Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Additional Information
Timeline
Generic

Atul Goel

Gurugram

Summary

I am a Tech Lead with 8 years of experience in the fintech and gaming industry, focused on creating products from the ground up. I started my career by writing clean, effective code to build systems that solve everyday challenges, and over time, I have optimized existing systems while upskilling, growing, and starting new teams. I believe in clear communication and practical solutions, ensuring that our projects meet real user needs while continuously improving over time.

I also believe in understanding the entire process—from writing the code to deploying it on servers, managing how clients and servers interact, and tracking how data moves through the system. For me, it's not just about building a product, but also about ensuring its security, reliability, and ease of use through proper data privacy, backups, and other essential practices.

Overview

8
8
years of professional experience

Work History

Co-Founder

Stealth Startup
07.2024 - Current
  • Trying something cool with a some cool people. Best case - it works; worst case - I'll learn a few things
  • Proxy for all internal roles - Architect, HR, Developer and Tester

Technical Lead

Third Unicorn
07.2023 - 05.2024
  • Initially joined to resolve severe scaling issues for Crickpe, a real money gaming platform facing critical performance challenges during peak times.
  • Evolved to lead the entire tech team, managing and upskilling engineers over the span of a year.
  • Instituted agile methodologies by introducing SCRUM, robust CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring tools (ELK, SonarCube), while establishing standardized code review processes and branching strategies.
  • Built and successfully launched ZeroPe entirely from scratch in a record 5-month cycle—2 months of comprehensive planning and securing MOUs with external partners, followed by 3 months of focused development.
  • Delivered a product that not only meets business goals with rapid growth (~30% month over month) but also features an optimized architecture that reduced server costs by 60% and enhanced overall system reliability.

Software Engineer - Infrastructure and Tools

Pixelberry Studios
01.2020 - 07.2023
  • Improved the CI/CD process by moving from default GitLab runners to dedicated AWS runners behind an ASG. This change increased build speeds by 30–70%, supported hundreds of simultaneous jobs, and reduced wait times.
  • Built a serverless art asset ingestion pipeline that enables customers to upload PSD files and auto-generate game-ready assets. Also created a Domain Specific Language for texture packing, compression, and conversion to protocol buffers.
  • Co-designed an authentication and authorization system using AWS Cognito for millions of users.
  • Enhanced the performance of an in-house programming language by refining its interpreter and grammar with ANTLR, later integrating it as a cloud-based tool with Atom IDE.
  • Supported the deployment of an in-house job orchestration platform ("cloud-pipe") by troubleshooting issues and optimizing its performance.
  • Developed a tool to convert JSON data into an easy-to-read movie-script format by using a visitor pattern to generate HTML, then transforming it into a PDF hosted in the cloud with a signed URL.
  • Created a content moderation web service for images and stories using an external AI service with customizable parameters.
  • Designed an onboarding program ("Pixelberry PhD") for new developers to quickly get acquainted with the tools and processes used across teams.
  • Acted as team lead for the Automation and Tools team, managing sprint planning and stakeholder communications.

Associate Software Engineer

Big Huge Games
01.2019 - 12.2019
  • Improved the internal admin tool by refining usability and restricting low-level functions to developers, which cut feature testing times in half and eliminated QA data-entry errors.
  • Developed a ledger system for an in-game resource to help prevent cheating, and built an online tool to correct gameplay issues when needed.
  • Built a real-time monitoring service for the game's chat system, enabling quicker identification and resolution of server failures.

Game Programmer

Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University
05.2018 - 08.2021
  • Redesigned a WebGL-based Space Invaders research game with custom analytics that received international academic recognition.
  • Developed a "Control Center Dashboard" for researchers to adjust game audio and settings in real time, and target specific configurations to selected players.
  • Supported two existing testing platforms and led the complete deployment of two six-month projects by external developers.

AR/VR Game Programmer

Param Labs
12.2016 - 05.2017
  • Re-engineered and shipped a VR title to Google Daydream to utilize the controller, which was featured on store upon launch.
  • Shipped a mobile VR racing game to test VR-ads created by Google team and gather analytics, and prototyped several demos for Asus Zenfone for its launch.

Education

Master of Entertainment Technology -

Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
05.2019

Bachelor of Information Technology - Network Programming

Vellore Institute of Technology University
Vellore, India
05.2017

Additional Information

Programming Languages: Java, TypeScript/JavaScript, C#, Python, C/C++, Shell Script


Frameworks & Libraries: Spring, Node.js, AWS CDK, AWS SDK, JUnit, Jest, Unity


Databases & Data Management: SQL, Redis, Memcache, NoSQL, DynamoDb, RabbitMQ


Cloud & DevOps: AWS IaC(EC2, Lambda, CloudFormation, API Gateway, CDN, Loadbalancer), Serverless architectures, CI/CD pipelines, Git (GitLab/GitHub), SVN, Perforce, JFrog Artifactory


APIs & Communication: REST, GraphQL, Pub/Sub, Protocol Buffers


Methodologies & Domain Expertise:

  • Agile/SCRUM, continuous integration and deployment
  • Fintech product development and real money gaming systems
  • Scalable systems design, process optimization, and security (data privacy and backups)
  • System architecture design, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and effective team leadership

Timeline

Co-Founder

Stealth Startup
07.2024 - Current

Technical Lead

Third Unicorn
07.2023 - 05.2024

Software Engineer - Infrastructure and Tools

Pixelberry Studios
01.2020 - 07.2023

Associate Software Engineer

Big Huge Games
01.2019 - 12.2019

Game Programmer

Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University
05.2018 - 08.2021

AR/VR Game Programmer

Param Labs
12.2016 - 05.2017

Master of Entertainment Technology -

Carnegie Mellon University

Bachelor of Information Technology - Network Programming

Vellore Institute of Technology University
Atul Goel