Sakshi Mahendru

AI Researcher

San Jose, California, United States8 yrs 9 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchAI ML Practitioner

Key Highlights

Expert in developing AI-powered cybersecurity solutions.
Proven track record in building scalable distributed systems.
Strong background in backend development with diverse technologies.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Cybersecurity and AI specialist with extensive experience in scalable backend systems.

Contact

sakshi93mahendru@gmail.com LinkedIn

Skills

Core Skills

Generative AiBig DataMicroservicesPython (programming Language)ScalaKafkaNode.jsSpring Framework

Other Skills

AerospikeAlgorithmsApache KafkaApache SparkBatch ProcessingBehavior-Driven Development (BDD)CCucumberData Driven TestingData StreamingData StructuresElasticsearchEspressoHDFSHive

About

I completed my Computer Software engineering at San Jose state university specialized in Data Science, Enterprise Distributed Systems And Application Development. I am a researcher, developer, and architect in the fields of Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence. At my current job, I am developing advanced solutions for AI-powered Next-Generation Firewall. My focus area is building scalable distributed systems leveraging Machine Learning. In the past, I have worked at Snapdeal, Hike, Wingify building low latency, scalable backend solutions.

Experience

Palo alto networks

3 roles

Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Promoted

Mar 2025 – Present · 1 yr · Santa Clara, California, United States

Senior Staff Engineer

Jul 2021 – Oct 2025 · 4 yrs 3 mos · Santa Clara, California, United States

Led research initiatives to design and develop cognitive assistant(CoPilot) to resolve customer requires for cybersecurity domain utilizing retrieval-augmented generation(RAG), state-of-the-art Generative AI models and embedding based retrieval engines over custom knowledge database.
Led and developed architectural improvement for critical component - alert service on batch pre-processing to reduce the overall db contention and improve scalability.
Design, develop and implement architectural models to enable Next Generation Firewalls for scalable data processing and scalable data storage.

Generative AIBig DataKafkaBatch ProcessingData StreamingInformation Retrieval+1

Software Developer Intern

May 2020 – Oct 2020 · 5 mos · Santa Clara County, California, United States

Enable monitoring, troubleshooting and capacity planning for end users and program managers by providing useful metrics.
Built SpringBoot microservices deployed by Kubernetes cron jobs on GCP to emit metrics to Grafana using Prometheus.

MicroservicesTest AutomationElasticsearchAlgorithmsPython (Programming Language)REST APIs+1

Wingify

Software Developer - Backend

Aug 2018 – Aug 2019 · 1 yr · New Delhi Area, India

Led team to design terabyte-scale log processing, real-time high performance data analytics pipelines using Kafka with HLL and Redis for caching and exposed RESTful APIs using SpringBoot to track data-collection requests.
Java-SDK : Built Open Source Java SDK to A/B Test websites at server-side, with inbuilt capabilities to track, convert and activate users via implementing a hashing logic.
Push-Notification : Improved efficiency by 50% by bifurcation and filtering the graph flows to remove the bottleneck in Scala.

ScalaMicroservicesTest AutomationAlgorithmsPython (Programming Language)Spring Framework+2

Hike messenger

Software Engineer

May 2017 – Aug 2018 · 1 yr 3 mos · New Delhi Area, India

Report ingestion and processing : Scalable backend on Node.JS(Express.JS) for report ingestion and processing. All team are using it for alpha release stats.
Built Steps to Reproduce in hackathon: Plugin, built on microservices architecture in Java, to create video of mobile app crash during automation suites.
Built Dynamic Feature Pipeline : Job Scheduler to distribute test cases on cluster, based on historical data.
Lead team to port existing automation pipeline from Appium to Espresso.

MicroservicesTest AutomationAlgorithmsPython (Programming Language)REST APIsJira+1

Snapdeal

Software Engineer

Jul 2015 – Apr 2017 · 1 yr 9 mos · Gurgaon, India

During my tenure, I had worked with Catalog Management Team, Pricing Team and Shipping Team.
Cooperated with operations team to improve the tracking of orders from 80% to 91%.
Developed and implemented tracking cancelled order back to seller.
Validation and automation of batch job, using HDFS, Hive, Spark and Kafka.

MicroservicesTest AutomationAlgorithmsSpring FrameworkREST APIsJira