About

I like problems that require more than one lens.

My background spans software engineering, healthcare, design, and now business—not because they are separate interests, but because each exposed a different part of the same problem: how do you turn technical possibility into something useful?

The trajectory

Each discipline changed the questions I ask.

01

Engineering

A B.S. in Computer Science at Tufts led to an engineering career in healthcare and genomics. Building production systems taught me to see architecture as a map of constraints, dependencies, failure modes, and consequences.

02

Design

UI/UX work gave me another way to reason about complicated systems: through the information people see, the sequence of decisions they make, and the visual patterns that help them understand what matters.

03

Product

My engineering work increasingly included requirements, workflow design, technical scopes, stakeholder alignment, architecture choices, and prioritization within technical delivery. I did not hold a PM title; the work made product questions unavoidable.

04

Business

Northwestern's MMM joint degree—an MBA and MS in Design Innovation—is the next deliberate layer: a way to connect technical and design judgment to strategy, value, and organizational decisions.

Timeline

Built one layer at a time.

  1. Tufts UniversityComputer Science
    BMW Group Asia · Innovation Team, Data Science & Machine Learning internship
  2. TellescopeUI/UX Design
  3. Human Care SystemsHealthcare Product Engineering
  4. Broad InstituteGenomics Platform
  5. Northwestern MMMMBA + MS Design Innovation

Working vocabulary

Tools are useful when they connect to a problem.

Software
Python · SQL · JavaScript · Vue.js
Data & workflows
PostgreSQL · Airflow
Cloud & infrastructure
Google Cloud · AWS · Azure · Terraform · Docker · Kubernetes
Design
Figma · Sketch

Outside work

Music is the other long-running system.

Guitar and music production are the strongest through-lines outside work. I also sail, snowboard, make graphics, and spend an unreasonable amount of attention on the NBA.

GuitarMusic productionSailingSnowboardingGraphic designNBA

Contact

Want to compare notes on a complicated problem?

nihal.pai@kellogg.northwestern.edu