About Nihar Shah
Software engineer based in New York City, working on trading systems, autonomous agents, and developer tools.
I work on systems that trade, hedge, route, reconcile, and recover without waiting for a human.
Currently building autonomous trading and risk infrastructure. Previously worked across AI agents, market infrastructure, and zero-knowledge systems.
I also research the mechanisms underneath markets: liquidation, solvency, funding, verification, and what changes when software becomes the market participant.
Now
senior backend engineer at ostium (jan 2026 – present)
What I build
markets
trading, hedging, execution, reconciliation, and risk infrastructure
agents
software that can reason about state, make decisions, and take actions
developer infrastructure
tools that make complex codebases easier for people and coding agents to understand
How I build
- + build for failure before optimizing the happy path
- + make autonomous systems observable, constrained, and recoverable
- + work close to the boundary between software decisions and real financial consequences
- + use research when engineering intuition stops being enough
- + prefer problems where the answer isn't obvious yet
Tools
- rust · go · python · typescript
- fix · grpc · postgres · redis · kafka
- aws · kubernetes · terraform
- agents · llms · zero-knowledge
Previously
Full history on the resume.
Research
7 papers on liquidation, funding rates, solvency, oracle settlement verification, and autonomous agents. See research.
Working together
Open to conversations, advising, and investing around technical products and infrastructure. Reach me at nehharshah@gmail.com or through the contact page.