aakash desai

Founder

Breakstep Group

A software studio building data and tracking tools for clients and for its own products.

• Limnal Research: a live macro-regime analytics product for investors. Six models score the macro regime daily, driven by 20 scheduled jobs. Model runs were going missing without errors. I traced it to the scheduler dying when the server scaled to zero, moved scheduling to GitHub Actions, and added a catch-up job that fills gaps without duplicates.
• TPO Watch: a proprietary tool for Movement Legal that keeps tenant-protection law tables current across 110 Bay Area jurisdictions. A daily watcher flags changes, Claude drafts each update with a citation and a verbatim quote, and an analyst approves or rejects it into a versioned record.

product · requirements · data pipelines · Next.js, Supabase, FastAPI, GitHub Actions, Claude API

R&D Lead, Physical Products

Ginkgo Bioworks · Product Manager III

• Took five biosecurity products through concept, prototype, field trials, and production, including aircraft wastewater collection devices deployed at SFO, Boston Logan, and JFK, and pathogen-surveillance field kits shipped to Ukraine.
• Ran R&D and engineering on the triturator collection device (v1 at SFO and Logan, v2 at JFK) and designed the device disinfection station.
• Ran failure analysis on field failures, built test rigs, and added verification checks to assembly and refurbishment; the field failure rate fell from about 2% to 0.1% in six months.
• Owned BOMs, materials forecasting, procurement, and production tracking for seven product lines through prototyping and contract manufacturing. We made thousands of school kits and hundreds of wastewater devices with dozens of vendors.
• Owned supplier and materials contracting; wrote and evaluated RFQs and RFPs. Built the assembly workflows, SOPs, and inventory processes that production ran on.
• Built automated lot tracking on our barcode system for shipped vials and devices, so suspect lots could be recalled and investigated. Wrote the requirements for the tracking system Ginkgo engineering built for the Ukraine deployment.
• Proposed decentralized disinfection stations near airports, backed by a cost and risk analysis and a working prototype; the Rwanda airport program used the approach and cut turnaround time and cost.
• Trained and coordinated with technicians and assemblers on kit workflows.

hardware product · R&D · procurement · manufacturing · field deployment

Co-founder

Keys to the City

An Oakland instrument lending library and performance series. More than 500 people have come to the shows. I restored five of its Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos.

Lecturer, Fung Fellowship

UC Berkeley

Designed and taught a project-based design course for cohorts of about 50.

Experience & Interaction PM

Lawrence Hall of Science

Prototyped hardware exhibits and wrote their SOPs.

STEAM Program Chair & Technology Lead · Physics & Engineering Teacher

Civicorps (2016–2019) · Oakland High School, OUSD (2014–2016)

Devices I worked on at Ginkgo during the pandemic. The wastewater devices were deployed at three airports.

• Aircraft wastewater collection devices — v1 & v2
• Triturator collection devices — v1 & v2
• Device disinfection station
• Passive collection device for low-resource settings

deployed at SFO · Boston Logan · JFK · photos →

Limnal Research

limnalresearch.com

Daily macro-regime monitoring for active investors.

Rent Facts

rentfacts.io

Tenant reviews from identity-verified renters, starting with 3,379 Oakland properties.

Lineup

lineup-pied.vercel.app

A marketplace that connects social-impact organizations with influencers and journalists. Built as a pitch to a statewide nonprofit.

TPO Watch

proprietary · Movement Legal

Keeps tenant-protection law tables current across 110 Bay Area jurisdictions.

M.S., Environmental Science, Policy and Management

University of California, Berkeley

M.S., Environmental Engineering

University of California, Berkeley

B.S., Mechanical Engineering

University of California, Irvine

minors in Global Sustainability and Earth System Science