Akshat Shah
Software Engineer @ USC IMSC

Hello, I'm Akshat Shah

Backend and full stack engineer · MS CS, USC (2026)

Based in Los Angeles, CA · Open to relocating anywhere in the US

I build backend systems that hold up in production. At USC IMSC I design async FastAPI microservices for a real-time geospatial platform used by 500+ people, and cut query latency 40% with PostGIS and H3 indexing. At Microsoft I built latency observability for Office apps serving 85M+ users. I also contribute upstream, with 12 pull requests shipped in projects like Microsoft PyRIT, OpenClaw and reticle.

Featured Projects

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Screenshot of POI Game

POI Game

2025 - 2026

USC Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), with Dr. John Krumm

A gamified labeling platform that turns GPS visits into ML training data.

  • React
  • TypeScript
  • FastAPI
  • PostgreSQL + PostGIS
Screenshot of Local Events

Local Events

Aug 2026

Personal project

Find live events near you and reserve a spot with Stripe, without overselling.

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • SQLAlchemy
  • PostgreSQL

Experience

  1. Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) @ USC

    1 yr 8 mos

    1. Software Engineer

      Full-time · Aug 2026 - Present · 3 mos

    2. Graduate Research Assistant

      Part-time · Mar 2025 - Aug 2026 · 1 yr 6 mos

      Built the POI Game, a crowdsourced web platform that generates labeled training data for ML location-attribution models.

    • Design and deploy async Python FastAPI microservices powering a real-time geospatial platform for 500+ daily active users, cutting average endpoint latency by 35% over a synchronous baseline
    • Integrate Google OAuth 2.0 and JWT authentication across the microservices with structured error handling, securing every REST endpoint with zero reported authentication failures
    • Optimize PostgreSQL 16 PostGIS spatial indexes and H3 geospatial indexing to reduce query latency by 40%, supporting reliable ingestion of 10k+ daily user submissions into partitioned tables without dropped writes

  2. Lead Teaching Assistant

    USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center

    Apr 2025 - July 2025 · 4 mos

    • Directed a team of 8 teaching assistants delivering a month-long, 3-unit engineering course on algorithms, data structures and software engineering principles to 60+ students, earning a 95% positive feedback rating

  3. Software Engineer Intern

    Microsoft, Hyderabad, India

    Internship · June 2023 - July 2023 · 2 mos

    • Built KQL and Azure Data Explorer dashboards tracking end-to-end latency for Word, Excel and PowerPoint across browser and Teams surfaces, giving production observability for a platform serving 85M+ monthly active users
    • Reduced manual performance monitoring overhead by 60% with automated monitoring pipelines in CI/CD that evaluated latency thresholds and flagged regressions across production environments daily
    • Delivered 8 dashboards with P50 / P75 / P95 percentile views, component-level latency breakdowns and farm comparisons, helping engineers find concurrency bottlenecks and scalability regressions toward a sub-5-second document load target

Open Source

I contribute fixes upstream to AI infrastructure, agent frameworks and developer tools. Updated daily from GitHub · last refreshed

PRs shipped
12
projects
14
in review
7

Credited in release notes

  • reticlehq/reticle v3.6.0 ★ 1.2k

    Find submit controls across realms, so the destructive-action guard works inside iframes

    Thank you @akshatshahh! This change shipped in Reticle 3.6.0 … You're credited in the release notes.

    @divshekhar, reticle maintainer
    Read the release notes See the pull request
  • MakazhanAlpamys/Soup v0.76.0 ★ 8.6k

    One shared loopback allowlist for every outbound gate, so IPv6 loopback judge URLs work

    The outbound loopback allowlist is now a single shared set … Each gate previously kept its own literal, which refused the IPv6 loopback (#1548 by @akshatshahh in #1554).

    Read the changelog See the pull request

Top contributions

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About Me

I'm Akshat Divyang Shah, a software engineer with an MS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (May 2026). I like owning a feature end to end: modeling the data, designing the API, building the UI and making sure it fails gracefully in production.

Today I'm a Software Engineer at USC IMSC, where I built the POI Game, a live labeling platform for location research. Before that I interned at Microsoft on the OneDrive and SharePoint team, building performance dashboards and automated alerting.

Lately most of my evenings go to open source: reading unfamiliar codebases, finding real bugs and getting fixes merged upstream in projects like Microsoft PyRIT, OpenClaw and Home Assistant MCP. It is the fastest way I know to learn how strong teams write and review code.

Outside of code I've tutored over 20 students, and I run thegajabfoodie, a food content page. I'm based in Los Angeles, open to Software Engineer, Backend and Full Stack roles, and open to relocating anywhere in the US.

Education

  • MS, Computer Science

    Aug 2024 - May 2026 · 3.66 GPA

    University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering

    Analysis of Algorithms, Database Systems, Software Architectures, Web Technologies, Applied Cryptography, Applied NLP, Information Retrieval and Web Search Engines, Advanced Mobile Devices and Game Consoles

  • BTech, Computer Science and Engineering

    Sep 2020 - May 2024 · 3.86 GPA

    Indus University, Ahmedabad

    Data Structures and Algorithms, Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Operating Systems, Database Management Systems, Computer Networks, Object Oriented Concepts with UML, Software Engineering and Project Management, Web Technology, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, Cryptography and Network Security, Mobile Application Development (Android and iOS)