kv.

All systems operational San Diego

Kajal
Varma

Staff Software Engineer at Intuit, working on systems & reliability engineering for the Consumer Group.

I enjoy working across the stack, with a focus on cloud infrastructure and backend development. My area of focus is operational excellence. Before Intuit San Diego, I did my master’s at Georgia Tech, specializing in computing systems.

Portrait of Kajal Varma

Career uptime 2012 → now

01

Experience

Intuit

Systems & reliability since 2020 · San Diego

  1. Staff Software EngineerSystems & Reliability Engineering, Consumer Group
    • Lead the development and rollout of continuous monitoring and self-remediation that recovers Intuit offerings from regional outages automatically.
    • Deliver reliable real-time data to a high-visibility dashboard tracking TurboTax’s key business metrics.
    • Scale critical backend services ahead of planned traffic surges.
    • Run failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to harden the TurboTax tech ecosystem.
  2. Senior Software Engineer
    • Designed and built a continuous monitoring and self-remediation framework that automatically recovers services from regional outages.
  3. Software Engineer 2
    • Built a traffic-dialing and fleet-management tool that lets product teams safely manage their services.
    • Standardized how backend services publish monitoring metrics, adopted company-wide.
    • Cut user-perceived page load times by 7% with location-based routing in a session-management service (Java, Kotlin).
    • Introduced hybrid EC2 autoscaling that balances scalability and cost.
Earlier at Intuit · 2016 — 2019
  1. Software Engineer InternCore Tax Services backend, Consumer Group
    • Cut test runs from ~15 to ~3–4 min across five services with record-and-replay integration tests (WireMock), eliminating flaky builds.
  2. Software Engineer 1 → 2TurboTax Desktop · Intuit India, Bangalore. Joined full-time after a TurboTax Android internship.
    • Integrated a new tech stack into TurboTax Desktop for Windows and Mac, replacing legacy frameworks. Earned an Engineering Excellence Award for its rollout to half a million users.

Assistantships

Grad & undergrad

  1. Graduate Teaching AssistantGeorgia Tech · CS 6262 Network Security with Dr. Wenke Lee
  2. Teaching AssistantBITS Pilani, Goa · Computer Architecture
  3. Professional AssistantBITS Pilani, Goa · Computer Programming

stack.yml

languages
GoPythonC++JavaScriptCBash
frontend
ReactHTML/CSS
infra
AWSKubernetesTerraform
ci_cd
JenkinsGit
observability
WavefrontSplunk
os
Linux/UNIX

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Cloud PractitionerEarned 2020
  • AWS Certified Developer – AssociateEarned 2020
  • CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application DeveloperEarned 2022

02

Research

  1. ISPA 2018 · IEEE

    Predicting Execution Time of CUDA Kernel Using Static Analysis

    Gargi Alavani, Kajal Varma, Santonu Sarkar

    An analytical model that predicts a GPU kernel’s execution time from its intermediate PTX code without running it, so developers can fix inefficient code before running it.

  2. VLSID 2017 · IEEE

    DTLB: Deterministic TLB for Tightly Bound Hard Real-time Systems

    Kajal Varma, Geeta Patil, Biju Raveendran

    A TLB architecture that saves a task’s TLB contents to its PCB on preemption and restores them on resume. It reduces misses and per-access time, with 6.74% average dynamic energy savings over a conventional TLB in MemSim.

03

Projects

A few things I built in grad school and undergrad.

  • GradC++ · gRPC

    MapReduce over gRPC

    A MapReduce simulation in C++, using gRPC for communication between workers in a distributed service.

  • GradC · Hypervisor

    vCPU scheduler & memory coordinator

    Dynamically manages the resources assigned to each guest OS running on a hypervisor in a virtualized setting.

  • GradPython · React

    PromotEd

    A visual interface that recommends courses from multiple online providers based on the job role you want. Machine learning in Python, shell scripts to pull data from MOOC APIs.

    Source

  • ResearchC · Real-time OS

    EDF-SRP scheduler

    An Earliest Deadline First scheduler with Stack Resource Policy, written in C for process scheduling in a real-time operating system.

  • UndergradJava · IOMeter

    DiskSim scheduling

    Java simulations of cyclic cylindrical access and shortest-access-time-first disk scheduling, along with a study of real disk usage measured with IOMeter.

    Source

  • UndergradC · Linux kernel

    Mouse device driver

    A Linux kernel module that changes screen brightness through mouse clicks.

    Source

  • UndergradCUDA · NVML

    GPU power measurement

    Measures the average power an NVIDIA GPU draws while running a CUDA kernel. Useful for microbenchmarking instructions.

    Source

  • UndergradVerilog

    Phased cache

    An 8-way associative, 512B cache with 16B lines in ModelSim Altera, with write-back and FIFO replacement.

    Source

  • UndergradPi · Android

    Raspberry Pi surveillance camera

    Motion detection, montage creation, and email notifications with a Pi Camera, controlled from an Android app.

    Source

04

Education

  1. Georgia Institute of TechnologyM.S. Computer Science, Computing Systems

    4.0 / 4.0 GPA

    Coursework

    • Advanced Operating Systems
    • High Performance Computer Architecture
    • Computer Networks
    • Network Security
    • Big Data Systems & Analytics
    • Information Security
    • Advanced Software Engineering
    • Data & Visual Analytics
    • Graduate Algorithms
    • Special Problem (research)
  2. BITS Pilani, K. K. Birla Goa CampusB.E. (Hons.) Computer Science

    8.64 / 10 CGPA

    Coursework

    • Operating Systems
    • Computer Architecture
    • Data Storage Technologies & Networks
    • Data Structures & Algorithms
    • Database Systems
  3. National Public School, IndiranagarCBSE · Class X CGPA 10.0, 99.9946 percentile

    97.6% Class XII

Awards

  • CG Engineering Excellence AwardIntuit
  • CG Engineering Excellence AwardIntuit
Earlier · 2011 — 2018
  • CG Engineering Excellence AwardIntuit India
  • GRE 338 / 340 · TOEFL 118 / 120Grad school admissions
  • National Cyber Olympiad: All-India Rank 17, Karnataka Rank 1Science Olympiad Foundation
  • CBSE Science Scholarship, top 1% nationally in Class XIICBSE
  • Mridula Scholarship, school topper in Grade XNational Public School

05

Downtime

Cats, books, and making things by hand.

Two cats, a tuxedo and a black cat, curled up together in a round mesh cat bed
Shadow & Cookieon-call support staff
Colored pencils fanned out on a wooden desk
Artsketches & paintings
Silhouette of a performer in a flowing dress against a lit screen
Mime Club, BITS Goaperforming arts

At BITS Goa