Pranav Yadav
I build AI systems for domains where a wrong answer is a liability — insurance underwriting, payments, financial research. Schema-first, output-verified, no hallucinated numbers.
Ex-Citi · Ex-Xendit · Ex-CTO · 9 years · 5 on Toptal
Now
What I'm focused on at the moment — current direction, not history.
- Lead engineer on a two-sided kids-activities marketplace — Airtable → Postgres → Algolia sync spine, Stripe claim & billing, and a column-level data-ownership model between editorial sync and self-serve providers. 3,500+ programs live.
- AI & automation for regulated workflows via Toptal — an underwriter-grade LLM document pipeline for a freight-insurance agency, and the invoicing engine for a behavioral-health provider portal.
- Story of a Stock — turning dense Indian company disclosures into structured, comparable research data. Schema-first extraction; no regex on free text.
- Token-efficient visual RAG — extracting signal from diagram-heavy investor decks without blowing the token budget.
Last updated August 5, 2026
Projects
A slice of what I've shipped recently — from consumer platforms to AI-driven tooling.
Kids Activities Search
Lead Engineer · MarketplaceTwo-sided marketplace for kids classes, camps, and events — editorial sync and self-serve providers share the same records under a column-level ownership model, with Algolia search, map exploration, and Stripe-powered claim & billing.
Live, with 3,500+ vetted programs in its launch county; catalogue sync rebuilt from ~7 minutes to ~10 seconds.
Cruise Package Search
Toptal · Webflow CloudFaceted cruise-package search for a US travel retailer — a Next.js app running inside their Webflow site via Webflow Cloud, on Cloudflare Workers.
Live on the retailer's main site, searching ~500 curated sailings.
What I build
Four capabilities, each anchored in named client work below.
LLM output you can defend
Schema-first extraction, JSON contracts, verified output. When the result goes to an underwriter, an auditor, or an investor, "the model said so" isn't enough.
Document-heavy workflows, automated
Spreadsheets, PDFs, and submissions in; structured records out. Renewal chases, intake pipelines, disclosure extraction.
Systems-of-record integration
Auth, retries, batching, caching — the boring half done right.
0-to-1 architecture
Backend, app, infra — comfortable owning the whole call.
How I work
What working together actually looks like — before, during, and after the build.
Scoping before code
Every engagement starts with scoping, not code. I map the workflow, find where a wrong answer actually costs you, and design the contract the output has to satisfy before any model is involved. Then I build to that contract.
AI-assisted, human-reviewed
I work with AI coding agents at full speed and review everything they produce. I've shipped unsupervised agent output and watched it degrade by month two — my workflow is built around catching that before it reaches you.
Engagement shapes
Typical engagements run 4–12 weeks at 10–20 hrs/week, hourly or fixed-scope. Remote, async-friendly, and used to operating across time zones without a delivery gap.
Experience
Fintech, consumer health, entertainment, and 0-to-1 startups. Individual contributor to CTO.
Front-end Developer
Citibank
2018 — 2019
Built an Angular client app from scratch to production — multiple AG Grid data tables, auth, and session management.
Java Developer
Citibank
2019 — 2021
Owned business logic and CI/CD; pipeline improvements saved ~1 hour of dev effort per day.
JavaScript Back-end Lead · side contract
Nuclei Sports
2020 — 2021
Designed a microservices architecture (Node.js, Express, Loopback) and built a proprietary player-performance algorithm. 1-5 reports. Ran alongside the Citi role as an evenings-and-weekends contract.
Node.js Developer
Spark · via Toptal
2021
Third-party integrations (ClickUp, Airtable), webhooks, and RabbitMQ for a UK edtech publisher.
Senior Node.js Developer
Xendit · via Toptal
2022
Built a lean billing/revenue system on a transactional dataset for SEA's largest payment gateway.
CTO · Founding engineer
On The Move
2022 — 2025
Founded and led engineering for an AI-powered fitness SaaS. 6-10 reports. Took the product from a Webflow MVP to a fully integrated platform.
Automation Consultant
Journey Entertainment · via Toptal
2025
Automated payment-request approvals and built a JotForm → Airtable pipeline plus a relational DB for crew, cast, and project management.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer · AI & Automation
Risk Management & Compliance · via Toptal
2025 — now
Provider-pluggable LLM pipeline (OpenAI + Gemini) generating underwriter-grade Letters of Experience. Zoho CRM sync with concurrent attachment streaming, GCS uploads, and NHTSA VIN verification.
Senior Full-Stack Developer · Webflow + Next.js
Very Big Things · via Toptal
2025 — now
Webflow → Next.js 15 migration of a vacation booking platform; edge-native on Cloudflare Workers via OpenNext. KV-backed cache fans out to 6 Webflow collections in parallel and serves a pre-joined dataset globally.
Webflow Developer
Rox Radar · via Toptal
2026
Stabilized a Webflow + Airtable + Mapbox event platform; refactored interactive components and cut bug turnaround.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer · Invoicing & Ops
Behavioral-health nonprofit (NJ) · via Toptal
2026 — now
Contractor portal for a behavioral-health nonprofit — typed schema layer over Airtable verified against the live metadata API, Firebase auth, and a cron-driven invoicing engine reconciling units, authorizations, and pay periods exactly. Playwright screenshot-regression coverage.
Lead Engineer
Kids-activities marketplace
2026 — now
Two-sided consumer marketplace: editorial pipeline and self-serve providers writing to the same records under a column-level ownership model. Airtable → Postgres → Algolia sync spine (batched upserts: ~7 min → ~10 s), Stripe claim & billing, HubSpot lifecycle outbox. 49 routes, 35 migrations, 14 ADRs.