Currently scaling 200PB+ at TikTok USDS JV

Software Engineer
building at scale.

I'm Akshay — Software Engineer on the Big Data Platform at TikTok USDS JV, where I own and scale Spark, ClickHouse, and Doris clusters that power analytics over 200+ petabytes. By night, an MS CS student at Georgia Tech specializing in AI. Previously at Smucker's, Cognizant, and Scale AI.

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San Jose, CA · Bay Area agona6@gatech.edu Georgia Tech · MS CS, AI
Akshay Gona
AG
TikTok USDS JV Full-time SWE
Apache Spark ClickHouse Apache Doris Kubernetes Kafka Hadoop / HDFS Iceberg Trino Airflow Python Scala Java Go SQL Terraform Prometheus Apache Spark ClickHouse Apache Doris Kubernetes Kafka Hadoop / HDFS Iceberg Trino Airflow Python Scala Java Go SQL Terraform Prometheus
Experience

A few places I've shipped.

Five years of building — from data labeling pipelines and generative-AI tooling to enterprise platforms and big-data infrastructure.

Software Engineer
Big Data Platform · Spark / ClickHouse / Doris at 200PB+
Software Engineer Intern
U.S. Data Security · Big Data Platform team
Software Developer Intern
Built Revere (alerting) & Prometheus (genAI for R&D)
Generative AI Extern
Built Genie — a Python package for training generative models
AI/ML Intern — Training Data
Fine-tuning LLMs (GPT-3.5, BERT, T5) for downstream tasks
SWE Development Intern
Workato dashboards & ETL for AT&T and Wells Fargo
Projects

Things I've built on the side.

Bits and pieces from late nights, weekends, and side quests — tools, experiments, and study companions.

PokerProCalc
PokerProCalc

Poker odds calculator and range-prediction tool with a lightweight UI for live decision making.

Python Probability
tExtractor
tExtractor

Pulls clean, structured text out of PDFs and images using OCR pipelines.

Python Tesseract OCR
Leetcode
Leetcode

A long-running collection of my LeetCode, HackerRank, and competitive-programming solutions.

DSA Practice
PNDaptitude
PNDaptitude

Notebook-style deep dive into Pandas and the foundations of practical data science in Python.

Pandas Numpy Jupyter
ALGaptitude
ALGaptitude

From-scratch implementations of classic algorithms — sorts, graph traversals, DP, and more.

Algorithms C / Java
DogImageClassifier
DogImageClassifier

Pre-trained CNN, fine-tuned on a custom dataset, for classifying dog breeds from photos.

PyTorch Transfer learning
EasyHeap
EasyHeap

A hand-rolled best-fit memory allocator written entirely in C — explicit free lists, coalescing, the works.

C Systems
SDKU
SDKU

Sudoku validity checker in C. Tight, fast, and a great exercise in array indexing.

C Puzzles
This site
This site

The portfolio you're reading right now — hand-built with vanilla HTML / CSS / JS, no framework.

HTML CSS Vanilla JS
About

A bit about me.

Engineer who got hooked on big-data systems and never quite looked back.

Akshay Gona

In January 2026, I started full-time at TikTok USDS JV on the Big Data Platform team — the same team I interned on in 2025, now under the U.S. data-security joint venture spun out alongside Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. I'm based in San Jose, in the heart of the Bay Area.

I graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in December 2025 with degrees in Computer Sciences, Data Science, and Mathematics. I'm now also a part-time MS student at Georgia Tech in Computer Science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence.

Day-to-day, I work on Spark, ClickHouse, and Doris clusters — owning, scaling, and optimizing them so analytics workloads over 200+ petabytes stay fast, cheap, and reliable.

Before TikTok, I shipped serverless alerting tooling and fine-tuned generative models at The J.M. Smucker Co., built a generative-AI Python package at Cognizant, and trained LLMs at Scale AI.

Outside of work, I play volleyball and golf, and am currently training for a full marathon.

Now

Software Engineer @ TikTok USDS JV · Big Data Platform · San Jose, CA.

Education

MS CS (AI) @ Georgia Tech · BS @ UW–Madison '25 (CS, Data Science, Math).

Focus

Big-data platforms, query engines, distributed storage, AI systems.

Off the clock

Volleyball, golf, and training for a full marathon.

Contact

Let's talk shop.

Always down to chat about big-data systems, distributed compute, side projects, or just trade book recs.

Best reachable via email or LinkedIn.

Email agona6@gatech.edu LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/agona GitHub github.com/akshaygona