# 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

- subconscious ai — ai engineer (aug 2025 – jan 2026)
- hustle fund — angel squad member (oct 2024 – present)
- starkware — exploration software engineer (sep 2024 – apr 2025)
- sizzle — advisor (apr 2024 – aug 2025)
- nethermind — researcher (may 2024 – aug 2024)
- hifi bridge — software engineer (sep 2023 – feb 2024)
- block convey — technical lead (jun 2023 – aug 2023)
- great lakes institute of management — visiting faculty - blockchain (mar 2022 – jul 2022)
- opx ai — blockchain lead (jun 2021 – jul 2022)
- vyom labs — data scientist (jan 2020 – mar 2021)

Full history: [resume](https://niharshah.xyz/resume.md).

## Research

7 papers on liquidation, funding rates, solvency, oracle settlement verification, and autonomous agents. See [research](https://niharshah.xyz/research/index.md).

## Working together

Open to conversations, advising, and investing around technical products and infrastructure. Reach me at [nehharshah@gmail.com](mailto:nehharshah@gmail.com) or through the [contact page](https://niharshah.xyz/contact).

## Elsewhere

- [GitHub](https://github.com/NehharShah)
- [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/nihar-shah-139331106)
- [X](https://x.com/NehharShah)
- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3I6qhW0AAAAJ)
- [Substack](https://nehharshah.substack.com/)