# Lokesh Devnani

> Lokesh Devnani builds backend systems, data infrastructure and products, and teaches contemporary dance and acroyoga in Bengaluru.

I build data systems and the products that sit on them. I was a founding engineer at Clarisights and on Percept Insight at Udaan. At Udaan I also led the SQL infrastructure team. These days I build and run a few products of my own.

I’m drawn to the inner workings of systems and the outer reaches of human expression: yoga, dance and music. That side lives on the Movement page.


## Key facts

- Based in Bengaluru, India.
- Backend and data-infrastructure engineer: backend systems, data infrastructure and the products on top of them.
- Teaches contemporary dance, improvisation, acroyoga and partnerwork; makes dance film and stage work.
- Email: lokeshdevnani@gmail.com
- https://github.com/lokeshdevnani
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/lokeshdevnani
- https://www.instagram.com/lokeshdevnani
- https://www.instagram.com/improvise.dance

## Work

- Udaan (May 2020–Sep 2024), Software Engineer: Worked across the pharma supply chain, led the SQL infrastructure team and built snorql. Founding engineer on Percept Insight, a product-analytics tool: architected and built the core of the product, including event ingestion, reindexing pipelines and the query layer.
- Clarisights (Jul 2017–Apr 2020), Software Engineer, founding team: Founding-team engineer on a multi-tenant marketing-analytics SaaS. Built tenant isolation, moved a high-volume tenant to its own cluster with no downtime, ran PostgreSQL at more than 4.5 TB, and built Kafka ingestion pipelines and core product features such as onboarding, RBAC and real-time collaboration.
- Independent (2024–2026), Planned break: Built MastiDB, Raft Bare Bones and four products for dancers.
- Celebal (Nov 2016–Feb 2017), Full‑stack intern: A hyperlocal food-delivery prototype in Go, CockroachDB, Angular and NativeScript.
- Wheelie Repairs (2016), Co-founder: Doorstep two-wheeler servicing, booked online. Co-founded in college.
- Talk: Squeezing the juice out of SQL Server, Rootconf 2023 (https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0db5_pKXtU5KgSahAjQxeLJqQ#sql-udaan-2)
- Talk: Productionizing hello world, InOut 6.0 2019 (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/120d8wEWXCccdBwhKZHyDhV6ao8DhFHMoXOWJjvQW-Hk)
- Talk: The power of snorql, Udaan Tech Talks 2022 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_GYuh0uYCc)
- Award: Runner-up, AI Hackathon, Udaan 2023
- More: https://lokesh.me/work/

## Projects

- [dhol.dance](https://lokesh.me/projects/dhol-dance/): A beat maker for dancers, with real dhol samples.
- [secondmirror](https://secondmirror.lokesh.me): Your take next to the reference, on the same beat.
- [567go](https://lokesh.me/projects/567go/): A music player built for dancers and choreographers.
- [AcroAtlas](https://lokesh.me/projects/acroatlas/): A shared skill map and practice planner for acroyoga partners.
- [Wheelie Repairs](https://wheelierepairs.github.io): Doorstep two-wheeler servicing in Jaipur, booked online.
- [MastiDB](https://lokesh.me/projects/mastidb/): An on-disk OLAP database engine, built from scratch in Python.
- [Raft Bare Bones](https://lokesh.me/projects/raft-bare-bones/): An educational implementation of the Raft consensus algorithm in Go.
- [snorql](https://lokesh.me/projects/snorql/): SQL diagnostics that turned specialist database knowledge into a tool every engineer could use.
- [Reel Studio](https://lokesh.me/projects/reel-studio/): An AI video editor for dance reels.

## Movement

- Overview: https://lokesh.me/movement/
- [Rebel Flow](https://lokesh.me/offerings/rebel-flow/): Contemporary dance with power, play and fluidity: floorwork, soft acrobatics and momentum, with roots in hip-hop, capoeira and breaking.
- [Acroyoga Foundations](https://lokesh.me/offerings/acroyoga-foundations/): Foundations of shared weight: balance, spotting and clear communication.
- [Curious Body Project](https://lokesh.me/offerings/curious-body-project/): Play, improvisation and embodied awareness, built into a lasting practice.
- [Shared Gravity](https://lokesh.me/offerings/shared-gravity/): Partnered practice of weight, trust, listening, and mutual support.
- Taming Inferno (2024, Dance film): A movement-led film built around the tension between holding and letting go. Screened at Manifest, AuroApaar’s dance-film festival in Pondicherry, 2024. Choreography and performance: Lokesh Devnani · Direction: Michael Maurissens.
- Solo in The Lost Diaries (2026, Stage): A physical-theatre work about identity, restraint, and the pressure to become acceptable. Elastic bands became both prop and partner: pulling the body into shapes, limiting its choices, and eventually becoming material to resist, negotiate, and transform. The Lost Diaries: Eras End. Echoes Remain. Directed by Aastha Gulati, presented by Dhurii · Sabha BLR, July 2026.
- 30 Days of Improvisation (2025, Online series): A dance a day for thirty days, in streets, ghats and mountain trails, posted as I went. India and Nepal.

## Writing

- [MastiDB: building an OLAP engine to understand one](https://lokesh.me/mastidb-olap-engine/): Why I wrote a small on-disk OLAP engine in Python, and how its storage, filters and aggregation work.
- [When the World Becomes My Studio](https://lokesh.me/when-world-becomes-my-studio/): Thirty days of improvisation while travelling, and what showing up every day taught me.
- [The minimalist’s guide to transformative accountability](https://lokesh.me/minimalist-accountability-stack-ios/): A small accountability system in iOS Notes and Shortcuts, shaped by Atomic Habits and Can’t Hurt Me.
- [Dancing with heuristic algorithms](https://lokesh.me/heuristics-algorithms-for-dancers/): Scheduling a dance show with local-search heuristics, after three paracetamol tablets.
- [Personal notes on receiving feedback](https://lokesh.me/mental-notes-for-receiving-feedback/): Things to keep in mind while receiving feedback, and how to process the not-so-constructive kind.
- [SQL Server: dropping indexes in production, safely](https://lokesh.me/sql-server-dropping-indexes-in-production-env/): What dropping an index locks, and how to do it on a live database.
- [Unused index analysis in SQL Server with a replica setup](https://lokesh.me/sql-server-unused-indexes/): Finding indexes nobody reads, using DMVs, across a primary and its replicas.
- [Crossing the chasm towards continuous learning](https://lokesh.me/learning-progress/): The psychology of making progress, and how imposter syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger effect shape it.
- [Promises: composition and patterns](https://lokesh.me/composing-promises-with-patterns/): Composing async work in JavaScript: concurrency, racing, sequences and cancellation.
- [Do you really understand CS?](https://lokesh.me/understanding-computer-science/): How computer science gets misunderstood, and how it differs from software development.

## Optional

- [Résumé](https://lokesh.me/resume.pdf)
- [Everything on this site in one file](https://lokesh.me/llms-full.txt)
- [RSS](https://lokesh.me/rss.xml)
- [About](https://lokesh.me/about/)
- [Engineering: The Good Parts](https://lokesh.me/how-engineering-upgrades-your-mind/) (2016)
- [Apache virtual hosts for dev environments](https://lokesh.me/dynamic-apache-virtual-hosts-dev-config/) (2016)
- [Ubuntu packages worth installing](https://lokesh.me/ubuntu-16-04-must-have-packages/) (2016)
- [Supercharge your terminal with guake and zsh](https://lokesh.me/supercharge-terminal-guake-zsh/) (2016)
- [What is version control and why should you care?](https://lokesh.me/version-control-need/) (2016)