Hey, I'm Vikas

I grew up in a defence family in India. We moved around a lot, studied in quite a few places, but Tamil Nadu, India is where I really grew up. It's home.

I've been passionate about computers since I was a little kid. The kind who'd take things apart just to see how they worked. The kind who'd wait for computer magazines and their bundled CDs like they were treasure maps to new worlds. I was fortunate to find friends and communities who shared the same obsession. We'd spend hours tinkering, building things, figuring things out together.

Open source communities shaped how I learn, think, and operate. The idea that you can read how something works, contribute back, and learn from people you've never met. That changed everything for me. Still does.

Started at IBM Software Labs (ISL) building order management systems for global retailers. Then caught the startup bug and joined Ezetap (now part of Razorpay) as an early employee. Later at Myntra, I led SRE and platform engineering.

Now at Google Cloud, I work with India's largest digital native customers and engineering teams to help them figure out their GenAI implementation, AI/ML infrastructure, LLM pipelines, TPU workloads, systems that handle millions of requests without breaking a sweat.

I love to talk. A lot. I'm genuinely passionate about evangelizing technology. I've given umpteen talks at conferences, not because I know everything, but because explaining things is how I learn best. Some of my best ideas came from hallway conversations at meetups.

I love to travel. I've been to many countries, and the list keeps growing. There's nothing quite like getting lost in a new city, trying to read signs in a language you don't speak, finding that perfect hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

I'm a collector of things. Mechanical watches, old books, random curiosities that catch my eye. There's something about objects with history and craftsmanship that I find deeply satisfying. Tiny gears doing their thing, pages that smell like time.

I read a lot. Mostly non-fiction, occasionally a good thriller. And I write here about distributed systems, cloud architecture, AI infrastructure, and building engineering teams. Mostly notes to my future self that others might find useful.