Software Development Engineer II

Hi, I'm Grishma Thakkar.

Architecting 150K+ TPS Distributed Systems at Amazon.

I specialize in building high-availability infrastructure (99.999%), zero-downtime migrations, and self-service platforms that accelerate developer velocity.

Grishma Thakkar
5+ Years Exp. in Distributed Systems

About Me

I am a Software Development Engineer who thrives on solving complex, scalable problems.

Currently, as an SDE II at AWS, I focus on Identity and Core Infrastructure. My engineering philosophy is built on three pillars: extreme scalability, operational excellence, and radical simplification. Whether I'm architecting a system for 150K+ TPS or mentoring the next generation of engineers, I aim to leave the codebase better than I found it.


Beyond the Code:
When I'm not deep in a distributed systems design doc, you'll likely find me on the badminton court or practicing dance-both of which keep my reflexes sharp and my creativity flowing.

I am a firm believer in giving back and spend my time volunteering to support community growth. I'm also a massive fan of mystery and non-fiction books. If you're looking for a recommendation, I recently finished "The Silent Patient" by Alex Michaelides-the pacing and psychological depth are a masterclass in logic, much like a well-architected system!

Professional Experience

AWS Logo
Oct 2024 - Present

SDE II - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

East Palo Alto, CA

  • Architected Trusted Identity Propagation for a global re:Invent launch, enabling secure multi-warehouse querying across 30+ regions.
  • Designed a self-service debugging tool for Glue Crawler using predictive log analysis, eliminating 30% of operational overhead.
  • Modernized 10 critical CI/CD pipelines, reducing deployment cycles from 3 weeks to 1 week via automated validation gates.
Amazon Logo
Feb 2020 - Oct 2024

SDE I & SDE II - Amazon

Seattle, WA

  • Architected a high-concurrency layer for Tier-1 APIs, sustaining 100k+ TPS with sub-40ms latency.
  • Led a zero-downtime migration of a 150K TPS service to MemoryDB, ensuring 99.999% availability via shadow-mode validation.
  • Engineered an automated lifecycle engine to decommission legacy rules, replacing months of manual effort.
Amazon Logo
May 2019 - Jul 2019

SDE Intern - Amazon

Seattle, WA

  • Engineered a schema-driven framework reducing partner onboarding from 2 months to <1 week.
  • Automated real-time event fetching from DynamoDB, reducing operational errors by 31%.
Charles River Development Logo
Jul 2018 - Dec 2018

Software Engineer Co-op - Charles River Development

Boston, MA

  • Designed and implemented a metadata-driven grid infrastructure with automated row/column discovery and heuristic hierarchy extraction, powering a combinatorial targeting system that executed all permutations and increased validation coverage by 91%.
  • Eliminated critical system bottlenecks by refactoring legacy security hierarchies to eliminate circular deadlock dependencies.
  • Implemented an MD5-based unique key framework for robust data cross-referencing.
Deloitte Logo
Dec 2016 - Jan 2017

Enterprise Risk Services Intern - Deloitte

Mumbai, India

  • Performed risk profiling for a global bank; created a master KPI report that optimized risk mitigation efforts by 80%.

Technical Projects

Technical Skills

Languages & Frameworks

Java, C#, JavaScript, SQL, REST, Spring, gRPC, HTML5, CSS3

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS (Lambda, S3, IAM, Redshift, Glue, StepFunctions), Docker, CI/CD

Databases

DynamoDB, MemoryDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL Server, Redis

Certifications & Awards

1st Place, MIT Office of Sustainability Challenge

3rd Place, MIT EnergyHack

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2018

State-level AI Competition Winner

Prakalpa, K.J. Somaiya College of Engineering

2017

Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) Java Programmer

Oracle

2015