Manish Bellani Link to heading

Staff Software Engineer · Frisco, TX manish.bellani@gmail.com · (972) 273-0710 · mbellani.org

Summary Link to heading

Software Engineer with over 2 decades of experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems, most recently at GitHub. In recent years, I’ve worked on Blackbird—a high-performance code search engine built from ground up in Rust. Blackbird system hosts the world’s largest code index, encompassing 130+ million repositories and serving as the backbone for GitHub Copilot’s code understanding and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities, empowering over 100M+ developers globally on a daily basis.

Experience Link to heading

Career Sabbatical · Remote · Feb 2025 – Present Link to heading

  • Sabbatical focused on personal and family well-being, while pursuing continued education through Oxford University’s part-time M.Sc. in Software Engineering.

  • Dedicated this period to advancing my personal interest in deepening knowledge of computer science, completing modules in Algorithmics, Concurrency and Distributed Systems, and Software Engineering Mathematics.

GitHub · Remote · Jul 2018 – Feb 2025 Link to heading

Staff Engineer · Code Search · Jan 2021 – Feb 2025

  • Early engineer on the Blackbird team where I contributed to several core pieces of novel code search engine that powers GitHub’s code search as well as Github Copilot for 100M+ developers globally.
  • Scaled Blackbird from a single-machine prototype to a globally distributed system, running on 450+ machines across multiple geographies, enabling high-throughput, low-latency code search at scale.
  • Led and scaled core search components written in Rust and Go, including query parsers and query services. Implemented query and index-time consistency guarantees to ensure accurate and up-to-date results. Optimized the system for high throughput and low latency, improving overall performance. Enhanced reliability, security, and trust across the platform.
  • Built epoch branching for Blackbird, reducing time to build new clusters from days to hours (minutes for semantic code index), enabling rapid creation of new semantic code search clusters that would otherwise have taken months. Epoch branching also provided robust recovery from incidents and dramatically boosting team productivity. This was crucial for launching enhanced Github Copilot experience on time.
  • Designed, built, and maintained key infrastructure—provisioning, observability, deployment, and end-to-end testing—enabling rapid, reliable system changes with confidence.
  • Recognized as the team’s connective tissue, fostering empathy and understanding across the group. Conducted one-on-one discussions with team members, playing a critical role in building a high-performing, cohesive team.

Staff Engineer · Data Infrastructure · July 2018 – Dec 2020

  • Scaled GitHub’s analytics data storage from 25TB to 3PB in my first 6–8 months, powering analytics, machine learning and business intelligence workflows.
  • Revamped the data platform, migrating to S3 and Azure, and built an 8B-event/day data pipeline with exactly-once guarantees—unlocking scalable machine learning and analytics workflows to drive future growth. Reducing burden of maintaining custom HDFS clusters in house.
  • Interviewed and onboarded new team members, creating culture of transparency and empathy across the team with regular 1:1s with all team members.

Keen IO · Remote · Feb 2016 – Mar 2018 Link to heading

Senior Engineer · Compute and Storage

  • Built and maintained Keen’s query engine and Cassandra storage layer for high availability; developed a caching layer to cut query latency; and designed BigQuery integration pipelines while refactoring core data code to reduce technical debt and improve modularity.
  • Drove large-scale migration and operations: orchestrated the zero-downtime migration of ~45TB from SoftLayer to AWS with full consistency, and participated in on-call rotations, tuning and monitoring systems to strengthen platform resilience.

Earlier Experience | 2008 – 2016 Link to heading

  • TheLadders · Senior Engineer · Feb 2015 – Feb 2016. Enhanced TheLadders platform stability and scalability by replacing Clustrix with Riak, streamlining the job domain model, and redesigning the user tracking system to process ~4M events/day using Scala, Storm, RabbitMQ, and HDFS.
  • Oculus360 · Senior Engineer · Mar 2014 – Feb 2015. Built a graph-based API and persistence layer for Oculus360’s ML platform, integrating Crawling, Data Science, and UI components, while automating infrastructure with SaltStack and Vagrant.
  • Intuit · Consulting · Sep 2013 – Feb 2014. Modernized Professional Tax SaaS platform by porting Flex to HTML5 with RESTful services, streamlining integrations with internal systems and improving usability for professional tax accountants.
  • CheapCaribbean · Senior Engineer · Jul 2012 – Sep 2013. Re-engineered a 10-year-old Java web app into a modern, scalable architecture, designing key air service components and a distributed object pool while maintaining legacy systems and evolving architecture standards.
  • Solutions IQ · Consulting · Feb 2012 – Jul 2012. Enhanced software engineering practices at AT&T by introducing iterative development and optimizing developer workflow with CI/CD.
  • Southwest Airlines · Lead Engineer · Jun 2008 – Feb 2012. Led design and development of Rapid Rewards 2.0 integration layer, building enterprise services with Siebel integration and launch-day observability, while contributing to SWA’s next-gen reservation system framework.

Early Career · 2003 – 2008 Link to heading

  • Held various consulting and full time engineering positions with companies like American Airlines, Sabre Airline Solutions, Nokia and Computer Associates.

Education Link to heading

  • M.Sc. in Software Engineering — University of Oxford 2025 – Present · Oxford, UK
  • Diploma in Computer Applications — NIIT 1999 – 2001 · Gujarat, India
  • Bachelor of Commerce — Gujarat University 1996 – 1999 · Gujarat, India