Software Engineer II @ American Express
Distributed Systems • Databases • Caching • AI Infrastructure
I'm a software engineer passionate about building the infrastructure behind modern software systems.
My interests lie at the intersection of distributed systems, databases, caching, and AI infrastructure. I enjoy designing reproducible experiments to understand how complex systems behave under load, why they fail, and how engineering decisions influence performance and reliability.
Outside of work, I build open-source infrastructure, conduct systems research, and write about the engineering lessons that emerge from those experiments.
An experimentation platform for distributed systems.
SlimyBug exists to help engineers build accurate mental models of distributed systems through controlled, reproducible experiments.
Instead of learning mechanisms like retry amplification, cascading failures, admission control, connection-pool saturation, and overload behavior from production incidents, SlimyBug makes them observable in a controlled environment and turns experimental evidence into trustworthy findings.
Current research includes:
- Database latency propagation
- Retry amplification
- Circuit breakers
- Retry jitter
- Connection pool capacity
- Admission control
- Signal freshness
- Overload onset
- Admission deferral
- Connection pool self-locking
Long-term vision:
- Research-grade experiments
- Reproducible experimentation methodology
- Experiment DSL & CLI
- Evidence-backed engineering findings
- A learning platform for distributed systems
Tech
Python • PostgreSQL • Docker • Prometheus • Grafana • OpenTelemetry
A research project exploring learned semantic cache eviction for LLM applications.
SmartEvict investigates lightweight learned eviction policies using reproducible experiments and real conversational workloads.
📦 Repository https://github.com/Shikha-code36/SmartEvict-Semantic-Cache-Eviction
📖 Research Artifact (DOI) https://zenodo.org/records/21643364
- Distributed Systems
- Databases
- Caching Systems
- AI Infrastructure
- Performance Engineering
- Reliability Engineering
- LLM Infrastructure
- Developer Infrastructure
I enjoy documenting experiments, engineering investigations, and the findings they produce.
I primarily write about:
- Distributed systems
- Databases & caching
- AI infrastructure
- Performance engineering
- Reliability engineering
- Software engineering
📚 Medium
https://pandeyshikha075.medium.com
Python • Go • C++ • JavaScript
FastAPI • Flask • PostgreSQL • Redis • Kafka • RabbitMQ
Docker • AWS • GCP • Prometheus • Grafana • OpenTelemetry
OpenAI • Claude • LangChain • Hugging Face • pgvector
- Database internals
- Cache design & eviction algorithms
- Distributed systems internals
- AI serving infrastructure
- Reliability engineering
- Experimentation frameworks
🌐 Portfolio https://pandeyshikha.me/
💼 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/36-shikha-pandey/
📝 Medium https://pandeyshikha075.medium.com
📧 Email shikha.py36@gmail.com
Build systems. Run experiments. Produce evidence. Share findings.