RITOM
San Francisco Bay Area, CA

I usually work on projects related to any or all of my 3 interests: building tech products, enabling people interaction, or satisfying my own curiosity on a variety of topics.

WORK & EXPERIENCE

Founding Engineer at Friendi.fi

• Apr 2025 - current
• San Francisco Bay Area, California
• Engineering healthy relationships
• Skills: Leadership, Agentic Automation, Generative AI, Python, JavaScript, React.js, Linux, Microsoft Azure, Cursor, Claude

Software + AI Engineer at care.coach

• Jun 2024 - Apr 2025
• San Francisco Bay Area, California
• Working on custom healthcare AI products and agents.
• Advancing senior healthcare through technology
• As an engineer, I focused on:
  • Building end-to-end protocol data measures
  • Implemented CV estimation
  • Improved ML model performance and generative AI summarization
  • Adding new features, product development & design, testing, and more.
• Skills: Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Android SDK, Android, Django, Python, OpenAI GPT

Digital Development Lead at USC Annenberg Media

• Jan 2023 - May 2024
• Los Angeles, California
• Developing web and app features for a better student news experience.
• Enabling Annenberg Media Centre's web team to get started on development projects using ArcXP, JavaScript for article pages, and Figma for design elements.
• Skills: Arc XP, Communication, Figma, Leadership, Web Applications

Course Producer at USC Viterbi School of Engineering

• Sep 2023 - Dec 2023
• Los Angeles, California
• For Databases - CSCI585

Founding Software Engineer at GrowthX

• Dec 2021 - Jul 2022
• Bengaluru, India
• Built a social learning community tech for the top 1% founders & growth leaders.
• As the founding engineer, I focused on a bunch of things:
  • Taking decisions on what tech stack we build on.
  • Defining the engineering org structure with founders.
  • Implementing engineering & development processes.
  • Building growth tools & the core platform experience across community, learning & upskilling functions.
  • Tech Stack: React, MongoDB, Node, Amplitude, Make.com, Zapier, Razorpay, and many more!
• This involved working with cross-functional teams & learning those business pieces in the process, very new yet tremendously fun!
• Skills: CSS, JavaScript, SQL, HTML, Cloud Computing, Full-Stack Development, Leadership

Web Developer at LookUp Incubator Inc.

• Aug 2021 - Nov 2021
• Oakland, California
• Developed custom brand pages atop CMS technologies (Wix, Squarespace) to optimize for user interactions
• Implemented Linktree-like social bio tool to increase domain visits & increase retention
• Built a from-scratch Whova widget to showcase conference speakers on discovery pages
• Worked on SEO optimizations for the LookUp homepage
• Built community tools, widgets, engaged in conversations on tech life balance & mental wellbeing

SEO & Content Lead at bitgrit Inc.

• May 2020 - Oct 2020
• Tokyo, Japan
• Developed strategies to increase website ranking, and attract engaging users
• Created email campaign content, some resulting in highest open and click-through rates
• Designed graphics for social posts
• Tools used: Google Analytics, Webmaster, Canva, Adobe Photoshop, Mailchimp
• Skills: JavaScript

Technology Specialist at Skylark Automation

• Jun 2020 - Sep 2020
• Pune, India
• Built backend systems for Skylark Group's web products
• Designed templates for dynamic webpages
• Strategized product addition mechanisms for site traffic
• Deployed end-to-end hosting for technical assets
• Skills: CSS, JavaScript, HTML

Co-Founder at The SCRIPT Group

• Sep 2018 - Jun 2020
• Pune, India
• Created and led a community for college students to learn technology, conducting live workshops and coding contests
• Oversaw club operations including events and necessary software
• Developed media assets and creatives for early events
• Skills: JavaScript

ACADEMIA

Aug 2022 - May 2024

• M.S. Computer Science, University of Southern California
  • Los Angeles, California

May 2020 - May 2022

• Paper on Major Depressive Disorder Detection
  • Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Big Data, and Internet of Things for Healthcare : Chapman and Hall/CRC

Jul 2017 - Oct 2021

• B.Tech. Computer Science & Engineering, MIT World Peace University
  • Pune, India

READING

I've been reading books ever since the wee age of 8. Only recently did I switch from fiction to business and history titles, something I never thought I'd do. The primary motivator was the dearth of insightful and comprehensive content available online on these topics.

I'm currently reading / finished the following set:

• The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust
• Confessions of an Advertising Man
• Magician of the Movies: The Life of Walt Disney
• Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
• An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California

WRITING

I've written a few articles on my not-so-periodic newsletter. I try to write about topics which really helped me or really capture my intrigue.
Why recruiters don't find your LinkedIn profile
Why Threads by Meta is hot
Why the Apple Vision Pro is insane
Gmail’s spam filters hurt indie email

I also wrote a few short stories in the past, which I republished here

PRESS

Featured in
YES! Magazine
Alternet.org
ZNetwork
Spirit of Change Magazine
USC Annenberg Media

CONTACT

X / TWITTER
LINKEDIN
GITHUB
INSTAGRAM
SUBSTACK
CRUNCHBASE
SPOTIFY

Ritom Gupta 2026