Neha Saji Jacob
Backend & Full Stack Engineer
Software engineer with 3+ years of experience building scalable systems, accessible applications and AI solutions.
Let's build something amazing!
About Me
M.S. Computer Science
New York University
2024 - 2026
Software Engineer
Target Corporation
2021 - 2024
I build for scale, speed, and accessibility.
My work spans from developing cloud-native distributed services that handle millions of events daily, to building AI-powered tools that enhance developer productivity and crafting thoughtfully designed user-facing applications. I thrive at the intersection of systems design, distributed computing, and artificial intelligence.
When the IDE is closed, you'll find me practicing tricks on my hula hoop, experimenting in the kitchen or hunting for the best eats in NYC.
Technical Expertise
Backend & APIs
Cloud & DevOps
Database & Storage
Frontend & UI
AI & Machine Learning
Work Experience
Software Engineer
Target- Migrated monolithic location data systems to Java/Spring Boot distributed microservices, building and scaling REST, GraphQL APIs handling millions of daily requests across Target's 1,900+ stores.
- Eliminated a 15-minute latency bottleneck in emergency store hour updates by re-architecting ETL pipelines with Apache Kafka and Redis caching, achieving real-time propagation across all store systems.
- Developed a RAG-based support chatbot using LangChain, autonomously resolving 45% of common service queries, reducing manual support tickets and enhancing developer productivity.
- Increased monitoring coverage by 40% across 20 critical microservices by building observability pipelines with Grafana and Elasticsearch, enabling proactive anomaly detection and reducing mean time to resolution.
- Reduced security vulnerabilities by 60% across microservices by integrating automated security scanning and Test-Driven Development into CI/CD workflows.
- Led root cause analysis for production incidents in distributed systems, resolving performance bottlenecks and data consistency issues across high-traffic microservices under on-call SLAs.
- Built responsive web applications using JavaScript, React.js, HTML/CSS, enabling business partners to input and manage location master data across Target’s store network.
- Mentored and onboarded new hires by conducting code reviews, architecture walkthroughs and support sessions.
Engineer
NYU Sixth Sense- Developed an AI pipeline for a wearable navigation assist device for visually impaired users, integrating object detection, instance segmentation and hand gesture recognition.
- Integrated depth estimation for spatial awareness, researching indoor/outdoor scene classification using KITTI and NYU Depth V2 datasets to improve model accuracy across environments.
Teaching Assistant - Data Structures & Algorithms
NYU Computer Science Department- Mentored 60+ graduate students in algorithmic optimization, focusing on memory/time efficiency, edge-case handling and optimal data structure implementation.
Projects
YouTube RAG Assistant
Built an end-to-end RAG pipeline with timestamp-aware retrieval over YouTube transcripts using LangChain, OpenAI, Whisper and ChromaDB for semantic search and interaction across YouTube videos.
Women In Tech Mentorship Platform
Developed a full-stack mentorship platform increasing mentorship accessibility for 1,000+ engineers across the organization. Implemented user dashboards integrated with REST APIs and PostgreSQL schemas to support mentor availability, mentor-mentee matching and mentoring session tracking features.
Virtual Store Checkout Management System
Top 3 & Award for Originality among 100+ teams - Target Hackathon
Spearheaded design and prototyping of a Virtual Store Checkout Management System using Java, JavaScript, React.js, projected to reduce in-store wait times and improve customer satisfaction.
Blogs & Interviews
Beyond the code, I spent my student years documenting the milestones and human stories of the campus community. As a journalist for Pulse NITK, the campus student media body, I had the privilege of writing articles and interviewing inspiring individuals - from tech innovators and scholars to championship athletes.
Here are some of the stories I had the chance to capture.
Images courtesy of Pulse NITK
Through the Lens
Exploring the world, one mobile snapshot at a time. I’m strictly an amateur, so if you have any photography tips or feedback, I’m all ears!
Drop a like if something catches your eye :)