OnlyWallpapers
featuredA macOS app that turns any .mp4 into a continuously animated desktop wallpaper, spanning every display, with live filters, framing controls and opt-in weather moods.
Currently: Forward Deployed Engineer, Aurora Designs.·Shipping: OnlyJobs, OnlyMoney
I'm a forward-deployed engineer. I embed with client engineering teams and take loosely-defined problems all the way from discovery to production and adoption. Over the years that's meant building platforms and apps across construction, esports, recruitment, real estate, healthcare, e-commerce, logistics, and a whole lot more.
Currently Forward Deployed Engineer, Aurora Designs
Based Remote
Open to Forward Deployed Engineer engagements
Built a startup in my second year of college. Five years later, a Google-funded company acquired it.
Featured in Bangalore Mirror, YourStory, Deccan Chronicle
Where I've worked
Fourteen years, a startup exit, and a lot of shipping.
- 2024–Present
Forward Deployed Engineer at Aurora Designs↗
Forward-deployed builder: I embed with client teams and ship ambiguous problems all the way to production and real adoption.
- 2023–2024
Principal Engineer at Fearn Co↗
Sole engineer on a large, inherited marketplace-management codebase. Rebuilt a tangled, poorly-structured system into something coherent and maintainable. Company closed after acquisition by a larger competitor.
- 2021–2023
Team Lead - Marketing / Growth Engineer at Andela↗
Moved a global talent marketplace off a sprawling WordPress setup onto Contentful + Gatsby. Led an external agency team and personally handled the third-party integration work.
- 2018–2021
Team Lead at Players' Lounge (ex Y Combinator)↗
Migrated a legacy PHP codebase to Node and React, then grew into owning a core vertical generating ~$80K/day in revenue.
- 2017–2018
Senior Software Engineer at Spectral Insights India Pvt Ltd
Sole front-end engineer across a suite of diagnostic imaging platforms for a cancer hospital. Five products unified by a licensing system I built.
- 2017–2018
Co-founder & CTO at Dust
- 2012–2017
CEO & Founder at Binox
Conceived and built Binox intOS, a patented "internet operating system" with a full app ecosystem. Its DareDeliver product was acquired by a Google-funded company.
How I work
I build with AI, but on rails. Across dozens of shipped projects I've refined a phased, guardrailed workflow that pairs Claude Code and Codex: one plans and implements, the other independently scopes and reviews. Speed without losing the rigor.
- PLAN
I scope the work, then have a second model independently co-scope it with zero shared context, so blind spots surface before any code is written.
- PAIR
The implementing model writes against a tight, context-rich brief. I review every diff.
- EXECUTE
Changes ship in small, verifiable milestones, each gated by build, type, and lint checks.
- REVIEW
An independent model reviews the full state like a PR reviewer, flagging blockers before anything merges.
It isn't a product. It's a discipline. The rigor a good engineering team runs on, encoded into how I drive the tools.
Things I've shipped
Showing 13 of 53 projects since 2011
2026
Bini
featuredA personal AI assistant running on a refurbished Dell laptop: voice and text, home automation, CCTV analysis, and a built relationship graph.
Maison de Medusa
featuredSole developer for a Pilates and matcha café: built the marketing website, member management portal, inventory and staff admin, and a social-media asset-management portal.
NearlyPerfect
featuredFull-stack hotel-booking platform: revenue management, auth, PMS, OTA integrations, and admin dashboard.
OnlyJobs
featuredAI job-matching platform scraping 30+ sources daily and scoring candidates on culture and fit.
OnlyMoney
featuredPersonal AI finance app that scans accounts, flags issues, and surfaces patterns. Hosted locally via Tailscale.
ScraperAPI
featuredEmbedded with a large-scale web-scraping company: raised success rates on hard targets, then built the internal knowledge layer the whole company now runs on.
Torc
featuredLed a team building a self-service, AI-powered platform for hiring talent by real attributes instead of keywords, with matching at scale as the hard part.
AI Operating System for an EV
featuredThe in-vehicle AI operating system for an electric vehicle at a stealth automotive startup, the intelligence layer, with companion web and mobile apps.
Twinstake
featuredAsset management portal for a leading crypto staking provider.
Players' Lounge
featuredLed the migration from a legacy Yii PHP stack to Node, React, and Lambda for an ex-Y Combinator esports head-to-head challenge platform.
Daredeliver
featuredThe 24x7 same-day delivery service in Bangalore that attracted the acquisition of my startup by a Google-funded company.
Binox intOS
featuredAn internet operating system with a social network core, app ecosystem, and a patent filed in India and the US.
What I reach for
A curated current stack, plus the long tail of things I have used in anger.
ReactTypeScriptNode.jsViteTailwind CSSNext.jsGraphQLPostgreSQLAWSClaude CodeCodexClaude SonnetElevenLabs
Used in anger
Frontend
ReactReact NativeTypeScriptJavaScriptNext.jsGatsbyHTMXReduxMobXTailwind CSSStyled ComponentsSASS/SCSSLessBootstrapjQueryCSS/HTMLThreeJSChartJSPaperJSOpenSeadragon
Backend
Node.jsExpressNestJSPythonFastAPIDjangoRuby on RailsPHPLaravelSymfonySilexGoJavaC++
Data
PostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBMongo ClustersRedisGraphQLSQLRobo3T
DevOps & Infra
AWSAzureHerokuDockerNetlifyVercelFly.ioTailscaleGitWebpackVite
Mobile
React NativeFlutterKotlinCordova Phonegap
AI Engineering
AnthropicClaude SonnetOpenAIOpenAI RealtimeElevenLabsGemini APIMCPVoice AIProvider-Agnostic FallbacksML Fundamentals
AI-Assisted Dev
Claude CodeCodexCursorAI Orchestration
Tools & Process
FirebaseTwilioContentfulChrome ExtensionJiraFigmaAgileMarketo
Design & Other
Adobe PhotoshopPhotographyVisual C#XAML
Where I studied
- 2014–2016
Master of Science in Computer Science
Christ University, Bangalore
- 2010–2013
Bachelor in Computer Applications
National Degree College, Bangalore
Outside the terminal
StartupsMusicAIGadgetsTravelAutomobilesGames
Writing
Selected essays
- Jan 2026
I said f*ck it and built my own job finder portal
“We’re sorry, Anoop, that it’s come to this,” the CEO said to me one evening a few years ago while on call with me and the company’s product owner. “Revenue has…
- Feb 2025
There’s no industry like the software industry when it comes to knowledge sharing
Well, maybe not no other industry, but the software world is definitely at the forefront of knowledge-sharing. Over the past few years, I’ve been slowly…
- Jul 2020
How To Insult An Indian Remote Candidate
As the title suggests, I’m an Indian. I’ve been working remotely for nearly 10 years and during this time, I’ve had the opportunity to be a senior developer, a…
- Jan 2020
How to start a failure startup — The Fourth Mistake
If you haven’t read the previous part: How to start a failure startup — The Third Mistake How to start a failure startup — The Fourth Mistake Preface: While…
Let's talk
I'm open to engineering engagements that capture the spirit of building and solving hard problems, ideally remote, ideally something ambitious. If that sounds like what you're working on, I'd love to hear from you.