Player 1

Name
Prakhar Goel
Class
Full-stack engineer
Base
India · remote

I build web products end to end — from TypeScript/React SPAs to the Node.js services and real-time infrastructure behind them. First engineering hire at Adalat AI (YC), where I led the product 0→1 and was promoted to Platform Engineer. Special interest in text editors, real-time collaboration, and AI-based technologies.

Career

Experience

Platform Engineer — Adalat AI (YC)

2025 – present · India · remote

  • Promoted after leading the product 0→1 as Founding Engineer; now a senior IC focused on platform-level problems across products.
  • Built Yak, a Yjs collaboration server on Node.js and Redis, enabling real-time multi-user document collaboration across the platform.
  • Designed a lossless WebSocket pipeline for voice dictation — buffering, automatic reconnection, and resume without data loss over unreliable courtroom internet.
  • The platform is live across 50% of India, recording 1,000,000+ minutes of courtroom proceedings every quarter.

Founding Engineer — Adalat AI

2024 – 2025 · India · remote

  • First engineering hire; helped scale the nonprofit into one of India’s leading legal-tech organizations — the first nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator in 5 years.
  • Owned the entire frontend stack; built the Judges Dashboard, a voice-first text editor that works on patchy internet, with document print, page margins, and end-to-end encryption.
  • Worked closely with design, lawyers, court staff, and leadership to drive feature development; helped scale engineering from 0 to 20.

Senior MTS, Frontend — SentiSum

2022 – 2024 · London · remote

  • Completed the 0→1 journey at a seed-funded startup with full ownership of the frontend and other key pieces of the stack.
  • Designed a reusable component system from unstyled components, cutting development time; eliminated page refreshes with react-query.
  • Mentored and hired junior engineers; retained part-time for 6 months after moving on, single-handedly maintaining the product through a company pivot.

Senior Software Engineer, Full Stack — Larsen & Toubro Infotech — Microsoft SDMPlus

2020 – 2022 · India

  • Built a git-like document change tracker and approval workflow using CKEditor.
  • Upgraded an ejected project to Webpack 5; improved performance with lazy-loaded components and react-virtualized.
  • Worked on site gamification to increase user interaction and on accessibility improvements.

Skills

Frontend

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Redux Toolkit
  • Zustand
  • React Query
  • Zod
  • Tailwind
  • Radix UI

Backend & real-time

  • Node.js
  • Express
  • Redis
  • WebSockets
  • Yjs
  • PartyKit
  • Python
  • MS-SQL
  • Supabase
  • Go

Architecture

  • System design

Editors & collaboration

  • ProseMirror
  • Tiptap
  • CKEditor
  • DraftJS

AI tooling

  • Claude Code
  • AI/LLM integration
  • AI-assisted workflows

Analytics & monitoring

  • Mixpanel
  • Sentry
  • June

Talks

  • “Building WebSocket Apps That Hold Up in Production” — React Nexus, 2026
  • “Designing a Voice-First Text Editor” — Bangalore React Meetup #96

Education

  • B.Tech, Computer Science — UPES · 2016 – 2020 · studied game development before moving to full-stack
  • Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification · 2020

Free roam

Rolled Game Developer at character creation; respecced to full-stack, kept the instincts — you're looking at them. Here's what Player 1 does when the work quests are turned in.

ExplorerAlways clearing fog of war — new places, new maps.
Glider unlockedCompleted a paragliding course. Fall damage: disabled.
Endurance buildTook up running.
Half marathon: 21.1/21.1 km — quest complete
STR grindingGym regular. Slow, honest stat gains.
Cutscene enjoyerAnime watchlist permanently running.

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