Santhanu Vinod
Distributed Systems Engineer
OSS Maintainer • GitLab Gitaly Contributor (Go)
Maintainer of GitLab’s vSphere Fleeting plugin and contributor to Gitaly, GitLab’s RPC service. Build event-driven, fault-tolerant systems using Kafka, saga orchestration, and event stores in production environments.
Demonstrated Go proficiency through maintained OSS tooling and merged contributions to one of the largest Go codebases. Seeking Go distributed systems roles.
What I Bring to the Table
A comprehensive skill set built through hands-on professional experience, open source contributions, and continuous learning in distributed systems engineering.
Distributed Systems Architecture
More than 2 years of experience building event-driven systems in production using .NET, Kafka, saga patterns, event stores, and workflow orchestration.
GitLab OSS Maintainer & Contributor
Maintainer of the vSphere fleeting plugin and contributor to Gitaly, the Git RPC service powering GitLab. Merged MRs in one of the largest Go codebases
Cloud-Native Infrastructure
Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, GitLab CI/CD, and Azure cloud deployments, with strong focus on observability and reliability
Go Ecosystem
Built CLI tools in Go, contributed to GitLab’s Go codebase, and maintained production-grade Go tooling. Transitioning from .NET to Go for distributed systems development
Real-Time & Streaming Systems
Implemented Kafka-based event streaming, SignalR-powered real-time dashboards, and distributed workflow monitoring with recovery mechanisms
Remote-First Engineering
Experienced in asynchronous OSS collaboration, distributed teams, and remote workflows through contributions to GitLab and community projects
End-to-End Delivery
Capable of shipping complete features across the stack from backend services to frontend interfaces enabling rapid iteration in small, agile teams
Data Layer Expertise
PostgreSQL, MongoDB with replica sets and aggregation pipelines, Redis, and custom event stores with encryption and multi-tenancy
Linux Comfort
Daily Linux user fluent in command-line workflows, production debugging, and CLI development. Excels in terminal-first engineering environments
Experience & Education
Building scalable systems and contributing to the engineering community
Professional Experience
Software Engineer
Software engineer building reliable distributed systems, backend services, and cloud infrastructure. Professionally experienced in .NET, focused on event-driven architectures, scalable service design, and cloud-native patterns.
Key Achievements
- Implemented an event store in MongoDB that stores full snapshots and computes deltas between events to support analytics and state tracking.
- Designed and maintained a distributed mail service using Kafka, PostgreSQL, and MailKit, supporting multiple backend providers with secure credential management
- Architected and integrated WorkflowCore orchestration, enabling complex distributed workflows with saga patterns and custom retry mechanisms
- Integrated Keycloak-based user access management for multi-tenant environments, ensuring secure gRPC inter-service communication
Technologies
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Education
B.Tech in Computer Science
Specialized in Computer Science & Engineering
Open Source Contributions
Actively contributing to the open source ecosystem as a GitLab Level 2 Contributor, maintaining community projects and contributing to large-scale distributed systems.
Projects I Maintain
Community-maintained plugin for provisioning ephemeral GitLab Runner VMs on vSphere, enabling scalable CI/CD pipelines in enterprise environments.
Highlights
- Designed and provisioned ephemeral build runners on vSphere using template cloning, improving CI/CD efficiency
- Actively maintained the plugin with bug fixes and responded to community contributions
- Officially listed in GitLab documentation as a community-supported plugin, establishing credibility in the OSS ecosystem
Technologies
Major Contributions
Contributed to GitLab’s core Git storage gRPC service, powering distributed systems and ensuring reliable repository operations.
Highlights
- Fixed critical observability gap in SSH-based Git operations (clone, fetch, archive), adding error handling that prevented silent failures
- Implemented bottom-up reflection-based config serialization, making Gitaly’s config struct the single source of truth
- Explored AST-based top-down approach for config documentation generation, improving maintainability
- Proposed and implemented Git refs verification in housekeeping with Prometheus metrics, enhancing monitoring and reliability
Technologies
Featured Projects
Collection of personal projects highlighting end-to-end system design, automation, tooling, and practical software engineering experience across multiple technologies.
Highlighted Work
A Go-based CLI for orchestrating API workflows, designed to test event-driven and distributed systems.
Highlights
- Built a Go CLI application with Cobra to chain API requests for simulating complex workflows.
- Enabled declarative scenario definitions and reusable orchestration patterns for testing distributed interactions.
- Structured testing framework helps debug APIs and validate multi-service behaviors.
- Showcases scalable architecture design and automation for API-driven workflows.
Technologies
Profile-driven Arch Linux installer for automated system setup.
Highlights
- Automates Arch Linux installation using YAML-based profiles for reproducible setups.
- Supports flexible system configurations and ricing workflows for self-hosted environments.
- Improves developer productivity by reducing manual system setup overhead.
- Single-maintainer project showcasing scripting, configuration management, and automation skills.
Technologies
Side Projects
Full-stack platform to manage student placement records.
Highlights
- Developed web application to manage, filter, and export student placement data.
- Implemented PostgreSQL schemas, REST APIs in Node.js, and React-based frontend dashboards.
- Improved recruiter workflow by providing structured and exportable placement data.
- Demonstrates full-stack development and backend database design skills.
Technologies
CRUD-based platform for hospital administration.
Highlights
- Implemented patient and staff management, appointment scheduling, and medical record storage.
- Built backend APIs with Node.js and MySQL, and frontend with React.
- Supports typical hospital workflows and database-driven CRUD operations.
- Demonstrates backend API design and database interaction skills.
Technologies
Experimental Solana blockchain-based marketplace.
Highlights
- Built decentralized e-commerce application with Rust smart contracts and React frontend.
- Implemented wallet integration, product listing, and purchasing flows on Solana blockchain.
- Focused on learning Rust ownership model, Solana programming, and conflict resolution patterns.
- Showcases experimentation with Web3, blockchain logic, and decentralized architectures.