Software, Systems & ML Infrastructure Engineer

Turning Complex Ideas into Production Reality

Hi, I'm Karthik Balasubramanian — a Software Engineer at Adobe specializing in Site Reliability, Systems Architecture, and ML Infrastructure. Driven by solving core business challenges, I bridge high-level strategy with deep technical execution — partnering with research and engineering teams to transform experimental concepts and machine learning systems into production-ready platforms. In my free time, I build tools to solve lingering problems I encounter in day-to-day life and make them useful for others. I do not collect, store, or use your data for any purpose.

Personal Lifestyle & Wealth Planner

Modular lifestyle calculators built for public company employees. Stress-test your income, housing affordability, family wealth, and RSU equity strategy without overextending.

TRACK A • CORE CASHFLOW & AFFORDABILITY PIPELINE (COUPLED)

Income Take-Home to Housing Affordability Flow

Step 01 Output → Direct Input to Step 02 Cap
STEP 01 • PAYCHECK 01

Net Take-Home & Wealth Allocator

Goal: Establish your true liquid net pay in hand after maxing 401(k), HSA, & ESPP.

  • Dynamic Tax Dissection (Federal, State, SDI)
  • 401(k) Match & ESPP $21.25k cap calculator
  • 26-Paycheck Chronological Cash Flow Timeline
Launch Paycheck Allocator →
STEP 02 • AFFORDABILITY & HOUSING 02

Rent vs. Buy & Major Purchase Planner

Goal: Stress-test monthly rent, homeownership PITI, and major commitments against net pay.

  • 4-Stage Reverse PITI & ZIP Spec Mapping Engine
  • Interactive Asset Selector (Homes, Cars, Major Assets)
  • Homeownership Readiness Roadmap & Expense Trimmer
Launch Rent vs. Buy Planner →
TRACK B • STANDALONE WEALTH & STRATEGY ENGINES

Independent Long-Term Decision & Investment Calculators

FAMILY • 18-YEAR HORIZON 03

Child 529 & Family Wealth Growth

Goal: Project 18-year compounding growth for 529, UTMA, & Roth Rollovers.

  • State 529 tax deduction optimizer
  • College fund vs Age 60 Roth Rollover
  • Custodial UTMA & compounding growth
Launch Child 529 Planner →
EQUITY • STRATEGY GAME 04

RSU Hold vs. Sell Simulator & Game

Goal: Simulate vesting schedules, compare holding vs S&P 500, & play regret game.

  • 1-Yr Cliff vs Quarterly vest simulations
  • Wisdom of Masses S&P 500 diversification benchmark
  • Vesting Time Machine behavioral regret game
Launch RSU Simulator →

Latest Writing

Deep dives into ML systems, engineering architecture, and first-principles math.

Ml Sep 2, 2026

The Flashlight and the Shadow: How Dot Products and Normalization Power AI Attention

From flashlight shadows to multi-dimensional Transformer attention: an intuitive, first-principles deep dive into dot products, matrix operations, and why self-attention works the way it does.

Ml Aug 26, 2026

The Great AI Compromise: How Autonomous Agents Will Reclaim Our Idling GPUs

An exploration of FLOPs, memory bandwidth, MFU across GPT-2 to Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and how long-horizon autonomous agents will unlock maximum GPU throughput.