Hi,
I am Sikhira Bhandaru

Developer Advocate | Creative Force of Nature

I am also a software engineer and I coded this website from scratch!

Resume
Profile

ABOUT

About Sikhira

NAMASTE!

I'm a software engineer by day, developer advocate at heart, and a full-time enthusiast of all things tech and storytelling. Whether it's crafting clean code or breaking down complex tech in simple words, I live for those “Aha!” moments, especially when I get to help others experience them too. I write (often very excitedly) about tech on LinkedIn, blending curiosity with clarity, and a sprinkle of wit. People tell me I’m chirpy, endlessly enthusiastic, and the kind of person you can ask literally anything from debugging an API call to where to find the best biryani in Jersey City. Some call me a jack of all trades; I prefer “creative Swiss Army knife.” I love adding my perfectionist sparkle to whatever I touch — be it code, content, or that one rogue pixel messing up a layout. When I’m not shipping features or singing the praises of developer tools, I’m… well, singing. Or playing the ukulele. Or making videos, diving into a rom-com, or getting lost in a good romance novel. New York has my heart, but only the second half. The first half is forever reserved for home, back in India.

WORK

FRONT END DEVELOPMENT | FULL STACK DEVELOPMENT | SOFTWARE ENGINEERING | DATABASE TECHNOLOGIES

Software Development Engineer

Amazon Ads

June 2024 - Present

  • Built a self-service Ads config platform that slashed onboarding time and sent manual ops packing. Because who has time for repetitive setup when automation can do the heavy lifting?
  • Designed and shipped scalable GraphQL APIs that play nice with IAB standards — all running smoothly on AWS with Lambda, Fargate, and DynamoDB under the hood. Basically, if GraphQL were a band, I was the lead guitarist and the sound engineer.
  • Turned observability from “meh” to “magnificent” using CloudWatch — improving uptime, catching issues faster, and giving our services some much-needed peace of mind.
  • Worked across the aisle with design, product, and campaign teams to shape how ads get built, configured, and launched. Product decisions? I was in the room where it happens.
  • Ran backend development in Kotlin and Java like a well-oiled machine — balancing speed, stability, and “let’s not wake up the on-call engineer at 2 AM.”
  • Teamed up with product managers and fellow ad-tech engineers to nail down roadmap priorities, design choices, and how campaigns flow from idea to execution without breaking a sweat.

Software Development Engineer

Amazon Security [Identity and Access Management]

September 2022 - June 2024

  • Built APIs so secure, they’d make Fort Knox blush. Designed robust REST APIs that manage AWS account lifecycles across microservices — and yes, they actually work like a charm.
  • Boosted service availability by 58% thanks to load shedding and circuit breakers. Basically taught our system to say “nope” gracefully instead of crashing like a drama queen.
  • Made our APIs faster and smarter with caching and pagination. They now perform like a caffeinated squirrel on a mission — fast, efficient, and unstoppable.
  • Code reviews? Oh, I’ve seen things. Led peer reviews like a friendly neighborhood code cop, making sure everything passed muster and CI/CD ran smoother than a Taylor Swift transition.
  • Held the fort during L3 on-call shifts. Fixed bugs before they became fires, slashed MTTR, and kept both customers and support engineers happy (and sane).
  • Mentored SDE interns and fresh hires — sprinkled best practices like confetti and helped them build scalable software that doesn’t crumble under pressure.

Research Assistant

Health Informatics Lab, UMBC

2021 - 2022

  • Took the lead on front-end development for Health IT platforms using TCL/TK — yep, that old-school-but-mighty framework. It was like building in retro mode, but we made it work like a charm.
  • Worked in a tight-knit, three-person squad to bringmdmom.org to life — a site designed to support expectant mothers in Maryland. Small team, big impact.
  • Built out resource-rich web pages that are now used by nearly 60% of Maryland’s moms-to-be. Basically, if you’re having a baby in Maryland, chances are you’ve clicked on something I coded.

Software Engineer

Franklin Templeton Investments

2019 - 2021

  • Built front-end apps with Angular and React that didn’t just scale — they soared. Think slick marketing tools with performance to match their polish.
  • Crafted responsive UIs for financial dashboards juggling 1500+ dynamic JSON objects like a pro. Data-heavy? Yes. Clunky? Never.
  • Tweaked and polished the UX/UI until it practically sold itself — contributing to an 8% bump in sales. Turns out good design isn’t just pretty; it pays.
  • Crowned ‘Top Graduate Trainee’ out of 200+ associates — apparently, obsessing over pixel-perfect interfaces and clean code does get noticed.

PET PROJECTS

API Explorer

A Postman-like frontend to test and explore REST APIs — built with React, TypeScript, Tailwind.

View on GitHub

Snake Game

A fun browser-based Snake game powered by JavaScript and canvas — try not to crash 🐍

View on GitHub

SKILLS

Front End Developer

5+ years experience
HTML5
CSS
JavaScript
Angular
React
Node
UX/UI

Database Technologies

3+ years experience
SQL
PL/SQL
SQLite3
DynamoDb
MongoDB (work in progress)

Backend Developer

4+ years experience
Java
C
Python (Work in progress)
C#

Operating Systems

3+ years experience
Linux
MacOS
Windows

EDUCATION

Masters
Bachelors

Master of Science [MS]

Information Systems
University of Maryland Baltimore County
2021 - 2022

Bachelor of Technology [B.Tech]

Information Technology
Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad
2015 - 2019

CONTACT


Lets get in touch!