Minura Punchihewa
Backend Engineer at MindsDB
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMinura Punchihewa is a Backend Engineer with 7 years' experience building scalable data and AI-driven systems, currently developing MindsDB’s enterprise backend and text-to-SQL agents in San Francisco. He blends software and data engineering expertise—shipping Python microservices with FastAPI, Prefect, Docker and Kubernetes while also architecting data pipelines and MLOps on Azure and Databricks. A hands-on open-source contributor to MindsDB, he has improved database handlers (Redshift, DynamoDB) and helped build AI tooling like Anton and a text-to-SQL agent that leverages major LLM providers. His background spans production ETL, real-time analytics, and computer vision research, reflecting a practical curiosity that moves prototypes into robust services. Known for cross-functional delivery, he pairs backend systems work with front-end integrations and developer tooling, including a Docker Desktop extension for MindsDB.
7 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
BSc. in Applied Accounting, Accounting and Finance, BSc. in Applied Accounting, Accounting and Finance at Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri LankaBSc. Honors in Management and Information Technology, Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management, BSc. Honors in Management and Information Technology, Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management at University of Kelaniya Sri LankaPhysical Sciences, Physical Sciences at Royal College Colombo
English, Sinhalese
Stackoverflow
1,761reputation
357kreached
43answers
115questions
Github Skills (13)
amazon-redshift10
postgresql10
sql10
python10
dynamodb9
sqlalchemy9
amazon-dynamodb9
database-design7
pandas6
gensim6
conda6
environment-variables6
dataframe6
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
mindsdb/mindsdb
Jul 2022 - Aug 2022
AGI's query engine - Platform for building AI that can learn and answer questions over federated data.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & ML Engineer
Back-end Developer & ML EngineerContributions:6 releases, 538 reviews, 86 commits in 1 month
Contributions summary:Minura's contributions primarily involved improvements to the existing codebase through fixes, optimizations, and the addition of new features. The user specifically contributed to the Redshift handler by uncommenting and changing SQL Alchemy renderers and changing the path import. Additionally, the user setup the handler class for DynamoDB, incorporating fundamental operations such as connecting, disconnecting, and connection validation methods.
localaimachine-learning-databasesolacesinglestoreexplainable-ml
MinuraPunchihewa/MinuraPunchihewa
Mar 2022 - Jan 2025
Config files for my GitHub profile.
Contributions:2 PRs, 129 pushes, 3 branches in 2 years 10 months
config
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