Akshay Chalana
Frontend DeveloperAI is analyzing your overall score…
Identifying your key strengths…
Evaluating your skill match against the job requirements…
Assessing your cultural and operational fit
AI is analyzing your overall score…
Identifying your key strengths…
Evaluating your skill match against the job requirements…
Assessing your cultural and operational fit
Saphira AI - Agents for Safety Compliance
I help run Saphira AI, a YC-backed company building an AI Safety and Security Engineer. We automate threat analyses, risk assessments, failure mode analyses, standards understanding, and safety concept development in order to get autonomous, robotic, and other hardware products ISO/UL/CE certified by organizations like TUV and Intertek in record time. Let's talk if you're building regulated systems and want to move faster! Interests: complex systems engineering, economic development, urban development, synthetic biology, industrial materials production, applied machine learning, energy technologies
University of Washington
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science (Data Science), Mathematics (Philosophy)
N/A – Present
Saphira AI
CEO & Co-Founder
March 1, 2024 – Present
San Francisco, California, United States · On-site
Citadel Securities
Systems Software Engineer
November 1, 2021 – March 1, 2024
New York, NY, United States · On-site
Apple
Software Engineer
September 1, 2019 – October 1, 2021
Seattle, Washington, United States
Software Engineer
June 1, 2018 – September 1, 2018
Menlo Park, California
SELCO Foundation
Financial Services for Migrant Communities Intern
January 1, 2018 – March 1, 2018
Bengaluru
Saphira Technology
Partner
December 1, 2017 – August 1, 2019
Greater Seattle Area
Jumpstart
Machine Learning Consultant
September 1, 2017 – May 1, 2018
San Francisco Bay Area
Doppler Labs
Machine Learning Engineer
June 1, 2017 – September 1, 2017
San Francisco, California
University of Washington
Undergraduate Research Assistant
December 1, 2016 – June 1, 2017
Seattle, Washington
Tesla
Software Engineer
June 1, 2016 – September 1, 2016
Palo Alto, California
University of Washington
Undergraduate Research Assistant - Programming Languages & Software Engineering
January 1, 2016 – February 1, 2016
Seattle, WA
Samaritan
Software Developer
December 1, 2015 – June 1, 2016
Seattle
3D Hubs
3D Designer & Printer Operator
March 1, 2015 – September 1, 2018
Bothell/Seattle, WA
Crowds on Demand
Partnerships Intern
June 1, 2014 – September 1, 2014
Greater Seattle Area
Winshuttle
Documentation Intern
June 1, 2014 – September 1, 2014
Bothell, WA
MoneySen.se
Founder
July 1, 2011 – September 1, 2019
Seattle, WA
DialDrones
November 1, 2018 – November 1, 2018
An ecommerce platform for local drone deliveries (T-Mobile Hacksgiving 2018)
Keras Playground
October 1, 2018 – Present
Visual drag-and-drop interface for basic Keras neural networks, as well as automated deployment via Docker containers to SONM (DubHacks 2018).
Sound Transition (Sonos Challenge 2017)
November 1, 2017 – Present
A solution that automatically transitions between Sonos speakers as a listener transitions between rooms.
Playsmid
October 1, 2016 – October 1, 2016
Playsmid is an interactive way to dive into the basics of synthetic biology design without ever having to pick up a pipette or put on a lab coat. By teaching synthetic biology logic through a game, even those with no biology knowledge can start learning how to make their own novel organisms. Playsmid models the process of designing and integrating a plasmid (circular piece of DNA) to engineer yeast cells. The puzzles included in Playsmid allow you to build up your knowledge in synthetic biology-- Begin with simple color outputs and advance into detecting and amplifying molecular signals. If you are a researcher or educator, you can add your own repository of genetic parts to our crowdsourced database and show students how to build strains in a engaging, visual format. Playsmid is your genetic playground!
HelperUpper
July 1, 2016 – July 1, 2016
A versatile platform that provides recommendations & services to impoverished users through NPO Understanding Poverty.
