Kalaiyarasan Raja · A Tech Nomad
Hi, I'm Kalai.
9+ years wandering across banking, product and consulting as an engineer. Currently Lead Development Consultant at Thoughtworks.
I like pulling on interesting threads until they turn into projects. This site is home base for whatever I'm building, testing and learning along the way — experiments and evidence, not recycled opinion. Views are my own.
I have been part of
My timeline
B.E. Electrical & Electronics Engineering
2013 — 2017
Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai. First Class with Distinction. General Secretary, Electrical Department · General Secretary, TCE Dramatics Club · Inter-zonal Silver Medalist, Judo.
Software Developer
JUN 2017 — JUL 2019
First engineering role, in banking tech. Won Project Star (2017) for a POC on dynamic tokenization for POS payments — tokens never stored, yet trackable by the issuer.
Member Technical Staff
AUG 2019 — MAR 2022
Product engineering at scale — building for one of India's largest SaaS suites.
Senior Development Consultant
MAR 2022 — SEP 2025
Consulting across clients and domains — engineering, architecture and delivery. Chennai, India.
Lead Development Consultant
SEP 2025 — PRESENT
Leading delivery and mentoring teams — and off the clock, researching AI search and writing AI Search Decoded.
Awards & recognition
2017Project Star — Standard Chartered. For a POC on a dynamic tokenization algorithm for POS payments: tokens that are never stored, yet remain trackable by the issuer for refunds and failures.
2016Best NSS Volunteer — Anna University. Selected from 500+ affiliated colleges.
Follow the series
Two posts a week on LinkedIn — research, experiments and practical findings.