Ershad Kunnakkadan

Software engineer

I build and operate infrastructure, backend systems and AI-native products where scale, security and correctness matter.

Fourteen years in, I've gone from hands-on engineer to leading Gumroad as its CEO, and then back to building full time, which is the part I've always liked most.

Résumé (PDF) GitHub LinkedIn [email protected]

Work

2020 — 2026

Gumroad

Senior Engineer → Staff Engineer → CEO → Staff Engineer

Lead engineer for infrastructure, security and performance. Moved to New York on an O-1A visa, then served as CEO — accountable for strategy, product direction, operations and company performance — before returning to full-time engineering to build AI-native products, infrastructure and internal systems.

2015 — 2020

BigBinary

Senior Software Engineer

Full-stack consulting engineer across a range of client products, mostly Ruby on Rails.

2012 — 2015

Bang the Table

Software Engineer → Software Architect

Led one of the engineering teams building EngagementHQ, the flagship product, and owned DevOps, scalability and security alongside it.

What I do

Infrastructure & DevOps

AWS · Terraform · Nomad · Consul · Docker · Ansible · Chef · Cloudflare · Heroku

Security

Application security · vulnerability research · secrets management · SSO and access control · Vault · Okta

Backend & product

Ruby on Rails · Ruby · Python · Go · Elixir / Phoenix · PostgreSQL · MySQL · MongoDB · DynamoDB

Frontend & AI-native systems

TypeScript · React · LLM-backed workflows, agents and internal tooling

Recognition

  • O-1A visa, United States — recognised by the U.S. government as an individual with extraordinary ability.
  • GitHub Security Bounty — reported a security vulnerability in GitHub Gist. Researcher page.
  • Prezi bug bounty — reported a vulnerability that exposed presentation titles held in the database.
  • Google Summer of Code, 2013 & 2014 — mentored and assessed students at Swathanthra Malayalam Computing, and built the Grandham bibliography platform and APIs.

Open source

  • Gumroad — infrastructure, security and performance work on the open-source platform.
  • GitLab — built the feature for addressing users directly in descriptions and comments.
  • Wikimedia — fixed issues in the Universal Language Selector.
  • Swathanthra Malayalam Computing — volunteer since 2009, developing and translating software for the Malayalam-speaking community.

Elsewhere