Hi, my name is Nikhil Narra
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About Me

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I'm Nikhil Narra, a software developer at Blackhawk Network, where I build backend and platform infrastructure for gift card commerce systems - event-driven pipelines, distributed logging, and cloud migrations on AWS. I hold a Master of Science in Computer Science from Virginia Tech (GPA 3.97), where I worked on 3D web technologies with Advanced Research Computing, published two papers at ACM Web3D '25, and won 3rd place in the Tool/Pipeline Innovation of the Year category at the Web3D '25 Tools Competition. My open-source work includes X3Test and x3d-mcp, an MCP server merged into the Web3D Consortium's official tooling. Before graduate school, I spent a year and a half at Deloitte building Salesforce and RPA automation.

Outside of work and academics, I have a diverse range of interests and hobbies that help me maintain a balanced and creative life. I am an avid car enthusiast and enjoy immersing myself in the world of automotive design and engineering. Additionally, I have a creative side that I explore through writing screenplays and diving into captivating books. When it's time to unwind, you'll often find me engaged in video games.

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Work Experience

Blackhawk Network

Software Developer

Apr. 2025 - Present | Coppell, TX

As a Software Developer at Blackhawk Network, I build backend and platform infrastructure for the company's gift card commerce systems. My work spans replacing batch jobs with event-driven pipelines (AWS SQS, EventBridge), building a distributed logging framework with correlation-ID tracing across 15+ microservices, migrating legacy applications to ECS with blue/green deployments and Jenkins CI/CD, and onboarding enterprise clients onto the core Java backend and Angular storefront.

Virginia Tech

Software Developer (Part-time)

Dec. 2023 - Apr. 2025 | Blacksburg, VA

As a Software Developer (Part-time) with Virginia Tech's Advanced Research Computing, working alongside Dr. Nicholas Polys, I built high-performance web and immersive 3D applications: contributed VR headset support to the open-source X3DOM library, rebuilt coursework simulations into a React platform, developed a RAG-based chatbot over the university's knowledge base, and created X3Test - an automated benchmarking framework that led to two peer-reviewed publications at ACM Web3D '25.

X 3 D x3dom

Virginia Tech

Software Developer (Part-time)

Jan. 2023 - Apr. 2025 | Blacksburg, VA

As a Software Developer (Part-time) at Virginia Tech's Center for Rural Education, I worked under the guidance of Research Scientist Dr. Rachelle Kuehl and Director Dr. Amy Azano, leading the full-lifecycle development of Rural STARS - a survey analysis platform that scores gifted-education screening responses in real time and generates per-school PDF reports, replacing a fully manual evaluation process for rural school districts.

NumPy Pandas S

Deloitte

Analyst

Jul. 2021 - Dec. 2022 | Hyderabad, India

As an Analyst on the USI Digital Enablement Team, I developed Apex code and Salesforce Flows on Deloitte's internal employee-lifecycle platform, automated recurring data uploads with UiPath RPA (eliminating a manual process run 3-4 times daily), and engineered a Salesforce-to-ServiceNow integration during the firm's support-ticket migration, delivering ~2,000 cases, change requests, and process enhancements along the way.

Apex UiPath

Key Achievements at Deloitte



Education

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Master's in Computer Science & Applications
Jan. 2023 - Dec. 2024 | Blacksburg, VA


During my pursuit of a Master's in Computer Science at Virginia Tech, my primary focus was on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This interdisciplinary approach provided me with a comprehensive understanding of these fields, allowing me to develop expertise in designing, optimizing, and building software systems, working with cutting-edge AI technologies, and ensuring user-friendly and intuitive interfaces. This educational journey equipped me with a versatile skill set to contribute effectively to various technology-driven endeavors.

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Bachelor's in Computer Science & Engineering
Jul. 2017 - Jul. 2021 | Hyderabad, India


My undergraduate journey at Malla Reddy College of Engineering & Technology (affiliated with Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad) was a pivotal chapter in my academic and professional development. Pursuing a Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering, I gained a strong foundation in core computer science concepts and engineering principles. This comprehensive program not only equipped me with essential technical skills but also nurtured my problem-solving abilities and analytical thinking. Graduating with distinction and holding three on-campus placement offers before graduating, I left the institution with a solid academic background that laid the groundwork for my continued pursuit of excellence in the field of computer science.

