# Justine Kizhakkinedath
Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer
Pune, Maharashtra, India | justine@kizhak.com | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinekizhak | Github: https://github.com/justinekizhak

## Professional summary
I've spent since 2019 on the parts of a product that aren't allowed to fail quietly - CRM communication tools, extensible channel integrations, e-commerce platforms, and APIs handling more than **10 million** requests a month. I move up and down the stack as needed: **TypeScript, JavaScript, Vue, React and Next.js** on the front; **Node.js, NestJS and Python** behind it; **PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, GCP, AWS, Docker and Kubernetes** underneath.

## Experience

### Full Stack Developer - Verto
Oct 2024 - Present | Full-time
Fintech systems fail expensively, so failure isn't really an option here. I own onboarding, ledger and invoice-settlement features end to end - architecture through rollout - and build in the safeguards that keep them recoverable when something does go wrong. Along the way I've made it a habit to leave each squad's engineering practice sharper than I found it.

Responsibilities:
- Architect and deliver full-stack fintech features across onboarding, payments, ledger operations, revenue workflows and compliance tooling.
- Design resilient financial workflows using idempotency, concurrency controls, circuit breakers, retries, rollback paths, dead-letter handling and progressive delivery.
- Lead features from technical design through production rollout, monitoring, documentation and cross-team handoff.
- Raise engineering quality through strict typing, automated testing, load testing, lower-environment validation, technical knowledge sharing and mentoring.

Outcomes:
- Shipped Onboarding v5 KYC and pricing modules with zero critical post-release issues; monthly onboarding volume subsequently reached **126**, approximately **38% above** the January-September average of 91.
- Audited 147,000 production logs, identified more than **72,000 silent validation errors** and helped resolve the underlying data-retrieval issue before it became customer-facing.
- Designed resilience and auditability controls for automated invoice settlement and ledger-hold workflows.
- Expanded API access for sub-account customers while preserving usage and charge attribution.
- Won Verto's internal **Outstanding Innovation award** and delivered company-wide engineering talks on state machines and progressive delivery.

Technologies: TypeScript, Angular, AWS Lambda, AWS CodeBuild, CI/CD, Distributed systems, k6, Kibana, PostHog, OpenFeature, State machines, Micro-frontends, REST APIs

### SDE II - HighLevel
Apr 2022 - Jun 2024 | Full-time
Inherited a CRM messaging product buckling under real usage — slow APIs, bloated memory, a composer stitched together from three different editors. I rebuilt the parts under strain and opened up the architecture so other teams could add new channels without touching my code.

Responsibilities:
- Built a unified email and SMS composer with attachments, previews, templates, custom tokens and compatibility across Gmail, TinyMCE and Twilio editing workflows.
- Developed a secure email preview and reply experience with sandboxed content, attachment previews, condensed views and IMAP/SMTP synchronisation.
- Designed an extensible conversations-provider architecture using OAuth apps and webhooks so internal and third-party teams could add new communication channels.
- Refactored Conversations APIs, database queries and endpoints in collaboration with frontend teams.

Outcomes:
- Reduced average API latency by **more than 70%**, from approximately 5-6 seconds to under 2 seconds, across workloads above **10 million monthly requests**.
- Reduced application memory consumption by **more than 60%**.
- Unified channel-specific composer modules into one interface, reducing associated technical debt by **more than 80%**.
- Reduced support tickets related to email navigation by **50%**.

Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, Vue 3, Pinia, TanStack Query, React, Node.js, NestJS, Python, Firebase, MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, GCP, Kubernetes, Cypress

### Member of Technical Staff - Mindstix Software Labs
Dec 2019 - Mar 2022 | Full-time
My first engineering role, and I was handed production commerce systems from week one — Amway and PENCOM's catalog, ordering and ERP-integration work, built to hold up for 10,000+ businesses.

Responsibilities:
- Led full-stack delivery for a scalable Amway e-commerce experience using React, Next.js and AWS Lambda.
- Enhanced the PENCOM e-commerce platform and integrated catalog and order-processing workflows with Epicor ERP.
- Collaborated across product and engineering teams to optimise application behaviour and user experience.

Outcomes:
- Delivered e-commerce platform work supporting **more than 10,000 B2B customers** alongside a larger B2C audience.

Technologies: Vue.js, React, Next.js, Python, Flask, FastAPI, MongoDB, AWS, AWS Lambda, Epicor ERP

## Selected production outcomes

### Onboarding v5 adoption and release quality
I architected Onboarding v5's KYC and pricing modules. Zero critical issues, and onboarding volume hit a monthly high of 126.
Contribution: I architected the KYC and pricing modules myself and did a lot of the state-management and configuration work that held the wider Onboarding v5 programme together.
Measured outcome: 126 monthly onboards, approximately 38% above the prior nine-month average, with zero critical post-release issues reported for the release.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Adoption and defect metrics are self-reported in the H2 2025 review. Managers separately corroborated major ownership and high-quality delivery on Onboarding v5, but did not restate these exact metrics.