Waitr.ai
June 1, 2016 – June 1, 2016
Waitr is the newest addition to the on-demand food family, bringing the power of Amazon Alexa to all types of restaurants around the world. Our team created an essential skill for Alexa that allows her to get and track orders that consumers would potentially make at a restaurant. We also made a mobile and web based dashboard that mangers and other employees can use to manage these orders. This skill and data heavily rely on Amazon Web Services which allows us to scale to a high volume of restaurants very quickly. In addition to scaling, the product is easily expandable. We were able to create plans for using license plate data from the drivethru to create profiles for certain users. This could also be augmented by a consumer facing mobile application. We also created plans for an In-Restaurant solution for restaurants that do not have drive thrus. Overall we learned a great deal about how Amazon Web Services work and how they all interact with each other. We gained extremely useful experiences that will help us easily create, hack, and work with AWS in the future.
HeartThrob
February 1, 2016 – February 1, 2016
SeaVR Mini Virtual Reality Hackathon: A Virtual Reality Anatomy Explorer built for Google Cardboard through WebVR in A-Frame.js on Meteor.
Bodyguard - Staying Safe, Together!
January 1, 2016 – January 1, 2016
Bodyguard maps safety risks (crimes, crime-posts, and emergencies from EveryBlock, as well as from our own database), and prompts the user to notify their friends and family of their safety if they are near such an event. Users may also indicate danger and safety to friends and family through shake and voice commands.
Compatigram.co
October 1, 2015 – October 1, 2015
Compatigram compares the photos of two users Instagram profiles and generates a "compatibility score" based on the similarities detected among the photos. This application has many real-world applications. It could be used by artists/photographers to track down accounts that repost their copyrighted photos or by college students to compare their profiles to their friends.
TeacherTesters
October 1, 2015 – October 1, 2015
Startup Weekend Education Seattle Oct. 2015 - We connect EdTech innovators with teacher user testers! We vet teachers, sort them by a variety of appropriate, relevant demographics, and provide access to their classrooms (paying them along the way, of course) to EdTech companies looking to get active feedback on their products.
UWashington Hyperloop Control Systems Team
July 1, 2015 – September 1, 2018
Control Systems Lead (Sept. 2017 - Present) 3rd Place (Comp 3 - 1st in US) ~8th Place (Comp 2) 6th Place (Comp I) Top 20 Internationally (Design Weekend) Top for Safety Internationally (Design Weekend)
GiftGenie.io
May 1, 2015 – May 1, 2015
CodeDay Belltown Spring 2015 - Gift suggestion web app (Node.js) based on Facebook likes & Amazon/Goodreads APIs
The Data Scientist’s Toolbox
Coursera
June 24, 2026 – Present
edX Verified Certificate for Scalable Machine Learning
edX
June 24, 2026 – Present
edX Verified Certificate for Introduction to Big Data with Apache Spark
edX
June 24, 2026 – Present
Cultural Fit Analysis
The candidate's background is heavily skewed towards backend, systems, and machine learning engineering, with significant experience in C++, Python, and Go. While there are mentions of JavaScript, PHP, and A-Frame.js in older projects (e.g., HeartThrob, Tesla internship, MoneySen.se), the recent professional experience (Citadel, Apple, Facebook) does not align directly with a dedicated 'Frontend Developer' target role. The entrepreneurial ventures also lean towards AI/ML and consulting. This indicates a potential mismatch with a pure frontend role, as the core competencies developed over recent years are in different domains. The breadth of projects shows curiosity and a learning mindset, which is positive for cultural fit, but the specific technical alignment for a frontend role is weak.
Soft Skills & Operational Fit
The candidate's extensive project and work history, including leadership roles and participation in hackathons, suggests strong initiative, problem-solving abilities, and a collaborative mindset. The diverse range of projects indicates adaptability and a willingness to tackle new challenges. However, without specific psychometric test results, a definitive assessment of stress handling or team collaboration is limited.