Paran Sonthalia.
Quantitative developer on Citadel's Index Rebalance desk. UC Berkeley '22, Computer Science and Data Science. Co-founder of DeWaste, a Y-Combinator-grant-funded food-waste startup. I build careful systems by day and run long distances by morning.
Experience
- Quant developer on the Index Rebalance desk — equities team executing systematic rebalances of major equity indices.
- Own production trading systems; write code that runs in critical hot paths during open and close.
- Built tooling for desk analytics, post-trade attribution, and pre-trade scenario modeling.
- Added persistent-disk functionality to Citadel's internal Kubernetes engine.
- Worked with infrastructure team on operator extensions and reliability tests.
- Automated analysis of device-connectivity data across the Echo fleet.
- Reduced redundant customer-service contacts by surfacing self-heal hints earlier in the flow.
- Co-founded a startup tackling post-consumer food waste in dining institutions.
- Designed and shipped IoT hardware (camera + load cells) plus the web dashboard customers used.
- Y Combinator Startup School grant recipient (2019). Pitched to and worked with dining services at multiple universities.
- Hired and managed a small team; ran sales, hardware, software, and fundraising.
- On the Release Engineering team; automated portions of the shipping pipeline for a new release.
- Wrote tooling that's still in use for build-promotion gating.
- Ran a summer internship program for high-school engineers; built a team of 4–6 students each year.
- We shipped a new app or tool every summer — game, tutoring marketplace, school directory, social.
- Designed and developed multiple new capabilities on LeanData's lead-routing product.
- First professional dev role; learned to read a large existing codebase.
Education
- Taught Computer Science Mentors (CSM) sections; mentored students through intro CS courses.
- Coursework: data structures & algorithms, OS, computer architecture, machine learning, probability, optimization, statistical methods.
Selected projects
AI-native technical interview platform. Candidates use AI freely while a silent watcher grades judgment, problem decomposition, and tool use — auditable scorecards in 45 minutes.
An AI interviewer that listens, speaks, and grades. Paste a job description and run a realistic mock interview — coding, system design, case, banking, or quant — with scored feedback.
Food-waste startup. Worked with dining institutions to measure and reduce post-consumer waste. YC Startup School grant.
YouTube channel documenting endurance training — running, biking, race prep. Long-form, no edits for the sake of it.
Designed and CAD'd custom arms, landing gear, and hub. Sourced parts, built a photography drone end-to-end.
Self-sorting trash can. Computer vision + servos to route landfill, recycling, and compost in real time.
Skills
- ·C++
- ·Python
- ·Go
- ·JavaScript / TypeScript
- ·Swift
- ·Java
- ·SQL
- ·Low-latency design
- ·Distributed systems
- ·Kubernetes
- ·Linux
- ·Equities index trading
- ·Rebalance mechanics
- ·Post-trade analytics
- ·React
- ·Next.js
- ·HTML/CSS
- ·Embedded prototyping
- ·CAD (Fusion 360)
- ·Soldering, harnessing
Honors & extras
- Y Combinator. Startup School 2019 grant recipient (DeWaste)
- Eagle Scout. Troop 103, Los Altos, CA
- Cal Hacks Fellowship. 5.0 cohort
- Press. 12+ writeups, mostly for DeWaste — see paransonthalia.com/press
- 100-mile ultra. Big Bear, CA — 100 mi.
- SF Ultra. San Francisco, CA — 52.4 mi.
- JFK 50. Washington Co., MD — 50 mi.
- Ironman. Texas — 140.6 mi.
- Ironman. Arizona — 140.6 mi.
- Half Ironman. Luxembourg — 70.3 mi.