Manas.
Not literally. I build backend systems so reliable, you forget they exist. Currently turning clicks into bookings at Headout. Previously shipping trading infrastructure at Morgan Stanley.
Seven years of making
complex things simple.
When millions of people book a sunset cruise in Santorini or skip-the-line tickets at the Louvre, my code is what makes it feel instant. I lead engineering at Headout, where every millisecond of latency is a booking lost — and I don't lose many.
Before that, I spent two years at Morgan Stanley building trading systems where "move fast and break things" means something very different. That's where I learned to obsess over reliability, correctness, and the kind of code that lets you sleep at night.
B.M.S. College of Engineering, Bengaluru — Information Technology, Class of 2019.
Shipping Code
Worldwide
Powered
The places that
shaped my craft.
Headout
Own the conversion funnel end-to-end. Every API call between "I want this" and "You're booked" runs through systems I lead. When checkout conversion ticks up 0.5%, that's millions in revenue.
Took ownership of payments and distribution — the systems where money actually moves. Built real-time inventory pipelines that made "sold out" errors drop dramatically.
Joined a fast-moving team and shipped from day one. Got deep into Kotlin and distributed systems, learned what "scale" actually means when real users are waiting.
Software Consultant
Morgan Stanley- Built trading APIs that handled automatic purchase and redemption — the kind where a bug doesn't mean a bad UX, it means real money lost
- Introduced TDD and automated deployments to a team that previously deployed manually. Bugs caught in staging went from "sometimes" to "almost always"
- Designed data pipelines that sourced, validated, and transformed financial data from multiple providers into a single clean output
Technical Mentor
Newton School- Helped aspiring engineers crack the code — literally. Mentored on full-stack development, DSA, and the art of not panicking in interviews
What I bring
to the table.
Backend — where I live
Kotlin, Java, Spring Boot, jOOQ, Hibernate, gRPC, REST APIs, Microservices
Infrastructure — what keeps it running
Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, AWS (SQS, S3, EC2), Gradle, Jenkins, CI/CD
Data — the source of truth
MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, BigQuery, Flyway Migrations, Query Optimization
Frontend — when needed
React, TypeScript, React Native, JavaScript, Next.js, HTML/CSS
Got an idea?
I've got the code.
Building something ambitious? Need someone who's done it at scale? Or just want to argue about Kotlin vs Go? I'm in.
manas.rishav@gmail.com