Pratyush Nalam


Creating intuitive experiences for people

  About

I am a software engineer at Google working on the Customer Conversations Platform. I specialize in backend engineering and take pride in developing systems that run continuously and scale seamlessly.

I believe that solutions based on a robust technological framework supplemented with a sustainable business model and a delightful user experience can help tackle some of the toughest socio-cultural, economic, and environmental challenges we face today. I feel empowered in taking leadership roles at different levels and have mentored students and colleagues in various capacities.

As an aspiring entrepreneur and a fiercely ambitious individual, I am continuously learning from the people I meet and the things I observe every day.

  Story

  • Google

    Senior Software Engineer and Technical Lead - Corporate Engineering | Hyderabad, India
    Jan 2024 – present

    I am currently a technical lead in Google Corporate Engineering at Google's Hyderabad office. Google's Corporate Engineering teams build business solutions that scale a more helpful Google for everyone.

  • Amazon

    Software Engineer - Prime Video | New York, NY, USA
    May 2022 – Apr 2023

    For close to a year, I was a software engineer in Prime Video at Amazon's New York City office. Prime Video is Amazon's subscription video on demand and over-the-top streaming and rental service. I contributed to revenue generation and operational excellence efforts on the platform powering the Prime Video storefront used by millions of users everyday.

  • Microsoft

    Software Engineer - Azure Data | Redmond, WA, USA
    Jan 2019 – Apr 2022

    For over 3 years, I worked as a software engineer in Azure Cosmos DB at Microsoft's corporate headquarters in Redmond. Cosmos DB is a database for building blazing fast, planet scale applications with native support for NoSQL. We created delightful experiences for our support engineers which in turn helped our customers have speedy resolutions for any issues they are facing. For the first 12 months, I also had an additional responsibility of working with our top customers and directly helping them to onboard and use our service in the best possible way.

  • Columbia Venture Community

    Seattle Chapter Lead | Seattle, WA, USA
    Mar 2017 – Dec 2021

    The Columbia Venture Community is a private network of Columbia students, alumni, and employees who are interested in all aspects of entrepreneurship. I re-launched the Seattle chapter from its dormancy and laid the foundations for a vibrant and supportive community for Seattle's Columbia alumni interested in the startup world.

  • Toastmasters – Microsoft Speechmakers

    Vice President - Membership | Redmond, WA, USA
    Jul 2018 – Jun 2019

    Microsoft Speechmakers is the Microsoft employees-only chapter for Toastmasters International in Redmond. Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. As Vice President of Membership, I welcome new members into the club and encourage people who have not tried Toastmasters to give it a shot.

  • Microsoft

    Software Engineer - Azure Compute | Redmond, WA, USA
    Feb 2017 – Dec 2018

    For almost 2 years, I worked as a software engineer in the Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) team in Azure at Microsoft's corporate headquarters in Redmond. Microsoft is the world's largest software maker and a massive provider of enterprise software and services. VMSS enables you to apply autoscaling to virtual machines for high availability and was my first full-time role. I started off by improving the service reliability, and then shipped some crucial, highly-requested features enabling an even better experience for our customers across the world! Subsequently, I had been developing the next generation of cloud services on VMSS. Azure Cloud Services makes deploying highly-available, massively-scalable applications and API a breeze.

  • Lakeview Elementary School

    Volunteer, Tech Club | Kirkland, WA, USA
    May 2017 – Jun 2017, Jan 2018 – Jun 2018

    Along with a few Microsoft employees, I volunteer at a tech club set up by a teacher to teach elementary students programming using code.org exercises and various hardware kits like LEGO, Ozobots, Makey Makey kits, and so on. Around a dozen fourth- and fifth-graders come every Friday, and it is great fun helping and mentoring them! At the end of the term last year, they made a video thanking us. Watch it here on YouTube.

  • Technovation

    Mentor and Judge | Redmond, WA, USA
    Feb 2018 – May 2018

    I mentored a group of 4 high school girls from Redmond High School for the Technovation challenge. I provided technical guidance, help with product strategy and financials among others. The girls of Team Sparrow won the Popular Choice award in the Pacific North West region of the United States. Technovation aims to close the tech gender gap by encouraging high school students to create, build, and sell an app that addresses a problem in the community. I also judged a few submissions as a Technovation volunteer.

  • Work Smart. Play Smart.

    PSBB Senior Secondary School | Chennai, India
    Feb 2017

    I gave a talk at my old high school – PSBB Senior Secondary School, on identifying and setting goals and what productivity tools/software can be used to make the most of ones time. The talk was covered in The Hindu.

  • Tribute to Parents

    Parents' Silver Anniversary | Hyderabad, India
    Feb 2017

    At my parents' silver anniversary celebrations, I – as the host – kicked off the evening, with a short speech honoring them and their contributions and sacrifices in bringing me up and making me the individual that I am today. I am and will be eternally indebted to them. Watch it here on YouTube.

  • Columbia University in the City of New York

    MS Computer Science | New York, NY, USA
    Sep 2015 – Dec 2016

    I graduated from Columbia University with a Master of Science degree in Computer Science specializing in Machine Learning. It was intense and enjoyable at the same time. I made some great friends here and had diverse and unparalleled experiences.

