Kenan Mathukutty

Senior Full Stack Engineer · Platform & Developer Tooling

kenan.mathukutty@gmail.com· Chennai, India

github.com/KenanMathews

Summary

Eight years at Zoho, all on one product: Zoho People, an HR platform companies use to run their staff records, with every customer's data walled off from the others. Scope grew from co-building the first module with one other engineer to sole ownership of three more, and now senior work across the team. Still shipping.

Java and JavaScript at work. Free time goes to learning new technologies and stacks, with hobby projects on GitHub in TypeScript, Python and Rust.

Experience

Software Engineer, Zoho Corporation

May 2018 – Present · Chennai, India

Product engineer on Zoho People, a multi-tenant HR management platform. Co-built Blueprint with one other engineer, then built Sandbox, Offer Letter and the enterprise integrations from scratch as sole developer. Each began as an enterprise customer requirement, scoped directly with client teams.

Blueprint: no-code process automation engine

Designed and built the state-machine workflow engine that lets customers model HR processes (onboarding, appraisal, exit) as visual state transitions with conditional routing, approvals and automated actions. Configured, not coded.
Built transition validation, per-state permission gating, and side-effect execution (notifications, field updates, outbound calls) safely within a multi-tenant boundary.
Handed the module to a wider team once feature-complete.

Sandbox: isolated customer test environments

Built the system that replicates a customer's production configuration into an isolated environment, letting them validate changes before promoting them live.
Solved cross-tenant configuration replication, data isolation, and the promote-back path to production.

Offer Letter: templated document generation

Built versioned offer-letter templates with merge fields bound to candidate records, PDF rendering, and the approval and delivery workflow.

Enterprise integrations

Delivered API-based integrations connecting the platform to enterprise customers' external systems: REST API design, data mapping across mismatched schemas, and authentication flows.
Worked directly with client teams and other internal product teams to scope and deliver these, translating customer requirements into platform features.

Stack: Java, Apache Tomcat, MVC web frameworks, REST APIs, relational data modelling, JavaScript front end.

Selected Projects

Envoi: Local coding agent with MCP and skills · Python, TypeScript, JavaScript

A browser-based coding agent running locally against any OpenAI-compatible provider. Built the agent loop with streaming tool calls, automatic context compaction against the model's context window, a filesystem/shell/search tool suite, an MCP client for external tool servers, and a markdown skills system with a token budget guard.

github.com/KenanMathews/envoi-companion · host and VS Code extension private

Visual Novel Toolchain: Compiler, engine and editor · TypeScript, JavaScript

A three-part system: a runtime engine for narrative state, a browser-based script editor, and a compiler that transforms YAML narratives into standalone, dependency-free HTML games. Same underlying problem as Blueprint, turning configuration into running software, solved independently in a modern stack.

vn-engine · vn-story-editor · vn-compiler-fresh

Guidenco: Adaptive learning iPad app · TypeScript, Swift, React Native

Kumon-inspired adaptive maths app: a placement test assigns one of 13 ranks (counting through intro calculus), then daily worksheets gate progression on mastery, three sheets passed inside the sheet's target time. Handwritten answers recognised on-device via PencilKit and Vision, with interspersed review and rank-up assessments.

Private; walkthrough on request

Kiln: Real-time auction marketplace · Node.js, PostgreSQL, Socket.io

3D-print auction platform: live bidding over Socket.io, an anti-snipe rule extending any auction bid in its final five minutes, email/OTP auth with JWT sessions, a UPI payment flow, and an Expo seller app for listing with photo upload.

Live: kiln.joeinthewind.com

Also: webtoon-gpu-pipeline (LoRA training pipeline orchestration on rented GPU infrastructure), embedded firmware on ESP32-S3, and assorted systems projects.

Technical Skills

Languages: Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, SQL, C
Backend: Node.js, Express, Flask, Apache Tomcat, REST APIs, WebSockets (Socket.io), JWT and OTP auth
Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL
Frontend: React, React Native, Expo, HTML/CSS
Infrastructure: Docker, Docker Compose, Linux, Git, VPS management
AI/ML: MCP, LLM agent tooling

Education

B.Tech, Electrical & Electronics Engineering

National Institute of Technology, Calicut · 2018