODUCT
Domain
Deep understanding
Architecture
System design
Evaluation
User-focused
MANAGEMENT
Leadership
By example
Philosophy
Progress > Perfection
Motivation
Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose

Languages

English — Native Hindi — Good French — B1 Spanish — A2 German — A1 Japanese — A1