About

I'm Pranav, the Engineering Lead at Snaptrude, a cloud-native 3D design platform for architects. I was the founding engineer, joining eight years ago. The team has since grown to 50+ engineers. I've been part of that growth from the start, building most of the core systems while staying hands-on, still shipping code every day.

My work sits at the intersection of 3D geometry, AI, and the web. I've built real-time multiplayer collaboration for 3D models (think Google Docs, but for buildings), polygon skeletonization algorithms, image processing pipelines, and most recently production AI agents that take a plain-English architectural brief and produce a concept massing in minutes by pairing LLM reasoning with geometry-aware tool use.

I believe the best architecture is the one you don't have to explain at 2 AM. Ship something that works, measure it, make it better. Language and framework are never a barrier.

Experience

Snaptrude

Engineering Lead · 2018 – Present

  • Founding engineer. The team has grown to 50+ and I still own architecture, core services, and release cadence while shipping code every day.
  • Built the agentic harness that powers AI features across the platform. The first agent takes a plain-English architectural brief and produces a concept massing in about 10 minutes, handling zoning research, adjacency generation, and self-evaluation along the way.
  • Designed the agent framework from scratch: LLM reasoning paired with geometry-aware tool use, RAG over zoning and building codes, and automated evaluation loops that let agents check their own work.
  • Built real-time multiplayer collaboration for 3D architectural models. Multiple users editing the same building at the same time, stress-tested with 60 concurrent users.
  • Led the 2D-to-3D pipeline: image upload, processing, detection, and AutoCAD import, reducing user onboarding from 30 clicks to 1.

Applied Materials

Software Engineer · 2017

  • Part of the CMP (Chemical Mechanical Polishing) software team, handling end-to-end software requests from root cause analysis through design, development, and testing.

Beyond Work

I'm endlessly curious. My Twitter feed is a mix of AI takes, random observations about Coke Zero economics, and "TIL" moments about languages I'd never heard of. I think the best engineers are the ones who can't stop asking "why" about everything, not just code.

I love food, especially street-style cooking heavy on spice and light on pretense. I stay disciplined through gym sessions three times a week. The consistency carries over into work: show up, do the reps, get better. Balance isn't a luxury; it's infrastructure.

I also write about AI and the future of work. I'm interested in the medium-term effects of AI on economies, the future of IT services, and what happens when building software becomes nearly free. If any of that sounds interesting, check out my writing.