  • Engineering Graduate Student Council, Columbia University

    Chair, Digital Media Committee | New York, NY, USA
    Jan 2016 – Dec 2016

    The Engineering Graduate Student Council is the governing body of the graduate students of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia University. As chair of the digital media committee, I overhauled EGSC's online presence, and conducted alumni and career-related events by virtue of sitting on the respective committees.

  • Subcommittee for Students with Disabilities, Columbia University Senate

    Committee Member | New York, NY, USA
    Feb 2016 – Dec 2016

    I served on the Columbia University Senate Subcommittee for Students with Disabilities where we discussed various issues faced by students with disabilities on campus and proposed comprehensive solutions to the administration to alleviate them.

  • Bit by Bit into the World of Bytes

    Columbia Open Labs | New York, NY, USA
    Dec 2016

    My classmate, Gaurav Ragtah, and I gave a talk to New York's high school students encouraging them to pursue a career in Computer Science. Watch the talk here on YouTube.

  • From Resume to Revenue

    Engineering Graduate Student Council, Columbia University | New York, NY, USA
    Nov 2016

    My classmate, Gaurav Ragtah, and I gave a talk to our peers at Columbia University on the various aspects of the job hunt process: successfully navigating resumes, emails, networking, and interviews. Some photos from the talk can be seen here on Instagram.

  • BlackRock

    Summer Analyst - Aladdin Product Group | New York, NY, USA
    Jun 2016 – Aug 2016

    I interned in the financial services industry with BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, as a summer analyst at their corporate headquarters in New York. Working in the Business Operations System team, I overhauled the firm's shadow accounting tool, Alpha. It was re-designed with the vision of an extensible platform so that it could be a one stop shop for all their accounting platforms, benefiting both BlackRock and the customers of its platform – Aladdin: the investment manager's operating system.

  • Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

    BTech Computer Science and Engineering, Management Minor | Mumbai, India
    Jul 2011 – May 2015

    I graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering and a minor in Management. The IITs are India's premier technological institutions. Their focus on not just academics, but on the holistic development of the individual, has helped me immensely and broadened my horizons.

  • Amazon

    Software Development Engineer Intern - Global Transportation System | Hyderabad, India
    May 2014 – Jul 2014

    In the summer of my junior year, I interned at Amazon, a global e-commerce giant and cloud services provider. As part of their Transportation team, I developed and shipped a tool for Amazon to customize their promotional content on shipping labels on its packages. There is a moment of joy and satisfaction every time I see ads on Amazon's shipping labels on the packages delivered home.

  • Undergraduate Academic Council, IIT Bombay

    Web Manager | Mumbai, India
    April 2013 – March 2014

    The Undergraduate Academic Council is a student body dedicated to improve the academic system and culture of the Institute. As Web Manager, my team and I worked on significantly revamping the council's online presence and outreach efforts – both online and offline.

  • Electronic Arts

    Software Engineer Intern - AllPlay | Hyderabad, India
    May 2013 – Jul 2013

    In the summer of my sophomore year, I interned at Electronic Arts, the world's largest publisher of video games. It was a dream come true to work at a company whose games I played throughout childhood and continue to play even now. Apart from getting a first hand look at how games are made, my job was building a tool to help compensate users who were victims of data corruption in EA's mobile games. EA is one of the few companies where playing Age of Empires gets you an audience to cheer you on!

  • Housing.com

    Winter Intern | Mumbai, India
    Dec 2012 – Jan 2013

    The winter of my sophomore year saw me working at Housing.com, India's leading online real estate portal. I performed tweet analysis on those related to real estate and found trends in the same. Working at a startup was a very different kind of experience, and was one of the factors in kindling my interest in entrepreneurship.

  • Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

    Summer Intern | Mumbai, India
    May 2012 – Jul 2012

    In my freshman summer, I worked at Professor Deepak Phatak's lab as part of the Ekalavya Summer Internship Programme. Along with my team, we developed an e-testing app for the Aakash tablet. It was a fantastic learning experience working on the Android app development platform. Watch our final presentation on YouTube.

  • Indian National Junior Science Olympiad Training Camp

    Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR | Mumbai, India
    May 2008

    In 2008, I was selected for the training camp of the Junior Science Olympiad, the last level before the international olympiad. I was one out of 30 students and narrowly missed out on making it to the top 6 who make it to the international level. Nevertheless, it was immensely enjoyable and at the same time, intellectually very stimulating.

  • National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement

    Gold Medal, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India | New Delhi, India
    2007

    In 2007, I was awarded the National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement for exceptional performance in computers and curricular activities. I received the award from Ms Sonia Gandhi, then Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, and Ms Renuka Chowdhary, then Minister of Women and Child Development. It was covered on national television, and you can watch the playlist on YouTube.

  • Mensa International

    Member | Worldwide
    2006 – present

    Mensa International is an international society for people with high IQ – the top 2 percentile. I was enlisted as a member in 2006.

  • Mastek

    Summer Intern | Mumbai, India
    May 2003

    In the summer of 2003 after completing my fourth grade, I completed my first ever internship. It was at Mastek, an IT services firm in Mumbai. I was given training in SQL and Visual Basic, and further put on a small live project. It was my first taste of the industry at the young age of 9 years.

  • Microsoft Certified Solution Developer

    Sep 2002

    Thanks to my parents identifying my passion for computers very early on, I completed the requirements to be recognized as a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer in 2002 at the young age of 9 years. I believe I am the youngest such individual.