Aryan Thakar

Secure full-stack engineer with applied AI experience.

Computer Science, University of Maryland — expected Dec 2026

About

Hi, I'm Aryan. I love inventing, creating, and bringing ideas to life.

I'm currently studying computer science and business at the University of Maryland, and I tend to start technical problems with a non-technical question: Why are we building this?

Through my experiences in software development, AI research, and experiential marketing, I've become fascinated by the intersection of technology and the people who use it.

I care as much about why we build things as how we build them.

To me, good technology helps us solve harder problems, make better decisions, and spend more time on what matters. When ideas become experiences rather than just features, technology becomes something people genuinely enjoy using.

Experience

  1. AI Security Intern @ MITRE

    – McLean, VA

    • Built an experimental pipeline for testing robustness of Open Policy Agents using attack cases generated with Promptfoo, reducing successful attacks by 30% for output-rail and tool-authentication components.
    • Increased throughput and usability of AI vulnerability analysis software by developing a Docker-containerized React/FastAPI web application using Redis for batch queueing and Celery workers for concurrent processing; identified parser-validation vulnerabilities through testing varied system prompts.
    • Won the AI Learning Track Hackathon by collaborating to fine-tune a phishing-link classification model that achieved the competition’s lowest log-loss score.

  2. SEO Tech Developer

    – Remote

    • Built a movie/TV review application using Flask, Jinja, and SQLAlchemy to prompt thoughtful, structured reviews.

  3. Teaching Assistant — CMSC388J: Building Secure Web Apps

    University of Maryland

    • Assisted instruction in secure, full-stack web apps.
    • Topics and tooling included Python/Flask, Django, MongoDB, and modern front-ends such as Svelte/React.

  4. Creative Software Developer Intern @ RedPeg Marketing

    – Alexandria, VA

    • Improved a retrieval-augmented generation chatbot’s query resolution quality by 30%.
    • Built a CustomGPT workflow with Microsoft Graph API + OpenAI function calling, saving 30–40 min/week per employee.

  5. Research Fellow @ NSF TRAILS (UMD)

    – College Park, MD

    • Designed inclusive interview protocols to reduce bias in automated video interviewing systems.
    • Implemented feature extraction with dlib/OpenCV, improving accuracy by 0.1 MSE.

Projects

DocuWell

OpenAI • React • MongoDB • Auth0

Patient–doctor chatbot prototype; improved interaction quality by 20% with structured follow-ups.

ReactOpenAIMongoDB

View code →

Bias in Public Datasets

Python • Fairlearn • LIME

Fairness analysis on U.S. Census & UCI Heart Disease models; surfaced parity/accuracy trade-offs and gender feature over-weighting.

PythonFairlearnLIME

View code →

Authentic Screen Talk

Flask • Jinja • SQLAlchemy

Movie/TV review site that prompts thoughtful reviews beyond star ratings.

FlaskJinjaSQLAlchemy

View code →

Cons App — Ethical Consumption

React Native • Android Studio

Prototype that helps users find ethical product alternatives, reducing search time by ~50%.

React NativeMobile

View project →

SEO Dev — Review App

Flask • Jinja • SQLAlchemy

App used in SEO Tech Developer program to elicit higher-quality opinions with prompt-guided form flows.

FlaskSQLAlchemy

Skills

JavaPythonCRustOCaml JavaScriptSQLReactReact Native Node.jsFlaskMongoDB TensorFlowPyTorchOpenCV FairlearnLIME