DANDA AKHIL REDDY
Software Engineer @ Microsoft | Distributed Systems | AI/ML
Software Engineer @ Microsoft | Distributed Systems | AI/ML
I'm a Software Engineer II at Microsoft with 5 years of experience architecting and scaling distributed systems. Right now I build distributed storage infrastructure on Azure that supports global service routing and database topology — DNS-driven topology discovery with caching and failover, cross-region Azure SQL migrations with production safeguards, and automated validation, rollback and deployment workflows. Previously I scaled high-throughput systems at Amazon (100K+ requests/sec) and HHA Medicine. Master's in Computer Science from Texas A&M University, plus a Professional Certificate in Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning from Stanford Continuing Studies, and a Google Summer of Code 2026 contributor to InVesalius, an open-source 3D medical imaging platform.
But engineering isn't my only passion. I'm also a professional cricket player, competing in the San Antonio Cricket League where I've scored centuries and led teams to victory. Cricket taught me discipline, strategy, and the importance of teamwork - skills that translate directly into building great software.
When I'm not coding or on the cricket field, you'll find me diving deep into AI research papers, fine-tuning LLMs, or exploring the latest breakthroughs in machine learning.
My research obsession is world models — Yann LeCun's JEPA idea that intelligence comes from predicting representations, not pixels. I train and fine-tune models on Hugging Face, mostly on healthcare data gathered from the open web, and I'm building Laya, my own healthcare model. Day to day that means vLLM for serving, vision-language models, and a lot of evals.
Every day starts with ArXiv. I read research papers on machine learning, distributed systems, and AI advancements to stay at the cutting edge. Understanding the theory behind the tools makes me a better engineer and helps me anticipate where the field is heading.
My main hobby: a Reachy Mini robot that I'm teaching to see and hear. I train its vision and audio models myself on videos of my dog Brook — so Reachy can detect her, predict her next move, and read her reactions to new rooms and new food. Robotics, computer vision, and pure fun in one desk-sized package.
Read about the Brook projectCricket runs in my blood. I play competitively in the San Antonio Cricket League, where every match is a lesson in strategy, pressure handling, and peak performance. From scoring centuries to leading teams, the cricket field is where I find my competitive edge.
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Whether you want to discuss AI, cricket strategies, or potential collaborations, I'm always open to connecting with like-minded individuals.