Bridging the Gap: Kshitij Patil Discusses the Role of Software Design at Start Ups and Multinational Corporations

Kshitij Patil, a seasoned software developer with seven years of experience across diverse fields, offers insights into the crucial role of software design in both start-up environments and established multinational corporations. His expertise spans computer vision, computer graphics, game engine development, cloud computing, microservices, and AWS infrastructure, providing a unique perspective on the industry.

Patil's experience includes a significant tenure at Amazon, where he focused on payments and accounting systems for Amazon's delivery partners and service providers across multiple countries. Notably, he built services to support the Fleet Improvement Fund and automated accounting processes for Amazon orders delivered by Delivery Partners (DPs) and Delivery Service Providers (DSPs) in Germany, Netherlands, Austria, and Australia. He also streamlined driver tip transactions in the US and developed a novel feature to support legal entity switching for stations in Germany.

Currently, Patil works within the Risc team at Amazon, contributing to the development of services that support Machine Learning models and adjacent services aimed at promoting safe and compliant products for buyers while enhancing Seller Partner experiences. His current project focuses on recovering penalties from sellers who list non-compliant or unsafe products on the Amazon platform.

Prior to Amazon, Patil's work at Concurrents Inc and Primal Space Systems involved leveraging Unreal Engine to develop innovative game streaming technology using "GPEG." He also contributed to the development of complex computational geometry algorithms for calculating from-region visibility of assets in a 3D environment, a project he cites with particular pride.

Patil emphasizes the importance of his role in designing and building software to support a company's products. This involves active participation in brainstorming sessions with product managers, program managers, senior engineers, and fellow software developers to design and architect effective software solutions. Beyond development, he actively mentors junior engineers, fostering their growth as software developers.

His daily workflow involves interacting with various IDEs to write code in multiple programming languages, including C++, Java, Python, SQL, C#, and JavaScript. Primarily focused on backend development, he supports the business logic that runs on servers and interacts with databases like DynamoDB to manage data.

"Every application, regardless of the device it's on, relies on a server in the background," Patil explains. "My work has been focused on supporting everyday use cases for customers." From prototyping software for streaming games to working on payment and accounting systems at Amazon, and now contributing to the safety and compliance of products sold on Amazon, Patil's experience showcases the diverse and impactful nature of software development in both emerging and established tech environments. He speaks to Newsbreak about software design, computer graphics and working with data at a multinational corporation.

What made you first interested in software design?

I think I was first introduced to a programming language called QBasic in my seventh grade. My school had started a computer club where students could learn QBasic and build a 2D graphics based project till the end of the year. I was always the first one to volunteer for any extracurricular activity and I joined the club. At the end of the year, my teammate and I created a project on “solar systems” and that was the first time software got my interest. I ended up working on two more QBasic projects and joining the computer quiz club in the next 2 years.

Were you a gamer, or was your first job something that happened by chance?

I wouldn’t say I was a gamer. I have been playing games since I was young. It started off with dave, wolf and other ms dos games. In my undergrad, I played a lot of real time strategy games like Age of Empires and dota.

My interest in my field comes from my passion for geometry and linear algebra. I have always been passionate about geometry and linear algebra since school days. I was good at it as well as I got multiple awards and accolades in extracurricular math competitions. During my undergrad I intuitively liked how geometry and software combined to create the field of computer vision. My interest was solidified when I worked as an intern at Tonbo Imaging which gave me real world experience with computer vision applications. When I came for my masters, I took multiple computer graphics courses as they were a direct extension of my interests. I went from the 2D world of computer vision to the 3D world of computer graphics. With Computer graphics, I studied game engine development, advanced computer graphics for games as well. I was fortunate that during my summer break after my first year at Masters at North Carolina State University, that I interviewed at Primal Space Systems Inc which was right in the middle of the centennial campus. That summer internship eventually led to my part time job for a year at the same place and then full time after my masters.

Can you tell us a little about the improvements you made to the games you worked on, which improved their streaming?

At Primal Space Systems Inc and Concurrents Inc, we were building a novel real-time game streaming product which used proprietary GPEG technology to stream 3D assets for rendering on client machines. This approach of streaming 3D assets improved bandwidth usage as an object(3d asset) placed at multiple locations in the game needs to be streamed only once, when the player first sees it. As opposed to video based streaming approach, where everytime we see an object, we need to keep streaming the video frame continuously at atleast 60 frames per second. This is a huge improvement over video based streaming. We optimized bandwidth usage by using adaptive prediction algorithms which could stream low resolution assets over the network with high latency and stream in higher resolution assets.

Why did you decide to transition from your previous job to your current one?

While my previous job at the startup was a very rewarding experience. I worked in a fast environment with rapid prototyping, and worked on developing multiple features of the product. This gave me an opportunity to grow in my role in very less time and take ownership of major components in the product. I gained expertise in game engine development and game streaming but this is a niche field. I wanted to gain more experience in cloud services and backend development which support customers at a high scale. My current job gives me that opportunity.

What have been some of the biggest challenges you have faced in your new role?

I think the biggest challenges I faced in my new role was the high learning curve of joining an MNC after start-up. There is a vast array of internal development tools available at MNC that takes time to get used too. Multiple developers worked on multiple features at the same time which increased the scope of what a team would deliver in a given time. I had to ramp up to speed and be productive in a short amount of time.

At start-up, fewer people were developing and after spending some time, everyone knew how the entire product worked. While at MNC, there were more people each with a subset of expertise of the entire product the team supported. Getting used to the work style was I think the biggest challenge I faced.

How has it been working for a MNC? The sheer amount of data and programming must be almost overwhelming!

It's been great. I was overwhelmed at first but now I am used to it. Working with a sheer amount of data also comes with high customer impact. I get to work on complex real world problems that improve customer experience and build new products for them at a high scale. I especially enjoy the ambiguous problems and challenges that are only seen at MNC due to the huge amounts of customers the company supports.

Can you discuss the main differences between working at an MNC and for a startup?

It's hard to tell. Software industry is changing at a rapid pace with GenAI and I want to be part of this change. I am embracing this change by upskilling with new technologies involving AI and ML. I want to stay at the forefront of either developing or using the latest cutting edge AI technologies to create newer and better products for everyone.

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