Career Journey
Exploring the path of innovation, growth, and meaningful impact in technology
Rishi Kumar Chawda
Principal Software Engineer, Chef team at Progress
I'm a software engineer obsessed with building rock-solid software systems. I believe in clean code, thoughtful architecture, and creating tech that actually makes a difference.
I thrive on challenges and love pushing the boundaries of what's possible in software development. My journey has taken me from freelancing to leading projects at Codebrahma, and now to my current role at Progress Chef, where I focus on DevSecOps tools that empower developers and operations teams alike.
When I'm not deep in code, you'll find me capturing moments through my lens, experimenting with new recipes, devouring books and articles, hitting the trails, or chasing after the next adventure.
Projects & Portfolio
Explore my technical projects and creative work
Core Skills
Certifications
Strategic Innovation: Building and Sustaining Innovative Organizations
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
SAFe Agilist Certification
Scaled Agile, Inc.
Interests & Hobbies
Work Experience
A journey through innovation, growth, and meaningful contributions
Progress Chef
Unleash the Power of AI for Your Business | Progress Software
Progress provides AI-powered software solutions to automate processes to develop, deploy and manage apps, and make critical data more accessible and secure.
www.progress.com
DevOps Automation & Infrastructure Management Software | Chef
Chef helps enterprises automate DevOps and infrastructure management. Simplify operations with ClickOps and Policy-as-Code while scaling securely across clouds.
www.chef.io
Principal Software Engineer
Related Projects
Configuration Management System Software - Chef Infra | Chef
Chef Infra automates the process of managing configurations, ensuring that every system is configured correctly and consistently. Learn more and get started today!
www.chef.io/products/chef-infra
Chef Courier | Chef Community
community.chef.io/tools/chef-courier
Senior Software Engineer II
My time here was split between Chef Infra and Chef Courier. On the Chef Infra side of things, I focused on pipeline health apart from the usual bug squashing, ruby upgrades, CVE patches, and building out a secure channel to distribute enterprise packages. For Courier, I kept resource limiting solid across Linux, Windows, and Darwin. Outside the day-to-day, I rolled out AI-assisted dev workflows and compliance guidelines across our repos to set standards for how we use AI in development, and teamed up with colleagues on a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) project during a hackathon.
Related Projects
Configuration Management System Software - Chef Infra | Chef
Chef Infra automates the process of managing configurations, ensuring that every system is configured correctly and consistently. Learn more and get started today!
www.chef.io/products/chef-infra
Chef Courier | Chef Community
community.chef.io/tools/chef-courier
Senior Software Engineer
This is where I got deeply involved with Chef Courier. I designed the interpreter layer, built the multi-platform client from scratch, and put resource limiting guardrails in place so things wouldn't fall over under load. On the side, I chipped in on internal dev tooling and kept our CI/CD pipelines running smoothly across several repos.
Software Engineer II
Joined the Chef Infra (Desktop) team and started by modernizing macOS configuration resources in the desktop-config cookbook using native CoreFoundation APIs, which made a real difference in fleet management stability. Along the way, I also built a secure content distribution system — Rails backend, S3 and CloudFront for delivery, IAM for entitlements — and automated reporting workflows with SES and Sidekiq. Expanded CI/CD for day-zero OS compatibility, built out solid RSpec coverage, and delivered technical webinars for the Chef community to make complex infrastructure concepts more approachable.
Related Projects
Infrastructure Automation Tool| Automate & Scale IT Management | Chef
Automate and scale infrastructure management with Chef 360. Apply configurations consistently, bridge compliance and DevSecOps, and manage any environment.
www.chef.io/products/chef-infrastructure-management
Configuration Management System Software - Chef Infra | Chef
Chef Infra automates the process of managing configurations, ensuring that every system is configured correctly and consistently. Learn more and get started today!
www.chef.io/products/chef-infra
Codebrahma
Software Engineer Project Lead
Ran projects end-to-end — talking to clients, figuring out what they needed, building it, and keeping it running. The stack varied a lot: React and Gatsby on the web side, React Native for mobile, Firebase (Auth, Firestore, Cloud Functions, Messaging, and more) on the backend, and even some IoT work with Bluetooth Low Energy devices. Mentored new hires, helped the recruitment team interview candidates, and managed deployments across Firebase, the App Store, Play Store, AWS, and Netlify.
Software Development Engineer
Spent most of my time building web and mobile apps — React and Redux on the frontend, React Native for cross-platform, Node.js and PostgreSQL on the backend. Picked up a lot about shipping quality software here, from setting up Sentry and analytics to learning how senior engineers handle client conversations and code reviews.
Software Engineer Intern
My first real industry experience. I built reusable component libraries, worked on an E-Commerce PWA with Gatsby, and learned how to turn design mockups into responsive, accessible pages that work well across devices. Also got my hands dirty with WebSockets for real-time features.
Freelance
Full stack web developer
Where it all started. Took on freelance projects while in college, teaching myself full-stack development with React, Node.js, Express, and databases like PostgreSQL and MongoDB.
Education
Highlights from my academic journey
Siksha 'O' Anusandhan University
Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER)
Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech), Computer Science
Extra-Curricular Activities
CODEX
Co-Founder & Chief Coordinator
Co-founded the first coding club at ITER with a few friends because we felt our campus needed a space for people genuinely curious about code. We ran lectures, organized hackathons and project collaborations, and put real effort into closing the gender gap — making it welcoming for everyone, especially folks who didn't see themselves as 'typical' programmers.
Let's Connect
Ready to turn ideas into impactful solutions? Let's explore how we can collaborate and create something extraordinary together.
Available for freelance projects and full-time opportunities