About Yash Shah
I'm a Staff Software Engineer based in the Chicago area, with 11+ years designing and building distributed systems, backend platforms, cloud-native services, and developer productivity solutions.
I started as an engineer who liked understanding how systems actually run in production — databases, APIs, integrations, the unglamorous parts that determine whether software survives contact with real users.
Over time, that grew into backend architecture, cloud modernization, and platform engineering at scale — event-driven microservices on AWS, Kubernetes workloads, infrastructure automation with Terraform, and APIs that other teams depend on.
Today that shows up in enterprise integration platforms and operational automation with measurable impact — including $1M+ annual infrastructure savings and $300K annual operational savings from platform and API work. Outside work, I ship Blanket Finance, a live fintech product where backend architecture, market data, and product engineering have to work together.
I also build developer tooling and explore practical AI-assisted engineering workflows, including MCP-based integrations, where AI can meaningfully improve how software teams build and operate systems.
I'm most interested in engineers and leaders who care about useful systems: scalable, observable, cost-aware, and connected to outcomes — not technology adoption for its own sake.
Engineering Philosophy
- Build systems that solve business problems, not just technical puzzles.
- Prefer practical architecture over over-engineering.
- Use AI as a teammate, not an unchecked replacement.
- Make cloud decisions with cost, reliability, and operations in mind.
- Connect technical decisions to product and operational impact.
For project depth and delivery detail, see Projects. For roles, scope, and career timeline, see Experience.
