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Hi, I'm Himanshu.

My journey began in Hyderabad, India where I first became fascinated by technology through video games. I was always amazed by what people could create.

Fast forward to today - I'm a Senior software engineer at Google NYC with 6+ YOE working on projects that empower creators and learners around the world. I'm driven by a deep-seated belief that technology can be a powerful force for good - especially in the realm of education.

Throughout my career, I have consistently demonstrated a commitment to high-quality, sustainable, and scalable engineering practices. I am passionate about building products that empower others to learn and create.

I have worked on many different products at Google ranging from startup-like product experimentation and ideation all the way to supporting long standing, high availability services for major consumer and business-facing products.

Beyond the code, I'm a lifelong learner with a passion for CrossFit, Poi spinning, and video games. I believe in continuous growth both personally and professionally - and I'm always eager to take on new challenges.

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Bridging the Gap Between AI and User Experience

I am a senior software engineer with expertise in front-end development and AI integration.

I excel at building intuitive and engaging user interfaces while leveraging the power of AI to enhance functionality and user experience. I'm passionate about creating innovative solutions that solve real-world problems and am dedicated to helping businesses achieve their goals through high-quality prototyping and strategic product thinking.

Core skills

  • Front-End Development
    • Proficient in web UI development and building seamless, responsive user experiences across devices.
    • Experienced in Android & iOS cross-platform development ensuring consistent user experience across various platforms.
  • AI Integration
    • Expertise in integrating generative AI into existing applications, enhancing user engagement and learning experiences.
    • Skilled in developing AI-powered tools that provide contextual and personalized responses, driving user satisfaction.
  • Product Strategy & Prototyping
    • Strong product thinking abilities with a focus on understanding user needs and translating them into actionable insights.
    • Proven ability to rapidly prototype and iterate on ideas, enabling businesses to validate concepts and refine product strategies.
  • Reliability Ops and Uptime Monitoring
    • Experienced in implementing systems and processes to ensure the reliability and continuous availability of applications.
    • Familiar with providing on-call support, responding to incidents and ensuring the stability and performance of applications for users.
  • Quality Iteration and Evals: Strong focus on quality assurance through iterative testing and evaluations, ensuring that applications meet the highest standards of reliability and performance.

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  • YouTube Ask Button

    Enhancing active learning with generative AI driven tutoring

    The YouTube AI Ask Button empowers premium users to engage deeper with video content by asking context-aware questions and receive contextual and personal AI-generated responses.

    I was a core IC contributing to the project across its entire lifecycle, from conceptualization to implementation to deployment. I worked on Designs, implementing the web and mobile UI, implementing privacy-compliant logging, the serving infrastructure, and model quality.

    While work is still ongoing, we were able to build a tool that:

    • Improved user engagement and satisfcation by providing a deeper learning experience
    • Enhanced the value proposition of YouTube Premium, driving growth
    • Positioned Youtube & Google as an innovative leader in AI-powered education

      Technical skills

    • Web UI development
    • Android & iOS cross-platform development
    • Serving architecture
    • Logging compliance for Privacy and legal
    • Reliability ops and Uptime monitoring
    • Quality iteration and evals

      Challenges

    • Delivering accurate and helpful answers at scale, on any learning video
    • Balancing the AI capabilities with user expectations
    • Implementing the UI such that it doesn't negatively impact user experience
    • Improving on quality as capabilities evolve
    • Ensuring the tool remains online 24/7

  • YouTube Quiz posts

    Empowering learning creators through quiz-driven video engagement

    The YouTube Quiz Posts feature allows content creators to add interactive quizzes to their videos (like this one!), fostering audience engagement and participation.

    I led a small team to deliver the complete creator and viewer experience across the creator studio and youtube apps, as well as the website. This included design reviews, android and web UI implementation, database design, reliability ops, and roadmap planning.

    • Helped creators by giving them new tools to assess audience understanding and encourage active learning
    • Increased viewer engagement with a more interactive learning experience
    • Demonstrated YouTube's commitment to supporting educational content

      Technical skills

    • Full stack development (Android app + Website)
    • Database design and storage
    • Roadmap planning and team management

      Challenges

    • Implementing a UI that doesn't interrupt the YouTube watch flow
    • Creating a consistent experience across the creator journey
    • A LOT of organizational complexity between PAs

  • GCP Logging UI

    Simplifying enterprise-level troubleshooting with an intuitive logs viewer

    The Google Cloud Platform Logging UI lets businesses monitor and analyze application logs within the Google Cloud ecosystem.

    I worked on designing and implementing large parts of the UI to improve performance and build high priority customer-facing features. Namely:

    • Logs histograms
    • Tail -f style log streaming
    • Time-based filtering
    • AngularJS Angular 9 migration

    This project demanded close attention to user needs, translating ambigious user asks into actionable insights a well-thought-out UI.

    I also provided oncall support, ensuring reliability and performance for enterprise users.

  • YouTube Courses

    Building the infrastructure for a transformative learning experience on YouTube

    The YouTube Courses platform provides creators with the tools to deliver structured learning experiences. I developed core infrastructure components, including a robust data pipeline to manage course-related information, reliability frameworks for consistent uptime, and an engaging UI for course videos.

    A significant aspect of this project was ensuring the scalability and reliability of the data pipeline, which handles a vast amount of information from numerous courses. By implementing rigorous testing and monitoring practices, I contributed to the platform's stability, meeting the high standards of YouTube's global user base. My work reflects a strong commitment to delivering infrastructure and UI solutions that support transformative educational content.

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Let's Connect!

I'm always excited to collaborate on new projects where I can make a meaningful impact. Feel free to reach out to me via email or LinkedIn.

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Sharing My Journey

I like to share my experiences and learnings from the world. While my blog is currently on hiatus, you can explore my previous posts covering topics such as:

Check out more on my blog here

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