I'm a product-minded Data Engineer (and a former data hoarder), with a hacker's mindset crafted over a lifetime of experimenting on computers - software and hardware.

Have trained myself on a simple principle:
I should be able to bootstrap and scale products/companies from the tech side - be a natural fit for zero to one.

A consequence of this principle has been:

• Overall breadth of technical knowledge and operations, with depth in specific areas.
• People skills, ability to idenitfy and isolate actual business requirements, ability to figure out "win conditions" for the product.

I work particularly well and truly come alive when facing the unknown, when dealing with open ended business problems.

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I grew up building and breaking computers, gadgets and software. Got my first exposure of building for others in 2011, through Android ROM development(started as simple optimizations, ended up as full blown ROM development. Classic case of scope creep and nerd snipe). Have been working for companies on and off since 2018.

Am used to prototyping solutions for problems with an unknown path to solution - by quickly iterating through initial prototypes and collecting numbers, and arriving at final architectures empirically. With evidence.

My edge is not what I already know. It actually is the ability of dealing with new unknowns through a violent rate of learning and adaptation.
It has been devleoped over the years due to extreme curiosity, paired with a gigantic appetite for information and the ability to string out a solution out of the ingested context. Sometimes borrowing ideas from across domains. Everything connects to everything else.

I generally get contacted by other engineers (majorly past colleagues), execs etc when:

• They are starting out new projects, and need someone for intial discovery.
• They are in some hairy problem, and need some pointers on how to approach it (cut down scope and arrive at the root cause).

I have a love for engineering in general, and particularly love software engineering.

Also had a deep interest in philosophy, which got quenched when some fundamental questions got answered. I firmly believe that a technologist who is not a philosopher will not realize the potential of technology.

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Want to connect or hire?
Email me - niraj[at]thenira[dot]com

However be warned - I tend to interview horribly.
I try hard to avoid it, but it simply happens. Recently started learning the skill of interviewing, with some moderate success.

A better approach will be simply scheduling a long call, stating your problem, and judging me by my approach towards the solution.