### API latency reduction
I cut average API latency from 5-6 seconds to under 2.
Contribution: I was part of the engineering work that brought that down to under 2 seconds.
Measured outcome: Average API latency reduced to under 2 seconds.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported professional evidence. Employer telemetry and implementation details are not public.

### High-volume API operations
I worked on APIs serving 10M+ requests a month.
Contribution: I worked as a senior, frontend-heavy full-stack engineer here, owning features independently rather than pairing on every decision.
Measured outcome: More than 10 million API requests served per month.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported professional evidence. Employer details, telemetry and source artifacts are not public.

### Email preview security isolation
I sandboxed third-party email content to close a critical XSS and CSS-leak risk.
Contribution: I built the sandboxing that kept untrusted code contained and stopped styles or scripts from leaking into the host CRM.
Measured outcome: Security risk reduction reported as greater than 90%.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported in the October 2024 résumé. Security assessments and incident records are not public.

### Resilient automated invoice settlement
I built the resilience controls that keep automated invoice settlement from double-processing.
Contribution: I built the safety net around it: caching, semaphores, circuit breakers, idempotency, retries, cooldowns, dead-letter handling, rollback paths and a cohort-based feature-flag rollout.
Measured outcome: Created automated recovery and progressive-release paths for a high-risk financial workflow.
Verification status: self-reported
Limitations: Implementation is described in the H1 2026 self-review; no public architecture or telemetry is available.

### Infrastructure cost reduction
I helped migrate services to Kubernetes, cutting infrastructure costs by ~80%.
Contribution: I helped deliver that migration — the cost result belongs to the whole effort, not just my piece of it.
Measured outcome: Approximately 80% reduction in infrastructure costs associated with the migration.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported professional evidence. Employer billing records and implementation details are not public.

### Auditable ledger-hold architecture
I engineered a ledger-hold system with immutable history, integrity checks and stress testing.
Contribution: I paired mutable operational state with an immutable history record, set up a scheduled integrity checker, and added stress testing to the ledger APIs.
Measured outcome: Added automated integrity validation and load-resiliency testing to a financially sensitive ledger workflow.
Verification status: self-reported
Limitations: Architecture is described in the H1 2026 self-review. Absolute claims about eliminating all race-condition risk have been removed.

### Service memory reduction
I cut application memory use by 60%+, from ~500 MB to ~200 MB.
Contribution: I was part of the work that brought consumption down by more than 60%.
Measured outcome: Application memory consumption reduced by more than 60%.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported professional evidence. Employer telemetry and implementation details are not public.

### Proactive production fault discovery
I audited 147,000 logs and caught 72,000+ silent errors before they hit customers.
Contribution: I went looking anyway: audited the logs in Kibana, isolated the recurring validation failure, and helped patch the data-retrieval issue behind it.
Measured outcome: More than 72,000 silent errors discovered across 147,000 reviewed logs before customer impact was reported.
Verification status: self-reported
Limitations: Counts are self-reported in the H1 2026 review and are not backed by public observability records.

### Onboarding configuration ownership
I built Onboarding v5's configurable Q&A flow and became the team's go-to on it.
Contribution: I architected the configuration engine myself and made the implementation calls independently as the complexity piled up.
Measured outcome: The manager described the contribution as pivotal, highlighted the robustness of the configurable flow and rated the half-year performance as Exceeds Expectations.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: The manager review is private employer evidence and cannot be linked publicly.

### Composer technical-debt reduction
I unified the composer modules into one interface, cutting technical debt by 80%+.
Contribution: I designed and delivered the unified interface that replaced both.
Measured outcome: More than 80% reduction in associated composer technical debt.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported in the October 2024 résumé. Employer code and delivery records are not public.

### Cross-squad technical leadership
I held delivery quality through three squad changes in one half, and got flagged for backup Tech Lead.
Contribution: I took ownership fast in each one, fixed critical defects that crossed squad boundaries, and made sure what I knew didn't stay just in my head.
Measured outcome: Helped the CaPa squad meet its release timeline and received manager recommendations for broader technical leadership responsibility.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: The release support is self-reported; leadership potential and high-quality contribution are corroborated by manager reviews.

### Email navigation support-ticket reduction
My redesigned email preview cut navigation support tickets by 50%.
Contribution: I built the Gmail-like viewing and reply experience that replaced it: condensed previews, full-message expansion, attachments in place.
Measured outcome: 50% reduction in email-navigation support tickets.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported in the October 2024 résumé. Employer support data is not public.

