Pratima Upadhyay

Software Engineer at Airbnb

Speaker

Pratima Upadhyay is an experienced Software Engineer with over 7 years of experience building large-scale distributed systems and enterprise platforms. She specializes in backend and full-stack development, microservice architectures, cloud computing, RESTful APIs, system design, and test-driven development, with a strong focus on scalability, reliability, and security. She currently works at Airbnb, where she builds secure, resilient payments and compliance platforms that operate at global scale, supporting complex, regulated workflows across financial crime, KYC, and risk systems. Her work involves designing production-grade systems that balance performance, safety, and auditability in high-risk environments. Previously, Pratima worked at Microsoft, contributing to the Microsoft Cloud Platform, where she gained deep experience in distributed systems, cloud storage, computing infrastructure, and enterprise-grade systems.

Beyond her engineering role, Pratima is deeply committed to mentorship and community building. She has mentored aspiring engineers on career development, interview preparation, and resume building. Her guidance is grounded in her own experience interviewing with many global companies and conducting technical interviews herself. She also serves as a Women in Tech Ambassador, supporting and encouraging women pursuing careers in large-scale technology organisations. She is also a technical blogger and educator. She runs her own ed-tech learning platform, where she teaches software engineering and system design fundamentals, helping engineers build strong architectural and problem-solving skills. She actively shares practical insights from real-world distributed systems through her writing and talks.