Akshiv Bansal

about me

I'm a software engineer who spends a lot of time thinking about hardware. Originally from New Delhi, I grew up in Vancouver, where I studied at the University of British Columbia, graduating with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering Physics and a Minor in Honors Mathematics. Currently, I'm working in the Bay as a software engineer, mostly at hardware companies.

In my spare time you'll find me out hiking / biking / running, cooking, trying exotic coffees, or tinkering on some small hardware project.

M o r e I n f o R e s u m e

Latest Works

These are some of my favorite projects. They're mostly from my time in university and early in my career.

All Categories
Mechanical
Prototyping
Sustainability

Low Cost Syringe Pump

ENPH 479 Project

Ultrafast Shutter

Work Project

Gantry Robot

ENPH 459 Project

Autonomous Retrieval Robot

ENPH 257 Project

Electrical Impedance Tomography

Class Project

Powering Our Future

Volunteer Project

Job History

Co-Founder

Merlin, San Francisco CA

Company Link

Worked across the stack to design a smart component selection engine for electrical components.
Built the backend in Python (FastAPI) and the frontend in NextJS, creating a visual way to compare capacitors — letting users compare key engineering graphs and find drop-in replacements for their parts.
Worked on SEO, analytics, user login/auth, and billing to build out the product.

Lead Software Engineer

Humane, Inc. (acquired by HP), San Francisco CA

Company Link

Designed and deployed a build artifact management solution used across six firmware projects, to automate the hardware in the loop testing of built firmware artifacts.
Wrote several Java + Android applications for Factory Automation — automatic camera calibration, subsystem co-existence testing, IMU sensor bring-up — later adopted by the CVML, EE, RF, and System Software teams.
Led the rebuild of the hardware testing lab. Migrated hardware test machines to Infrastructure as Code (Ansible) and scaled up test fixtures from 5 to 20.
Led a cloud service migration to switch vendors with zero downtime and no external changes, resulting in an 80% cost savings. Improved CI runtimes across firmware and Python projects by 60%.

Senior SWE, Framework

Symbio Robotics, Emeryville CA

Company Link

Worked on a robotic platform for automated assembly using robots from vendors like ABB and UR.
Worked on logging, data analysis, and applications to understand large volumes of robotic data.
Worked on a force control application involving gear meshing using robots, implemented using async zmq clients and servers.

Software Engineer, Tools

Johnson & Johnson, Redwood City CA

Company Link

Created libraries to provide high level logging capabilities in Python that plugged into low level C++ applications.
Wrote API for the rapid integration of new sensors to expand logging without needing additions to the control chain.
Created testing infrastructure to manage test cases and data generated. Worked on a streamlined pipeline for data definition, packing, upload, and processing.
Worked with PyTest, Numpy, and Django libraries to build tools for use in automated manufacturing testing.

Skills

Backend Engineering

Building pipelines & CI/CD integration
API design
Infrastructure as Code
Cloud infra & migrations

Hardware in the Loop Testing

Setting up and scaling HIL systems
Building automated test suites
Developing robust test plans

Rapid Prototyping

3D Printing, Laser Cutting, Milling, Lathe, Hand Power Tools, Microcontrolers, Sheet Metal

Experiment Design

Lab automation,
Test Fixture Design,
Performance and Lifecycle analysis,