Bharati Kulkarni · Senior Founding Engineer
I build AI systems
and care about
the world they serve.
Building production AI systems for agriculture, healthcare, and public-good applications. Previously improved engineering systems by 200× and built platforms serving 10,000+ farmers.
Experience
Senior Founding Software Engineer · San Francisco, CA
Built grant-discovery platform serving 10,000+ farmers — cut detection time from weeks to near real-time.
Designed the core Python/Flask backend for an AI-powered grant-matching platform integrating LLMs and RAG pipelines. Built and owned all infrastructure from scratch — ECS clusters, CI/CD, observability, auth, and payments. Second engineer.
Software Engineering Intern · Natick, MA
Delivered a 200× runtime improvement — reduced an 8-hour script to under 2 minutes.
Optimized a MATLAB code coverage script through parallelization. Applied OOP principles and the Singleton Design Pattern to improve scalability across the engineering toolchain.
Software Developer · Pune, India
Reduced client onboarding time by 80% and cut deployment time by 30% through automation.
Built analytics applications for real-time data access. Designed event-driven microservices with Kafka for high-volume trade processing. Automated CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins.
Education
Aug 2022 – Dec 2023
University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign
Master of Computer Science
GPA 4.0 / 4.0
Jul 2015 – Jul 2019
Savitribai Phule
Pune University
Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science
GPA 9.15 / 10.0
I want to work on problems that matter — agriculture, health, and the planet.
Projects
Maai — The Bollywood Project
2nd place · Stanford · Garje Marathi Hackathon
"Could AI help writers overcome the blank-page problem by structuring narrative through the classic Five-Act structure?"
An AI-powered story builder that guides creators through Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution. Built multilingual support to break language barriers for global storytellers. Integrated OpenAI Assistants API for advanced narrative generation.
AGROW
Semi-Finalist · IBM WiT-ACE Hackathon 2021
"Could a WhatsApp chatbot make agricultural support systems accessible to non-English-speaking farmers across India?"
Led architecture and development of a Python Flask + Angular web app using Open Data Gov APIs. Built a WhatsApp ChatBot with Twilio and Google DialogFlow for intent understanding, and IBM Watson for language translation — making agricultural support accessible to farmers in their native languages.
Shramik-Bal
Finalist · IBM WiT-ACE Hackathon 2020
"Could a mobile-first employment portal connect informal laborers in India with formal work opportunities at scale?"
Spearheaded architecture and development of a cross-platform mobile application connecting informal laborers with employers across India. Designed data persistence on IBM Cloud DB2 to support the marketplace.
Beyond the Code
I write about AI and the internet on Substack.
I think about food systems, healthcare, and climate.
I photograph ordinary things.
I want to work with people who are smart, humble, and building toward a mission.
Contact
Let's build
something
that matters.
I'm interested in early-stage AI companies working on problems with real-world impact — agriculture, healthcare, sustainability. If that sounds like your team, I'd love to talk.
bmk15897@gmail.com