Karthik Lavu

Lawnside,NJ

Summary

Accomplished Backend and Software Engineer with over 5 years of experience in developing large-scale, consumer-facing distributed systems that enable real-time analytics, experimentation frameworks, and high-throughput event pipelines. Proficient in Python, Java, and C#, with a strong focus on event-driven architectures capable of handling millions of transactions while ensuring low-latency user experiences. Expertise in designing telemetry pipelines, A/B testing support systems, and feature rollout strategies that enhance user engagement, retention, and system reliability. Committed to leveraging product data and scalable backend infrastructure to drive measurable user growth through innovative solutions.

Overview

years of professional experience

Certification

Work History

Software Development Engineer

Unified Tech Group

USA

01.2023 - Current

Built and scaled a real-time event-driven backend platform supporting 1K+ daily active users, processing high-volume telemetry streams to power real-time dashboards and user-facing analytics.
Designed Kafka-based streaming pipelines to ingest and process high-frequency behavioral event data, enabling near real-time insights and engagement tracking.
Developed backend services supporting controlled feature rollouts and telemetry-driven experimentation, enabling product teams to measure performance impacts and optimize user workflows.
Improved system responsiveness and reduced processing latency by optimizing concurrency handling in distributed pipelines.
Implemented observability, monitoring, and anomaly detection dashboards to identify engagement drop-offs and improve system stability.
Acted as Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) for production systems, maintaining 99.9% uptime across user-facing services.
Expanded automated test coverage to 85%, strengthening release confidence for rapid, iterative deployments.

Software Engineer

Volkswagen

Michigan

01.2021 - 01.2023

Developed scalable backend microservices supporting 5M+ monthly financial transactions using C#, Kafka, and Azure.
Built async processing pipelines and caching strategies to reduce response times under peak loads by 25%.
Designed multi-tenant backend systems enabling secure, high-availability service delivery to 200+ enterprise clients.
Implemented monitoring and alerting systems to track performance metrics, user workflow reliability, and system anomalies.
Optimized database queries and concurrency mechanisms to support high-throughput, low-latency transaction flows.
Delivered zero-downtime releases through CI/CD automation and test-driven deployments.

Education

Master of Science - Information Technology

Wilmington University

Skills

Languages: Python, Java, C#, C, SQL
A/B testing and experimentation frameworks
Backend & Distributed Systems: Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Kafka, Async Processing, Low-Latency APIs
Data & Analytics: Telemetry Pipelines, Behavioral Analytics Support, Real-Time Metrics Processing, Observability

Databases: PostgreSQL, SQL Server, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB
Cloud & Infra: AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD
System Design: Scalability, Reliability, High Availability, Fault Tolerance