Vishwak Thatikonda

Vishwak Thatikonda is a Lead Software Engineer and Founding Architect specializing in high-resilience, mission-critical systems. Known for building complex platforms from the ground up, his work ranges from engineering the ground systems for the NASA Perseverance Rover (Mastcam-Z) to architecting the "Product Data Brain" for 38,000 Starbucks stores—a foundational cornerstone for their next-generation global POS system. A technical pioneer in both the startup and enterprise worlds, Vishwak served as the inaugural architect for an MIT GeoAI spinout (AirWorks), where he scaled the platform from $0 to a multi-million dollar venture fundraise. He has led industry-first banking initiatives for 18 million users at Credit Sesame and directed blockchain-logistics pilots for UPS. A former ACM Chairperson, Vishwak bridges the gap between deep-tech research and large-scale production reality. His latest open-source project, LambdaForge, empowers engineers to run professional-grade financial automation with near-zero operational overhead.