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[Currently working] Balena

Started working at Balena in April 2020 as a software engineer in the balenaOS team. Maintain Leviathan & autokit, key components in the open-source hardware in the loop testing pipeline which enables support for over 200+ device types.
Took on ownership of balena's documentation landscape and scaling developer education efforts with the growth team.

My Roles​

Software engineer and product owner with over 5 years of expertise in building & maintaining applications and infrastructure. At Balena, I have driven mission-critical projects across hardware in the loop testing, CI/CD pipelines, and developer education.

I wear multiple hats in the team working with diverse stakeholders. Taking on ownership of undefined, high-impact projects, I thrive in resource-constrained environments by applying first-principles thinking and solving complex challenges. Passionate about open-source contributions, mentoring, and fostering a culture of radical candour.

Key Projects​

Automated Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing (2020-Present)​

Leviathan​

  • Took ownership of Leviathan, a previously unmaintained project critical to Balena’s 10x device mission.
  • Delivered a working MVP for Raspberry Pi devices, automating OS testing and saving thousands of engineering hours previously spent on manual testing
  • Integrated into the balenaOS build-test-deply CI/CD pipeline to detect critical issues in balenaOS before release.
  • Scaled the team by onboarding new contributors and fostering collaboration across teams.

Read more about the project, Leviathan, the story so far.

Crisis Management During Chip Shortage​

Developed virtual runners to simulate hardware environments during the global chip shortage crisis, expanding test coverage by 35% while reducing hardware dependency.

Read about how we Maximizied Resources in the Chip Shortage: How balenaOS Testing went Virtual

Migration to GitHub Actions (2024)​

  • Spearheaded the migration of our entire BalenaOS build-test-deploy CI/CD pipelines from Jenkins to GitHub Actions.
  • Reduced Hetzner costs significantly while improving pipeline reliability and easing engineering pain points.
  • Full report on the migration.

Autokit, previously testbot (2020-Present)​

  • Built on Leviathan’s foundation to create testbot, a hardware-in-the-loop testing system tailored for customer use cases.
  • Conducted customer interviews to explore productization opportunities for automated testing kits.
  • Transitioned to Autokit, a completely off-the-shelf alternative, reducing customer acquisition costs by 7% through self-service balenaOS support enabled by Autokit.

Documentation​

• Became the go-to person for all documentation at Balena. • Defined and executed a documentation culture vision within the company where each engineer documents their product. • Delivered projects like Getting Started guides automation linked to the 10X device mission. • Completed critical projects such as contract instructions and standardized Getting Started examples across multiple programming languages.

Scalable Dynamic Documentation (2023-Present)​

  • Overhauled Balena’s documentation landscape to make it scalable, dynamic, and easier to maintain.
  • Automated "Getting Started" guides by integrating processes across API, SDKs, Supervisor, OS, and base images.
  • Enabled every engineer at Balena to write documentation as part of their development workflow using Docusaurus.

Cloudflare Migration (2022)​

  • Migrated static site hosting from Heroku/Netlify/GitHub Pages to Cloudflare Pages, saving $20K annually in bandwidth costs.

Discourse Feature Requests Platform (2024)​

  • Transitioned feature request management to Discourse forums to improve community engagement and feedback loops.

Docubuilder (2022-present)​

Challenge was to build docs site for about 30+ products, internal tools, team websites, and more. The goal was to make it easy to maintain, scalable, and no technical knowledge required to update the docs.

Built Docubuilder, a documentation site generator that uses Docusaurus as the base. It is a monorepo that contains all the documentation sites. It uses a single configuration file to generate all the sites. It is easy to add new sites, update the existing ones, and maintain the content. It is also integrated with GitHub Actions to automatically build and deploy the sites on every push to the main branch.

Building CI/CD Observability Framework (2025)​

  • Currently leading the implementation of observability tools using OpenTelemetry and Grafana for CI/CD pipelines.

Research and Strategy Development​

Vipul has proactively conducted research to shape criteria for project decisions, enabling contributors to execute with minimal additional context.

Research Projects • Documentation Frameworks: Selected Docusaurus as the primary framework for Balena’s docs ecosystem, scaling it to over 30 websites. • Hosting Platforms: Transitioned hosting to Cloudflare Pages, saving $20K annually in bandwidth costs. • Observability Platforms: Conducted research on GitHub Actions observability tools, providing actionable recommendations for future development.

Customer-Centric Initiatives • Conducted customer interviews to explore potential products like autokit testing systems. • Collaborated with stakeholders to define target audiences and shape research plans for future projects.

Blogs & Articles​

Skills and Expertise​

Vipul has consistently sought opportunities to upskill and contribute beyond his primary responsibilities.

Technical Skills​

  • Programming Languages: JavaScript (Node.js, TypeScript), Python, Bash
  • Frontend Frameworks: ReactJS, Next.js
  • Backend Frameworks: ExpressJS, Flask
  • DevOps & Automation: Docker, GitHub Actions, GitLab Pipelines, Jenkins, Ansible
  • Cloud Platforms: AWS (EC2, S3), Azure Serverless, Cloudflare Pages
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, Redis
  • Testing & Observability: TAP, Playwright, Puppeteer, OpenTelemetry, Grafana
  • Version Control: Git (GitHub/GitLab)

Core Competencies​

  • Project ownership: Being a core participant and sole owner from ideation to execution to delivery of projects.
  • Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing: Expertise in building automated test systems for IoT devices, enabling support for 200+ device types.
  • Documentation Leadership: Solely managed and scaled Balena’s documentation landscape, empowering developers with dynamic, scalable content pipelines.
  • CI/CD & Observability: Led the migration of CI/CD pipelines to GitHub Actions and implemented observability frameworks using OpenTelemetry and Grafana.
  • Open Source Advocacy: Passionate about contributing to open-source communities, mentoring students, and organizing developer events like PyCon India.

Work in progress​

  1. Expand observability efforts into customer-facing device monitoring tools leveraging OpenTelemetry expertise.
  2. Lead major documentation refactors with upcoming website redesigns while conducting rounds of customer research.
  3. Continue driving impactful projects that align with Balena’s mission while mentoring others in ownership-driven roles.
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Last updated on by Vipul Gupta (@vipulgupta2048)