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Brahmnoor Chawla

Software Engineer III @ Google Photos, building a better AI & ML driven photos reminiscing experience for over a billion users, in a privacy centric way.

Previously: Software @ YouTube Ads, Nuro; B.S. in Computer Science @ Princeton & Drexel; ACM-ICPC Regionals & International Olympiad in Informatics.

About.

As a Software Engineer III at Google Photos, I build the privacy-focused infrastructure powering our highly scalable recommendation & notification systems for Memories, which impact over a billion users worldwide. 1 in 5 people on the planet engage with a Google Photos memory every single day. My role is to ensure that on each of those occasions, users are met with the most relevant and meaningful memory, creating a truly special, reminiscing-worthy experience.

Work.

My career has spanned diverse environments, from impacting billions of users at industry giants to driving innovation at startups and research institutions.

Google Photos

Software Engineer III

September 2023 - Present | Mountain View, CA

Media Coverage: Forbes | Fast Company

  • Leading design and execution across the Memory Recommendation space, collaborating cross-team to optimize relevance and personalization of content, with a projected meaningful Daily Active User growth of 12%.
  • Maintaining a recommendation server with a combination of Integer Programming and ML-driven signals using Java, C++ scaffolding, Boq, & Spanner which serves 1B+ users.
  • Collaborating with Google Research and Google One, influencing design and decisions x-Product through tech talks, design reviews, and data analysis (in Google SQL).

Software Engineer II

August 2021 - September 2023 | Mountain View, CA

Media Coverage: Verge | Tech Crunch | CNet

  • Worked on 12+ critical launches, which collectively resulted in 10%+ (150M+) increase in MAU (Monthly Active Users).
  • Designed and built infrastructure for notification recommendation and delivery with a server QPS (Queries Per Second) of over 100k using Java, C++ & Spanner, while collaborating with Google Research to use ML models to improve content curation, timing, and delivery.

Google

Software Engineer

Internship | June 2020 - September 2020 | Mountain View, CA

Media Coverage: 9to5google

  • Designed the infrastructure to select the most interesting segments from long user videos, implementing data pipelines for Action Moments and Photobooth ML models to pick interesting clips, resulting in 16% increased user coverage and engagement in early demos.
  • Built infrastructure for Suggestor nodes from ground up using C++ to filter out the interesting clips, and designed new RPCs in Java to pass this information to the web and mobile clients

Nuro

Software Engineer

Internship | September 2020 - January 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area

  • Designed a gRPC service to directly access a Postgres table for log search, using Kubernetes and Python, resulting in 12% improvement in processing time.
  • Implemented infrastructure to switch from offline to online processing of car logs in order to create a real-time world state in the autonomous vehicle itself, reducing processing time of these logs by a day.

YouTube

Software Engineer

Internship | June 2019 - September 2019 | Mountain View, CA

  • Orchestrated data to build an internal dashboard in Typescript and Angular to track data backfill tasks for ads targeting, which reduced time from data generation to running the machine learning models by 12 hours
  • Consolidated the user data generation and profile pipeline by adding a new, automatically invoked testing phase using C++ and Spanner which reduced redundant tasks and decreased processing time from 2 hours to 45 minutes.

Princeton University

Research - Human-Computer Interaction Lab

Research | March 2019 - May 2019 | Princeton, NJ

Reichel, J., Chawla, B., Peck, F., Inaba, M., Moges, B., & Chetty, M. (2020, August). 'I have too much respect for my elders': Understanding South African Mobile Users' Perceptions of Privacy and Current Behaviors on Facebook and WhatsApp. In Proceedings of the 29th USENIX Security Symposium. Boston, MA.

Education.

I've been fortunate to learn and research at incredible institutions around the world.

Drexel University

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (Honors)

September 2019 - June 2021 | GPA: 4.00/4.00

Selected Coursework: Advanced Algorithms (G), Theory of Computation (G) Data Structures, Systems Programming, Software Architecture, Functional Programming, Machine Learning (T), Operating Systems

  • Honors Program under the Pennoni Honors College.
  • Teaching Assistant for Machine Learning (CS 383), Computer Programming in Python, and Everyday Computing & Internet.
  • Member of the Competitive Programming Team.
  • Graduated with Dean's Highest Academic Achievement Award.

Princeton University

Exchange Program - Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

January 2019 - June 2019 | GPA: 4.00/4.00

Selected Coursework: Fundamentals of Machine Learning (COS 424), Algorithms and Data Structures (COS 226), Computer Networks (COS 461), Social Psychology (PSY 252)

  • Only student selected from the The University of Hong Kong for this exchange program.
  • Whitman College, Research Assistant (Human Computer Interaction Lab), Powering a Sustainable Generation Scholarship by CLP Power

The University of Hong Kong

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (Transferred out to Drexel University)

September 2017 - December 2018 | GPA: 4.21/4.00

Selected Coursework: Functional Programming (COMP 3258), Modern Technologies on World Wide Web (COMP 3322), Programming Technologies and Tools (COMP 2123), Discrete Mathematics (COMP 2121), Linear Algebra (MATH 1853), Computer Programming (ENGG 1111)

  • Represented the university regionally in ACM-ICPC competitive programming competitions.
  • Research Assistant (under Teli) | Teaching Assistant (CCST9003, COMP1117)

Engagement.

I actively engage with the professional community through my involvement in leading organizations dedicated to advancing the field of computing and artificial intelligence.

Active member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), participating in events and contributing to the advancement of computing.

Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), staying updated on industry trends and engaging in professional development opportunities.

Engaged with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), exploring the latest advancements and ethical considerations in AI.