HS
Specimen 01 — EngineerHyderabad · 2026 edition
Open to AI rolesHyderabad, India— IST

HardikSharma

Software Engineer 2 — MicrosoftFrontier FoundrySince 2020

I build the systems other engineers depend on. At VMware I architected the vulnerability remediation platform that scanned and patched 4,000+ datacenters. At Harness I cut reserved-instance exchange execution from eight hours to under twenty minutes. At Microsoft I work on contextual personalisation and real-time voice for Bing and OneDrive.

Six years of backend, cloud infrastructure and applied AI — mostly Java, Python and Kubernetes.

Email meRésuméGitHubLinkedIn
Portrait of Hardik Sharma
Now
Software Engineer 2, Microsoft — Frontier Foundry
Before
Harness (Cloud Cost Management) · VMware (Cloud Platform)
Focus
Distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, applied AI
4000+Datacenters scanned and patched by the vulnerability remediation platform I architectedVMware · 2020—2024
1500+Engineers registered on AlgoRush, the interview-prep platform I build and runIndependent · ongoing
50%Cut in mean incident resolution time from the script-recommendation service I builtVMware · 2020
8h → 20mReserved-instance exchange execution, after the transaction accelerator I builtHarness · 2024
01

Selected work

Things I built end to end, and that you can actually look at.

012025 —Solo

AlgoRushLive

A coding-interview prep platform for engineers who don't have six months to spare — curated problem sets, customisable practice tracks and structured roadmaps instead of an undifferentiated list of a thousand questions. Built, shipped and operated on my own, from product decisions through to deployment.

1,500+registered engineers0funding, 0 team
Open AlgoRush
1,500+Registered
engineers
022019Team lead

Smart Parking SystemSIH 2019

India has the world's fourth-largest car market and nowhere to put the cars. This system points a camera at a parking lot, runs Mask R-CNN over the frame to work out which bays are actually empty, and lets drivers reserve one from an Android app before they set off. I led a team of five; it took us to the Smart India Hackathon finals.

Top 4of 314 teams5engineers led
Mask R-CNNPythonOpenCVAndroid
Read the write-up
Mask R-CNN detection overlay marking occupied and vacant parking bays
Occupancy detection, region-of-interest overlay

Also built

03MacStorage StudioNative macOS disk analyser. Scanner runs out-of-process so a crash never takes the UI with it.Swift · GitHub ↗04zed-dbA relational database built from scratch: SQL parser, B-tree storage, query planner, transactions.Python · GitHub ↗05High-Level System DesignWorking notes on scaling, sharding and consistency. 9 stars.GitHub ↗06Low-Level System DesignDesign patterns and OO modelling worked through in Java. 5 stars.Java · GitHub ↗07Neuroevolution of Flappy BirdNeural networks evolved by genetic algorithm until the bird stops dying.Playable08Smart RocketsGenetic algorithm navigating obstacles to a target. 5 stars on GitHub.Playable09Robotics, simulations and the restWall-climbing robot, maze solver, CNC portrait plotter, quadcopter, p5.js games.Full archive →
02

Experience

Six years, three companies, one throughline: infrastructure at scale.

Microsoft

10/2025 — PresentHyderabad, India

Software Engineer 2

Frontier Foundry

  • Built an AI personalisation platform for Bing and OneDrive that adapts wallpapers to season, time of day and contextual signals, making the surface feel responsive to the person using it rather than static.
  • Developed a real-time voice assistant that infers user intent, executes tasks across services and returns conversational responses at low latency.

Harness

09/2024 — 06/2025Bangalore, India

Senior Software Engineer

Cloud Cost Management

  • Led design and implementation of a seed-based Reserved Instance optimisation workflow that automatically provisions, expands and rebalances commitments while preserving expiration timelines and maximising coverage.
  • Built a transaction execution accelerator for RI exchanges that took end-to-end execution from eight hours to under twenty minutes, through workflow orchestration, resiliency work and parallelised processing.
  • Integrated commitment and cluster optimisation engines to prioritise underutilised Reserved Instances and Savings Plans, reducing wasted cloud spend.
  • Developed a commitment inventory platform giving customers real-time visibility into RIs and Savings Plans across cloud accounts.

VMware

07/2020 — 08/2024Bangalore, India

Member of Technical Staff 3

VMware Cloud Platform

  • Architected and delivered a vulnerability remediation platform that scanned and patched infrastructure across 4,000+ datacenters, cutting operational overhead and shortening security response times.
  • Led development of a distributed fleet execution platform for secure remote execution of automation workflows across thousands of datacenters, improving operational efficiency by over 50%.
  • Built semantic search over operational data using transformer-based models, so engineers could find insights by meaning rather than exact keyword.
  • Developed automated patch orchestration, incident escalation workflows and real-time operational dashboards.
  • Built monitoring and reporting services that automated SLA computation and health tracking across critical infrastructure, removing manual reporting entirely.

VMware

01/2020 — 06/2020Bangalore, India

Software Engineering Intern

VMware Cloud Platform

  • Built an intelligent recommendation service matching operational incidents to relevant remediation scripts, cutting mean resolution time by 50%.
  • Developed a cloud-based IDE on Eclipse Che and Theia for infrastructure automation engineers to write, test and deploy scripts in one place.
03

Toolkit

What I reach for, roughly in order of how often.

Languages
JavaPythonTypeScriptSwiftSQL
Backend
Spring BootFastAPIFlaskRESTMicroservicesStackStorm
Data
PostgreSQLMongoDBElasticsearchTransformers
Cloud & infra
KubernetesDockerHelmAWSGCPGitLab CI/CD
Frontend
AngularReactHTML/CSS
Practice
AgileScrumTDDMentoring
04

Recognition

A robotics habit that never quite wore off.

2021

Exceptional Mentorship Award

VMware — for mentoring the winning team at VMware Bootcamp 2021.

2021

Spot Award

VMware — for scanning and patching the fleet during the Log4Shell response.

2021

At Our Best Award

VMware — for building the automated SLA service.

2019

Smart India Hackathon — finalist

Government of India — top 4 of 314 teams, leading a team of five with the Smart Parking System.

2018

Winner, Escalade

IIT Guwahati — first of 60 teams, wall-climbing robot.

2018

Best Innovation Award, RoboCup

Axis'18, VNIT Nagpur — among 120 teams.

2018

Third place, Meshmerize

Techfest, IIT Bombay — maze-solving robot, 314 teams.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering

Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management, Nagpur · 2016–2020 · GPA 8.86/10

05

Contact

Open to senior backend,
platform and infrastructure roles.

If you're hiring for systems that have to stay up, I'd like to hear about it. I read every email.

sharmahardik.mail@gmail.com