### Engineering knowledge sharing at scale
I scaled technical knowledge through company talks and deep architecture docs.
Contribution: I gave company-wide talks on state machines and progressive delivery, started a central documentation practice, and wrote up the state machines, Angular event buses, dynamic forms and JSON DSLs myself.
Measured outcome: Managers reported that the team looked to Justine for accurate technical knowledge and encouraged continued knowledge leadership.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Talk and documentation artefacts are internal; onboarding-time improvement was not quantified.

### Engineering quality and progressive delivery
I raised engineering standards: progressive delivery, strict typing, 94%+ test coverage, load testing.
Contribution: I pushed for OpenFeature multi-control flags, strict TypeScript, the Result pattern for error handling, and k6 load testing wired into AWS CodeBuild.
Measured outcome: Established a stated 94%+ coverage baseline and reusable on-demand load-test capability.
Verification status: self-reported
Limitations: Coverage and support-burden effects are not backed by public CI or operational records.

### Sub-account API access
I unlocked API access for sub-accounts without breaking usage or charge attribution.
Contribution: I updated the backend so they inherit and share their parent account's plan instead.
Measured outcome: Enabled API access for a previously excluded customer segment.
Verification status: self-reported
Limitations: The number of enabled accounts and revenue effect were not stated.

### Composer editor compatibility
I built a composer 90% Gmail-compatible and 98% compatible with legacy TinyMCE.
Contribution: I built it in Vue 3 and Pinia, with Cypress coverage on the flows that mattered most.
Measured outcome: 90% Gmail compatibility and 98% TinyMCE v3 cross-compatibility.
Verification status: employer-confidential
Limitations: Self-reported in the October 2024 résumé. The compatibility methodology and employer test artifacts are not public.

### Outstanding Innovation award
I won Verto's Outstanding Innovation award at an internal hackathon.
Contribution: I built a solution to one of them.
Measured outcome: Received the Outstanding Innovation award.
Verification status: self-reported
Limitations: The solution, judging criteria and award record were not included in the reviews.

### E-commerce customer reach
I delivered e-commerce work reaching 10,000+ B2B customers.
Contribution: I delivered full-stack across personalised shopping, catalog and order-processing experiences on both.
Measured outcome: Estimated reach above 10,000 B2B customers.
Verification status: self-reported
Limitations: An estimate stated in the October 2024 résumé. Customer analytics and attribution records are not public.

## Capabilities
- TypeScript and Node.js: Frontend-heavy full-stack engineering across TypeScript, Node.js, React, Vue and NestJS. Used in production systems and current developer-tooling work.
- Distributed services: Experience building and scaling distributed production services in fintech and high-growth software environments. Supported by high-volume API and service performance outcomes.
- Performance optimisation: API latency, service memory and infrastructure-efficiency work with measurable production outcomes. Outcomes are self-reported and employer-confidential.
- GCP and Kubernetes: Experience migrating services from App Engine to NestJS, Docker and Kubernetes. Production migration work; public implementation artifacts are not available.
- AWS and Docker
- React, Next.js and Vue: Complex product interfaces in Vue and React, including rich-text composition, secure content previews, attachments and workflow-focused CRM tools. Production delivery using Vue 3, Pinia, TanStack Query, React, Next.js and Cypress.
- Secure third-party content rendering: Sandboxing untrusted email content to contain malicious code and prevent CSS or JavaScript leakage into host applications. Applied to production email preview and reply workflows.
- OAuth, webhooks and REST API integrations: Extensible OAuth and webhook architectures that let internal and third-party teams add communication channels. Production work spanning content validation, verified email management and consolidated webhook payloads.
- PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Redis
- E-commerce platforms and ERP integrations: Full-stack commerce delivery across personalised shopping, catalog access, order processing and ERP integration. Amway and PENCOM programmes using React, Next.js, AWS Lambda and Epicor ERP.
- Coding-agent evaluation: Investigating how teams can evaluate agent-produced software with deterministic, evidence-backed signals. Current area of interest and experimentation, not presented as completed production expertise.
- Context and memory systems: Exploring contextual memory, context ranking and organisational knowledge for engineering agents. Current area of research and experimentation.
- Release evidence and governance: Exploring deterministic release-risk scoring, deployment evidence and reviewable release decisions. Active DeployTitan product and systems exploration.
- Reliable deployment of agent-produced changes: Investigating how teams can verify, govern and safely operate software produced by AI agents. A coherent current direction grounded in prior production and deployment experience.

