Hemant Sharma

I am a highly curious and eager-to-learn, figure-out-and-implement kind of person and believe in doing things the absolute right way. My relationship with computers started very early. At age 9, I wrote my first line of code in BASIC and at age 11, I was introduced to Turtle Graphics through my school curriculum itself. I still remember how magical it felt to draw shapes on a screen simply by giving the computer commands. Since I had access to computers throughout my childhood, it became natural for a curious kid like me to fall deeply in love with computers. Every day after coming back from school, one of the first things I would do was start my computer.

At age 14, I wrote my first line of C++. Around the same time, I was already solving programming problems from my school books — problems that I later realised were essentially easy-level DSA problems. At age 15, I was introduced to Java, the programming language I love working in. I enjoyed it so much that I went beyond what my school curriculum had to teach me. I wrote Java for about four years, building many small and interesting CLI applications simply because I wanted to see what I could make.

When I joined college at 19, I continued doing DSA in Java, moreover I was exploring full-stack development with React, Node.js, and MongoDB. I initially got into full-stack because I was curious about building webapps and because it was a quick way for an engineering student to earn some money. That eventually led me to freelancing, working with friends, and co-founding Sovaka, where we built software for clients in India and Ireland.

My path eventually led me to Syrow (opens in new tab) as a Software Engineer, where I started by building user-facing applications and prototypes and gradually moved deeper into the core product. I am now involved into production backend systems, including a real-time AI chatbot pipeline handling 543K+ weekly requests. I have also built projects single handedly such as an AI Voice Assistant and an AI Call Assistant with sub-200ms latency, contributing across the stack and throughout product development for products including Aartel (opens in new tab) and AI Giny (opens in new tab).

More recently, my engineering curiosity has been pulling me much more deeply toward backend engineering and AI. I am focusing seriously on backend engineering with Java and AI engineering with Python, because these are the areas that genuinely draw my attention and make me want to understand things at a much deeper level. I believe these are fields I may stick with for at least a decade. Full-stack development was something I initially entered out of main curiosity and the opportunity to earn as a student; backend and AI feel different — they are where my engineering curiosity naturally drags me and where I find myself wanting to go deeper.

A significant influence on how I think about engineering is Steve Jobs and his philosophy of craftsmanship. I strongly believe that great software should be built with the same care for the things users never see as for the things they do. The internal details may be invisible to most users, but they should still reflect thoughtfulness, precision, and care. I try to carry that mindset into my own work — not just building software that works, but building software that is reliable, well-engineered, and worthy of the people who depend on it.

My goal is to become a top-tier backend engineer with strong complementary AI engineering skills: someone who can understand systems deeply, figure out difficult problems, learn whatever is necessary, and build reliable software that creates meaningful impact in people's lives.