I don't just maintain systems — I grow them. Three years scaling the backend at The Raley's Companies — a multi-banner grocery network plus a farm-to-door subscription business serving 2M+ active users. Building new modules, shipping data pipelines, performance refactors, and integrating the tech that keeps it all connected. You can reach out to me at contact@kamblenikhil.com

Some things about me:

• Lives in California. Grew up in Pune, India.
• Studied at MIT Pune and IU Bloomington.
• Currently at Fieldera | The Raley's Companies for 4 years, focusing on Backend Development, Data Engineering, and Systems Integration.
• My current role sits at an unusual intersection — two orgs, entirely different business models, same engineer. The context-switching is a feature, not a bug.
• Off the clock: coffee, piano, tennis, and whatever rabbit hole I fell into this week.

Some thoughts and directions:

• I embrace laziness — the productive kind. If I find myself doing something five times, that's a system failure, not a workflow.
• The flip side: automating too early compounds confusion faster than it saves time. I wait until I understand the process before I eliminate it.
• Great products aren't designed, they're evolved
• I build feedback loops early — the gap between what was planned and what's actually useful is always wider than anyone admits.
• Everything I build points toward something with obvious value. That narrows my funnel deliberately, and I'm fine with it.
• The foundation has to be strong — trends fade, fundamentals don't.
• I use AI for productivity on boilerplate, but I won't let it become a reason to stop understanding what's happening under the hood.