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Mallika Rao

Mallika Rao

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Feb 19

Designing for Reality: Operating, Evolving, and Sustaining Large-Scale Systems

In the first article, we talked about how senior engineers should approach system design: clarifying constraints, asking the right…

Designing for Reality: Operating, Evolving, and Sustaining Large-Scale Systems

Mallika Rao

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Feb 13

Going Deep Where It Matters: Coaching Senior Engineers on Designing Scalable Systems

When I coach principal engineers, I’m explicit about this: depth is not about knowing every component, it’s about knowing where complexity…

Going Deep Where It Matters: Coaching Senior Engineers on Designing Scalable Systems

Mallika Rao

·

Feb 13

Designing Systems the Way Senior Engineers Actually Do

How I Coach Principal Engineers to Teach System Design at Scale

Designing Systems the Way Senior Engineers Actually Do

Mallika Rao

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Jan 7

Service Ownership Without the SRE Title

Calm sequencing. Ownership mindset. Respect for production.

Service Ownership Without the SRE Title

Mallika Rao

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Dec 10, 2025

Building Evaluation Infrastructure: The Implementation Guide

You’ve identified evaluation debt. Now comes the hard part: building infrastructure that actually catches failures before users do.

Building Evaluation Infrastructure: The Implementation Guide

Mallika Rao

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Dec 2, 2025

When 92% Accuracy Means Your System is Failing

How evaluation debt compounds silently in production AI systems

Mallika Rao

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Nov 5, 2025

Scaling Non-AI Systems into the AI Era

This essay is Part 3 of the series “Bridging the AI Stack: From Tools to Intelligent Systems.”

Mallika Rao

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Nov 4, 2025

Agents vs Workflows: Autonomy and Orchestration in the AI Stack

This essay is Part 2 of the series “Bridging the AI Stack: From Tools to Intelligent Systems.”

Agents vs Workflows: Autonomy and Orchestration in the AI Stack

Mallika Rao

·

Nov 4, 2025

LLM Tools: The New CLI

“Every command is an act of intent. Every tool, a contract.” — Notes from a systems engineer learning to think in prompts.

Mallika Rao

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Nov 3, 2025

The Vocabulary of Experience: Lessons in Leadership from Large Language Models

The larger the vocabulary, the more efficient the encoding.

The Vocabulary of Experience: Lessons in Leadership from Large Language Models

Mallika Rao

Mallika Rao

Logic. Math. Computer Science. Scale. Hike. Entropy. Mountains. Photography. Thinking. Writing. Conversations. Coffee. Travel. Work. Improve.

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