Software Wizard

Chakradar
Raju.

My code is my art.

I build real-time backend systems and data pipelines that hold up under scale. Currently building AI agents at Genera. Previously Founding Engineer at Wingman (YC S19, acquired by Clari), and Google Knowledge Graph and Maps. Electronics, NIT Trichy · 2012.

14+years shipping
2YC startups · founding eng
bugs resolved
Portrait of Chakradar Raju
Currently Building AI Agents @ Genera
Based in India
01 / About

Engineer by training, craftsman by habit.

Electronics graduate from NIT Trichy, software engineer by passion. I've been obsessed with building software since I was 14 — I consider myself very lucky that the world pays handsomely for what I enjoy building.

Currently a Founding Engineer at Genera, building voice and text AI agents for the deployment of new-age enterprise software products. Before that I spent a year (Sep'24 – Aug'25) chasing my own ideas — a mobile app connecting people by interest, a legal-tech model extracting structure from unstructured Supreme Court judgements, and an OOH ad platform for dynamic commercial-space advertising.

Earlier, I joined Wingman (YC S19) as a Founding Engineer and built a significant portion of its backend and engineering team. After Clari's acquisition I helped onboard enterprise customers and grow the team into late-stage startup processes.

Before Wingman I built web services at Google (Mapmaker, Knowledge Graph) and Directi (Talk.to). On the side I started and ran Pondicherry's first tourist hostel — operationally profitable for two years and three months, until COVID.

Curious about everything, in roughly this order: software, general engineering, politics, business, economics, travel.

02 / Experience

A decade-plus of shipping.

  1. 2025

    Founding Engineer

    Aug 2025 – Present

    Building voice and text agents for the deployment of new-age enterprise software products — so teams can treat every customer like their most critical one.

    • Claude
    • OpenAI Agents
    • TypeScript
    • Next.js
    • MongoDB
    • AWS
    • Terraform
    • GitHub Actions
    • Slack · Notion
  2. 2024

    Independent — Entrepreneurship

    Self-directed · 1-year sabbatical
    Sep 2024 – Aug 2025

    A year building my own ideas end-to-end. Notable projects: a mobile app connecting people by interest; legal-tech models extracting structure from unstructured Supreme Court judgements; an OOH ad platform for dynamic ads in commercial spaces.

    • Expo
    • getstream.io
    • ML · Custom models
    • AWS
    • MongoDB
  3. 2022

    Senior Engineering Manager

    Clari · Remote
    Jun 2022 – Aug 2024

    Grew backend team and systems to handle significant product usage growth post-acquisition. Helped the team ramp to late-stage startup processes and ship new AI features.

    • Team management
    • AI features
    • Scale
  4. 2021

    Engineering Manager & Tech Lead

    Wingman
    Nov 2021 – Jun 2022

    Hired developers, managed priorities for an early-stage dynamic product, led tech-debt reduction.

    • Hiring
    • Tech lead
    • Product priorities
  5. 2018

    Founding Engineer

    Wingman · YC S19
    Sep 2018 – Nov 2021

    Built real-time call processing and suggestion delivery, insights extraction, and the external REST/integration layer pulling data from CRMs, calendars, and dialers. Ran AWS, Kubernetes, and MongoDB. Led migration from GCP to AWS.

    • AWS
    • Kubernetes
    • MongoDB
    • Real-time
  6. 2018

    Founder

    Droid Hostel · Pondicherry
    Feb 2018 – Jun 2020

    Built Pondicherry's first tourist hostel. Ran it profitably in a rented building until the COVID lockdown forced closure.

    • Operations
    • Hospitality
  7. 2016

    Software Engineer

    Google · Zurich
    Apr 2016 – Oct 2017

    Migrated batch Worry Metrics (preliminary analysis for data entering Google's Knowledge Graph) to a live system. Improved triggering and retries for RefX model building in Data Experiments.

    • Knowledge Graph
    • Data pipelines
    • Large scale
  8. 2013

    Software Engineer

    Google · Bengaluru
    May 2013 – Mar 2016

    Migrated user preferences to more secure storage with zero live-service disruption. Built editing widgets, shortcuts, and the category index for Mapmaker v2; set up Mapmaker sandboxes.

    • Mapmaker
    • Data migration
    • Internal tools
  9. 2012

    Software Developer

    Directi · Mumbai
    Jun 2012 – Apr 2013

    Worked on Talk.to — a client unifying chat across Facebook, Google, and others. Improved error reporting and roster performance.

    • Chat
    • Performance