Arpan Patel

Hello, I’m Arpan

I’m a Software Developer Engineer at Credit Acceptance , based in Austin, TX. I build backend services and APIs, work with distributed systems, and obsess over making things faster.

I graduated with a Master of Science in Computer Science from Northeastern University in December 2024, where I focused on scalable and distributed systems and programming design paradigms. Before that, I earned my B.E. in Information Technology from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Technology.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” — Steve Jobs

What I do

I care about building software that holds up under pressure. Not just software that works in a demo, but systems that stay correct under concurrency, stay fast under load, and stay debuggable when things go sideways at 2am.

Most of what I find interesting lives close to the metal: how memory is laid out, why a syscall takes longer than it should, what the scheduler is doing while you wait. I also spend a fair bit of time thinking about applied AI, specifically how language models fit into real production systems as useful primitives rather than bolted-on features.

Earlier in my career, I co-founded Scudo Systems LLP, where we built real-time GPS tracking from the hardware layer up through the software stack. Shipping something that had to be accurate in the physical world, on constrained hardware, taught me more about what reliability actually means than any textbook did.

Tech I work with
  • Programming Languages: Java, Python, C++, SQL, Swift, Go, TypeScript, JavaScript
  • Networking & Protocols: TCP/IP, UDP, DNS, TLS/SSL, RPC, HTTP/HTTPS, REST
  • AI & Data Platforms: LangChain, Vector Databases (Pinecone, Milvus), Redis Semantic Cache, Ollama
  • Tools & Debugging: GDB, Valgrind, tcpdump, Git, Jenkins, Shell Scripting, Linux Internals
  • Distributed Systems: Kafka, Spark, Hadoop, Kubernetes, Docker, Microservices, AWS, GCP
  • Development: Node.js, Micronaut, Django, MySQL, MongoDB, Android, ReactJS
Beyond the code
I was the Chapter Lead of the Mozilla Campus Club at my undergraduate campus, co-organized Flutter Vadodara, and served as a trusted Mozilla Rep. I’ve contributed to open-source projects, including the Flutter Shortcut Widget via the “Adopt a Widget” campaign on GitHub, and co-authored a research paper titled “Parkup” published in the International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology.
Dev Setup

Hardware & OS

  • MacBook Pro M2 13"
  • macOS Sequoia 15.x

Editor & Terminal

  • IntelliJ IDEA — primary for Java/backend
  • VS Code — the one that has a plugin for everything, including my indecision
  • iTerm2 + zsh + Oh My Zsh
  • Arc

VS Code Extensions

  • GitLens — git blame and history inline
  • Error Lens — errors and warnings inline, no hovering needed
  • REST Client — test APIs without leaving the editor
  • Docker — container management from the sidebar
  • Remote SSH — dev on remote machines without friction

Apps

  • Raycast — launcher, clipboard history, quick calculations
  • AltTab — proper window switching on macOS
  • Docker Desktop — container management
  • Notion — where every great idea goes to become a perfectly formatted, never-finished document
  • Day One — daily journal
  • Claude Code — AI in the terminal
  • Spotify — the real IDE, been shipping focus playlists since 2017

Few Interesting Pages

  • Resume / CV : My professional background and experience
  • Projects : Things I’ve built across distributed systems, IoT, and open source
  • Posts : Writing on backend engineering, distributed systems, and lessons learned
  • Shelf : Books, papers, and articles I find worth reading
  • Resources : Useful websites, tools, and references I keep coming back to

Get in touch

I’m always up for a conversation about distributed systems, backend architecture, or just a good book recommendation.

Views expressed here are my own and do not represent my employer or any organization I am associated with.

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