Nikki Vinayan

Senior Software Engineer, Search

About Me

I am most skilled in: search and data

Experience

GIPHY

Senior Software Engineer

October 2019 - Present

GIPHY

GIPHY is the best way to search, share, discover and create GIFs on the Internet.

Giphy was aquired by Meta and later sold to Shutterstock. As a Search Engineer at GIPHY, I have contributed significantly to enhancing the search experience for a global audience through several key projects:

  • Development and Expansion of Trending Feed. I led the development of a dynamic trending feed that offers push-based recommendations, using robust data pipelines and Elastic MapReduce (EMR) to ensure real-time delivery. This feature has become a key product, enhancing user experience with personalized content.
  • User Search Enablement. I played a crucial role in enabling users to upload and search their content on GIPHY using their usernames, improving user interaction with the platform.
  • ML-Based Content Moderation Prototype. I collaborated on prototyping a machine learning-based content moderation system using Python, Seldon, Luigi, and Scikit. This project aimed to improve the platform’s safety and inclusivity, ultimately being adopted by the content moderation team to enhance productivity and reduce exposure to harmful content.

Jet.com

Senior Software Engineer

At Jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart, I focused on developing end-to-end solutions for search functionality. This included architecting solutions, ranking search results, creating analyst tools, managing search indexing, data pipelines, and deploying models. The main project involved building NLP libraries for Query Expansion and SKU understanding, which significantly improved search metrics by integrating machine learning into search service. Additionally, I was involved in various other responsibilities, such as:

  • Use of A/B testing to assess the performance of models and algorithms at scale.
  • developed models and criteria for multi-dimensional analysis.
  • data pipelines to track customer interactions on Jet’s web and mobile platforms.
  • participated in an on-call rotation, handling deployment and load testing, using tools like Splunk and New Relic.
  • mentored new hires, conducted technical interviews
  • enabled CI/CD deployment pipelines, including migrating F# microservices to DotNetCore Docker services.

Education

Stanford School of Engineering

Artificial Intelligence Professional Program

2021 -2022

I completed three rigorous courses adapted from Stanford’s on-campus graduate curriculum, covering topics such as AI principles and techniques, natural language processing with deep learning, and machine learning with graphs. These courses, taught by leading experts in the field, have equipped me with the knowledge and skills to tackle complex AI problems and implement cutting-edge algorithms effectively.

University of Melbourne

MSc Computer Science

2014 - 2015

The coursework comprised a blend of Distributed Systems and Declarative languages. Throughout my time there, I learned about Distributed Systems, Distributed Algorithms, Cluster, and Cloud Computing. My thesis focused on “Cache-based Path Routing in Roads.” In my spare time, I served as a committee member of the Women in ICT club, where I held the position of President. Additionally, I served as the Computer Science Graduate Ambassador, facilitating “Introduction to Computing” sessions for high school girls and women. Concurrently, I volunteered with Robogals. Notably, I was selected as the International Grace Hopper Scholar in 2014 and was a finalist for the Google Anita Borg Scholarship the same year.

A Little More About Me

Alongside my interests in search and software engineering some of my other interests and hobbies are:

  • Comic/Dark Fantasy geek esp:- Neil Gaiman,Terry Pratchett.
  • Giving back to the community through volunteering
  • Continous learning - NLP, AI, MLOps!