Projects

x3d-mcp

x3d-mcp is an open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets large language models generate, validate, edit, and animate ISO-standard X3D 3D scenes. It bridges LLMs' spatial reasoning with a declarative, interoperable 3D format, with multi-layer validation against the X3D specification. The project was merged into the Web3D Consortium's official x3d_mcp repository, contributing the semantic validation layer, animation tooling (TimeSensor + Interpolator + ROUTE chain generation), scene CRUD operations, X3DOM rendering, and guided MCP prompts, developed in coordination with the AI with X3D Working Group.

Technology: Python, FastMCP (official MCP SDK), lxml for XSD and Schematron validation, and the Web3D Consortium's x3d.py package, with Docker-based testing.

Official Repo Reference Implementation
x3d-mcp project banner

X3Test

X3Test is an open-source npm library for automated, headless performance benchmarking of X3D/X3DOM web scenes. Built on Node.js and Puppeteer, it measures FPS, render time, and scene node counts through both a CLI and a JavaScript API, making it easy to drop into CI/CD pipelines for regression testing of 3D web content. X3Test won 3rd Place in the Tool/Pipeline Innovation of the Year category at the Web3D '25 Tools Competition and is published as a peer-reviewed paper at ACM Web3D '25, the 30th International Conference on 3D Web Technology.

Technology: Node.js, Puppeteer for headless browser automation, published on npm, designed for CI/CD integration.

Source Code Paper
X3Test project banner

Rural STARS

Rural STARS is a survey analysis platform built for Virginia Tech's Center for Rural Education to identify gifted students in rural school districts. QuestionPro webhooks feed survey responses into the platform in real time, where Likert data is normalized and candidates are flagged via per-scale thresholds across five talent domains, with cross-scale aggregation to surface multi-talented students. A validation and reporting pipeline generates branded per-school PDF reports with TLS-secured email delivery - replacing what was previously a fully manual spreadsheet-and-calculator evaluation process for county personnel.

Technology: Python, Streamlit, Pandas, NumPy, ReportLab for PDF generation, and SMTP with TLS for secure report delivery.

Rural STARS project banner

TL;DW

Too Long; Didn't Watch (TL;DW) is an innovative application designed to address the challenges of information overload and shortening attention spans in the digital era. TL;DW enables users to interact with and quickly comprehend the essence of lengthy video content. The technology behind TL;DW integrates large language models (LLMs) and video encoders to create a natural, conversational interface for video analysis. Key features include on-demand video summarization, keyword-based prompt recommendations, and navigation to specific video segments guided by AI-generated responses.

Technology and Datasets: The application is built using Streamlit and incorporates Langchain components such as FAISS ChatOpenAI and OpenAIEmbeddings. This setup facilitates an effective method of extracting and concatenating video frame captions and audio transcriptions, enhancing the AI's contextual understanding and interaction accuracy​​.

See Live Demo Video
TL;DW project banner

Fun Fact: I used AI to generate the images you see for each project!

Achievements

A Generalized Web3D API for Metaverse Bookmarks

Nikhil Narra, Anuj Marisetty, Nicholas Polys, and Ben Sandbrook.

Web3D '25: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on 3D Web Technology

This paper introduces a schema and API for a Web3D Bookmarking system that enables interoperable sharing of precise, user-generated 3D scene contexts.

Paper DOI

X3Test: A Headless Browser-Based Framework for Automated Performance Benchmarking

Nikhil Narra, Anuj Marisetty, Nicholas Polys, and Ben Sandbrook.

Web3D '25: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on 3D Web Technology

An automated testing and performance benchmarking framework designed to address the absence of dedicated tools for X3D scenes on the web.

Paper DOI

Spot Award

2022

Received a spot award as part of the FY'23 Deloitte Rewards and Recognition (R&R) Program for rapid learning, independent leadership, and technical expertise in managing critical tasks.

Web3D/Metaverse Tool/Pipeline Innovation of the Year

2025

3rd Place Winner at the Web3D/Metaverse Tools Competition held as part of Web 3D 2025: The 30th International ACM Conference on Web3D Technology in Siena, Italy.



Contact

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or drop an email using the links below.

I'm looking forward to connecting with you!