Sushant Lokhande

Software engineer across full stack, ML, and the systems underneath. I'm at my best turning messy, ambitious problems into software that's fast, reliable, and genuinely usable.

Open to full-time Software, ML, and AI Engineering roles across the US. Let's build something together.

01 — open source

My open source contributions.

02 — projects

Things I've built.

Proxima

The index that beats the libraries

Everyone imports a vector search library. I wrote my own in C++ and made it win. It answers nearest neighbor queries 1.8 times faster than hnswlib and 2.5 times faster than FAISS, at 0.999 recall, on a single thread.

  • C++17
  • SIMD/AVX2
  • pybind11
  • CMake
  • Python

view case study →

Relay

The LLM gateway that remembers

A gateway that remembers what your model already said. It matches prompts by meaning, not exact text, so 78 percent of requests skip the model entirely and the typical answer comes back in 44 milliseconds. The memory runs on Proxima.

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • asyncio
  • SQLite
  • Proxima (C++)

view case study →

Autograde AI

The TA that never sleeps

The grading platform I designed after 400+ Java and Python submissions landed on my desk as a TA. Six specialized agents grade in parallel under Temporal orchestration, a confidence gate routes only the shaky grades to a human, and it runs local-first, so student work never leaves the machine.

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • Temporal
  • Kafka
  • gRPC

view case study →

Image-Based Malware Classification

Malware Mugshots

My thesis. I turned malware files into pictures and taught three vision models to recognize the family on sight. They vote together and agree 94 percent of the time across 17 families. It became a co-authored paper, now under review.

  • Python
  • PyTorch
  • OpenCV
  • ViT
  • Docker

view case study →

Reel Rank

Describe a vibe, get movies

A two-stage hybrid movie recommender, built the way production systems are. A two-tower neural model retrieves candidates through Proxima, my own C++ vector search engine; a neural ranker reorders them. It answers free-text requests like 'a slow-burn sci-fi like Arrival but funnier' and includes movies in theaters this week.

  • PyTorch
  • FastAPI
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Proxima (C++ HNSW)

view case study →

HNSW Lab

Watch the search walk

Vector search does not scan your data, it walks a graph. This runs the real HNSW algorithm on points you can see and replays the walk hop by hop, so you can watch a query fall through the layer stack and land on its neighbors. Click to move the query, drag the sliders, break it on purpose.

  • TypeScript
  • Canvas
  • HNSW
  • Zero dependencies

view case study →

Graph Connect

Six Degrees

A social platform that thinks in relationships. It keeps 50 thousand connections in a graph database and answers who knows who in two hops, with profiles and content living in their own store alongside.

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • TypeScript
  • Neo4j
  • MongoDB

view case study →

AI Learning Aggregator

Cited, Not Guessed

A study assistant that refuses to make things up. Every answer is pulled from real source material and arrives with citations, and it stays quiet when it genuinely does not know.

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • OpenAI
  • Vector embeddings
  • Docker

view case study →

Melody Metrics

What makes a song a hit

A million messy music records that shared no common keys. I joined them with C++ MapReduce on a Hadoop cluster, then asked the clean data what actually makes a song popular.

  • C++
  • Python
  • Hadoop
  • MapReduce
  • Hive

view case study →

Multimodal Palmprint Authentication

Show of Hands

Contactless identity from the palm of your hand. Four models study every scan and vote on the verdict, and together they reach 99.75 percent AUC.

  • Python
  • PyTorch
  • OpenCV
  • FastAPI
  • Docker

view case study →

Kairo

Zero to shipped in a week

An AI patient assistant that talks back, in text and in voice. I took it from an empty folder to a shipped product in under a week, working entirely AI native.

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • OpenAI

view case study →

TCP Sliding Window Simulator

TCP, from Scratch

I rebuilt TCP by hand over raw sockets. The handshake, the sliding window, the retransmissions when packets vanish, all of it, with a live dashboard watching every packet move.

  • Python
  • Sockets
  • TCP

view case study →

03 — journey

Where I've been.

University of Mumbai

University of Mumbai

GPA 3.9 / 4.0

BE, Computer Engineering

Aug 2019 — May 2023

  • · Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, DBMS
  • · Computer Networks, Computer Architecture, Compilers, Distributed Computing
  • · Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Cryptography & System Security
San José State University

San José State University

GPA 3.8 / 4.0

MS, Computer Science

Aug 2024 — May 2026

  • · Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Algorithms
  • · Computer Communication Systems, Database Systems, NoSQL, Biometric Security with AI
Trivia Softwares

Trivia Softwares

Software Engineer Intern

Nov 2021 — Jan 2022

Turito

Turito

Software Engineer

Jun 2022 — Oct 2023

San José State University

San José State University

Graduate Assistant

Aug 2025 — May 2026

04 — research

Research & awards.

Paper · under review

Image-Based Techniques and Ensemble Soft Voting for Malware Classification

S. Lokhande, F. Di Troia, M. Juracek, M. Stamp · 2026

Conference

Comprehensive Big Data Analytics Dashboard on Chats

Presented at ICICN 2023, Mumbai, India

Scholarship

Spartan Scholar

San José State University · awarded for academic excellence

Felicitation

Consistent High Rank

University of Mumbai · felicitated for holding a top rank across 7 straight semesters

05 — skills

What I work with.

Languages

  • Python
  • C++
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • SQL
  • Java
  • C
  • Swift

Machine Learning

  • PyTorch
  • scikit-learn
  • OpenCV
  • NumPy & Pandas
  • CNNs
  • Ensemble learning
  • CUDA (PyTorch)

LLM & GenAI

  • RAG
  • Vector embeddings
  • Multi-agent orchestration
  • OpenAI & Anthropic APIs
  • Ollama & vLLM
  • Semantic caching
  • Prompt engineering
  • Hugging Face

Web, Mobile & APIs

  • React
  • React Native
  • Next.js
  • FastAPI
  • Flask
  • Django
  • Node.js
  • REST & webhooks
  • GraphQL
  • gRPC
  • asyncio
  • JWT auth
  • SSE streaming

Data & Storage

  • PostgreSQL
  • PL/SQL
  • DBA
  • MongoDB
  • Neo4j
  • Qdrant
  • Redis
  • SQLite
  • MinIO (S3)
  • Hadoop, Hive & HBase

Systems & Tooling

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Kafka
  • Temporal
  • AWS (EC2)
  • CI/CD
  • Linux
  • OpenTelemetry
  • Prometheus & Grafana
  • pybind11 & CMake
  • pytest
  • Cursor & Claude Code

06 — about

A little about me.

Sushant Lokhande

I'm fascinated by the gap between a great idea and a system that actually holds up at scale. That gap is where I like to work, building software where performance, reliability, and intelligence meet.

I recently finished my Master's in Computer Science at San José State University. My research on image-based malware classification became a co-authored paper, now under review, and somewhere in that work I fell for building intelligent systems that survive the real world, not just the lab.

Before grad school I was a Software Engineer on an EdTech platform serving 70K+ users, building Python microservices, chasing down latency, and shipping features that thousands of learners actually used. The problems I enjoy most sit right where tough engineering constraints meet a simple, intuitive experience.

Outside of work I like taking systems apart to really understand them. Lately that meant writing a vector search engine from scratch in C++ and an LLM gateway that runs on top of it, just to learn how modern AI infrastructure works under the hood. I ship something small almost every day; building is how I learn.

I'm looking for full-time Software, Machine Learning, and AI Engineering roles where I can build scalable systems that solve real problems. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and open to relocation.