Nilkamal Thakuria
Software Engineer
I build systems that scale — from network OS internals to AI-powered pipelines.
About
I'm a backend software engineer who spent two years deep inside Cisco's IOS-XR — the operating system that runs carrier-grade routers serving millions of people. I worked on telemetry pipelines, control-plane networking, and OpenConfig/YANG data models in C/C++.
Recently I've been building at the intersection of systems and AI — applying LangChain, RAG pipelines, and vector databases to real engineering problems.
Location
Bengaluru, India
Education
Birla Institute Of Technology And Science (BITS Pilani)
B.E. Computer Science & M.Sc. Physics — Dual Degree
Aug 2018 – May 2023
Experience
Cisco
Aug 2023 – Dec 2025
Bengaluru, India
Software Engineer
- Backend engineer on Cisco IOS-XR — core contributor across telemetry pipelines, control-plane networking, and platform services in C/C++.
- Reduced end-to-end telemetry latency by 83% (30 min → <5 min) and improved system throughput by 70% via IPC optimization, bulk API batching, and in-memory caching.
- Implemented OpenConfig/YANG support across IOS-XR with NETCONF, gNMI, and CLI interfaces on Cisco 8000, ASR 9000, NCS, XRv, and XRd platforms.
- Maintained the IOS-XR control-plane stack — IPv4, IPv6, VRF, static routing, ping, and traceroute — ensuring high availability across distributed systems.
Cisco
Jan 2023 – Jun 2023
Bengaluru, India
Software Intern
- Built Python test automation and validation frameworks for YANG-driven configuration and telemetry pipelines, improving protocol correctness and cross-platform interoperability.
Bicycle.ai
May 2022 – Dec 2022
Remote
Software Intern
- Built a production-grade ELT Java source connector for Elasticsearch from scratch with JUnit coverage; open-sourced via contribution to Airbyte.
- Integrated KEDA for custom metric-based autoscaling; developed Java DevOps workflows using GCP Pub/Sub, Compute Engine, and GKE APIs.
- Architected a distributed load testing framework for Apache Kafka using JMeter and Docker on GKE with horizontally scaled load injectors.
Projects
Aug 2025
BugInsights
Cisco HackAIFest'25 — Winner / 30+ teams
- AI-powered bug analytics tool that ingests and summarizes historical bug data using GPT-4o; embeddings stored in ChromaDB for semantic retrieval.
- HDBSCAN clustering pipeline over bug summary vectors; GPT-4o-labeled cluster representatives surface actionable issue categories.
- Streamlit dashboard with graph reports filterable by component, timeline, and severity — enabling engineering managers to identify systemic problem areas.
Jul 2020
StudyDeck
Personal Project
- Web app for creating and managing personalized class timetables with Redux state management and Material Design UI; deployed and live.
Skills
Languages
Networking & Protocols
AI & ML
Cloud & DevOps
Contact
Always happy to connect. Feel free to send me a message using the form, or reach out directly via email or LinkedIn.