## Technologies
TypeScript, Angular, AWS Lambda, AWS CodeBuild, CI/CD, Distributed systems, k6, Kibana, PostHog, OpenFeature, State machines, Micro-frontends, REST APIs, JavaScript, Vue 3, Pinia, TanStack Query, React, Node.js, NestJS, Python, Firebase, MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, GCP, Kubernetes, Cypress, Vue.js, Next.js, Flask, FastAPI, AWS, Epicor ERP, Distributed services, IMAP, SMTP, App Engine, Docker, OAuth, Webhooks, GitHub integrations, MCP, Sanity CMS

## Selected projects

### Architecting Onboarding v5: KYC and pricing
Status: demonstrated
I architected the KYC and pricing modules for Verto's Onboarding v5, then went looking for what could still go wrong — an audit of production logs that caught failures before customers ever saw them.
Contribution: Architected core modules and led post-release verification for a compliance-critical fintech onboarding workflow.
Outcomes:
- Shipped with zero critical post-release issues; monthly onboarding volume reached a yearly high of 126, approximately 38% above the prior nine-month average of 91.
- Audited 147,000 production logs and identified more than 72,000 silent validation errors before they escalated into a customer-facing incident.
Technologies: TypeScript, Angular, AWS Lambda, Kibana, State machines
More information: https://justine.kizhak.com/work/verto-onboarding-v5-architecture

### Scaling a high-volume communications platform
Status: demonstrated
APIs handling more than 10 million requests a month were running too slow and using too much memory. I went after both.
Contribution: Senior, frontend-heavy full-stack engineering with independent feature ownership and performance optimisation work.
Outcomes:
- Average API latency reduced to **under 2 seconds**.
- Service memory consumption reduced to **approximately 200 MB**.
Technologies: TypeScript, Node.js, NestJS, Distributed services
More information: https://justine.kizhak.com/work/scaling-high-volume-communications-platform

### Resilience controls for automated invoice settlement and ledger holds
Status: demonstrated
Money that gets double-processed or silently lost is a very bad day. I built the idempotency, circuit-breaker and audit controls that keep automated invoice settlement and ledger holds honest under failure.
Contribution: Designed and delivered the resilience and auditability architecture for two adjacent financial workflows.
Outcomes:
- Created automated recovery and progressive-release paths for a high-risk financial workflow.
- Added automated integrity validation and load-resiliency testing to a financially sensitive ledger workflow.
Technologies: TypeScript, Angular, State machines, OpenFeature, REST APIs
More information: https://justine.kizhak.com/work/verto-financial-workflow-resiliency

### Secure email viewer and reply system
Status: demonstrated
Untrusted email HTML rendered inside a CRM is a live XSS risk. I built a Gmail-like preview and reply experience that sandboxes it safely.
Contribution: Owned frontend delivery and contributed across the supporting Node.js and NestJS services.
Outcomes:
- Resolved critical XSS and CSS-leak vulnerabilities, reducing security risk exposure by **more than 90%**.
- Reduced support tickets related to email navigation by **50%**.
Technologies: Vue 3, Pinia, TanStack Query, Node.js, NestJS, Cypress, IMAP, SMTP
More information: https://justine.kizhak.com/work/secure-email-viewer-and-reply-system

### Migrating services to Kubernetes infrastructure
Status: demonstrated
Moved production services off App Engine and onto NestJS, Docker and Kubernetes — infrastructure costs dropped by approximately 80% as a result.
Contribution: Contributed to migrating services from App Engine to containerized Kubernetes infrastructure, focused on deployment reliability during the transition.
Outcomes:
- The migration contributed to an **approximately 80% reduction** in infrastructure costs.
Technologies: GCP, App Engine, NestJS, Docker, Kubernetes
More information: https://justine.kizhak.com/work/app-engine-to-kubernetes-migration

## Focus and role preferences

Current focus:
- Product engineering
- Backend performance
- Cloud infrastructure
- Release tooling

Target roles:
- Senior full-stack web developer
- Senior product engineer
- Platform engineer

## Confirmed facts
- Professional software engineering experience since December 2019.
- Current role: Full Stack Developer at Verto.
- Previous roles: SDE II at HighLevel and Member of Technical Staff at Mindstix Software Labs.
- Skills include Angular, PostgreSQL, web development and frontend engineering.
- Founder of AstralForge Labs LLP
- Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering from P.V.G.'s College of Engineering and Technology, Pune.
- Previously worked with Next.js, TypeScript, GCP, GitHub integrations, MCP, Sanity CMS and modern developer tooling.
- Deep expertise in Typescript
- Currently working with Angular, AWS including Lambda, Codebuild.

## Source and freshness
Last updated: 2026-09-06T12:45:16Z
Canonical profile: https://justine.kizhak.com/
HTML resume: https://justine.kizhak.com/resume
Structured profile data: https://justine.kizhak.com/api/profile