Work

Most recent first. Campus and production infrastructure to begin with, then WAN failover and multipath, and firmware and secure boot now.

Firmware Engineer

Dec 2025 - now · Remote

Current

Implemented verified boot in U-Boot for OpenWrt-based access points, with authenticated kernel and rootfs validation across dual-image flash layouts.
Built and validated a complete secure-boot workflow for Qualcomm IPQ60xx platforms: key provisioning, image signing, fuse programming, and boot-chain verification from PBL to Linux.
Developed a hardened firmware-signing pipeline with RSA-PSS signing, SHA-384 fuse hashing, and signed recovery images.
Diagnosed secure-boot failures through vendor tooling analysis, boot metadata inspection, and controlled fuse generation.
Low-level recovery over serial console, emergency download mode, and flash-level workflows.

May - Jul 2025 · Pune

Researched and deployed OpenMPTCProuter, which bonds several WAN links into one connection with Multipath TCP, on a two-link site (wired and cellular) with custom Raspberry Pi 4 and x86 images.
Reached 230 Mbit/s aggregated across both links, with a dropped link rejoining within 2 to 4 seconds, even after a 90 second outage.
Built a QEMU and network-namespace lab that reproduces link flaps, loss and blackholes, and used it to check every image before it went out.
Fixed OpenMPTCProuter bugs found along the way: a rate unit mix-up that overdrove every link 8x, a sysctl file that silently skipped 44 settings, and a LAN checksum issue that held client uploads to 8 Mbit/s instead of 40.

May 2023 - May 2026 · NITK Surathkal

Added JWT access control for internal dashboards using a custom-compiled NGINX module integrated with a Rails service.
Set up centralized monitoring with Zabbix and Grafana, alerting on certificate expiry, outages, and anomalies.
Migrated GitLab Enterprise to a containerized deployment with automated backups and health checks.
Migrated 40+ containers and 15+ VMs to a high-availability cluster with zero downtime.
Built a Dockerized Moodle test environment for isolated API testing.

Apr - Jul 2024 · Supervised by Prof. Mohit P. Tahiliani

Designed and deployed a network access control testbed using PacketFence, OPNsense, and VLAN segmentation.
Configured VLAN-based enforcement with dynamic device onboarding, DHCP handling, and access policies.
Validated end-to-end enforcement with VLAN tagging and PVIDs across simulated endpoint scenarios.