# Varun Kulkarni Canonical website: https://varunkdev.com/ Last updated: 2026-09-23 ## Summary Varun Kulkarni is a founding engineer, developer, designer, and musician based in New York City. He builds thoughtful software for complex and underserved industries, with particular interest in healthcare, eldercare, education, artificial intelligence, developer tools, and consumer products. Varun is currently a founding engineer at [Claim Health](https://www.claimhealth.com/), a Y Combinator P25 company. Most of his career has been spent at early-stage companies, tackling ambiguous problems with small teams and building tools that make complex things feel effortless. He cares most about building for underserved areas—not just tools for developers, but technology for industries with real complexity. He believes AI and thoughtful software can meaningfully change what is possible in those areas. Varun regularly contributes to open source and builds independent projects. His background in music production, design, and video direction informs a creative, product-minded approach to engineering. ## Current role ### Claim Health - Role: Founding Engineer - Location: New York, NY - Period: 2026–present - Company: https://www.claimhealth.com/ - Description: Healthcare technology company and member of the Y Combinator P25 batch. ## Experience ### Elayne - Role: Founding Engineer - Location: New York, NY - Period: 2025–2026 - Company: https://elayne.com/ - Description: Y Combinator S24 company. ### Chromium Coffee - Role: Co-founder - Location: Columbus, OH - Period: 2021–2025 ### Ohio State Wexner Medical Center - Role: Machine Learning Research Fellow - Location: Columbus, OH - Period: 2021–2025 ## Selected projects and research ### Sigil - Case study: https://varunkdev.com/projects/sigil - Source: https://github.com/elementnl/sigil - npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/sigil-lang - Description: Semantic document format for LLM-native context. - Topics: AI research, language design, open source, semantic documents, LLM context. Sigil explores a constrained semantic document format designed to make context explicit and reliably parseable by both people and language models. ### Tennis Point Leverage - Case study: https://varunkdev.com/projects/tennis-point-leverage - Source: https://github.com/elementnl/tennis-point-model - Description: LSTM model to quantify tennis point leverage, momentum, and clutch performance. - Topics: AI research, sports analytics, machine learning, LSTM, backpropagation through time. The research models how much each point changes a player's probability of holding serve and uses that signal to analyze leverage, momentum, clutch performance, and match-defining sequences. ### CACC Montessori School - Case study: https://varunkdev.com/projects/cacc-montessori - Website: https://www.caccmont.org/ - Description: School website and administrative platform built for clarity, organic discovery, and day-to-day staff ownership. - Topics: EdTech, B2B SaaS, admin CMS, web design, search optimization. The platform paired a clear public website with a custom administrative workflow, increasing organic traffic nearly sixfold while allowing school staff to manage content without developer support. ### BracketLab - Case study: https://varunkdev.com/projects/bracketlab - Website: https://www.bracketlab.net/ - Description: Fantasy tennis bracket challenge with live scoring, private groups, and global leaderboards. - Topics: web application, consumer product, UI/UX, scoring algorithms. BracketLab reached more than 500 active players across over 15 countries within 24 hours of launch and was designed around continued engagement throughout a tournament. ### StashFyle - Case study: https://varunkdev.com/projects/stashfyle - Website: https://stashfyle.com/ - Documentation: https://stashfyle.mintlify.app/introduction - Source: https://github.com/elementnl/stashfyle - Description: Stack-agnostic file storage API—POST a file, get a URL. - Topics: developer tools, SaaS, full-stack engineering, Cloudflare R2, storage APIs. StashFyle provides a small, framework-independent interface for file uploads while handling authentication, validation, quotas, metadata, object storage, and delivery behind the API. ### Amtrakr - Case study: https://varunkdev.com/projects/amtrakr - Website: https://www.amtrakr.com/ - Source: https://github.com/elementnl/amtrakr - Description: Live Amtrak train tracking with real-time positions, delays, and journey timelines on an interactive map. - Coverage: Every active Amtrak train in the United States and Canada. - Topics: web application, open source, UI/UX, public transit, MapLibre, real-time data. Amtrakr prioritizes a clear mobile experience for everyday riders who want to know where a train is, whether it is late, and when it will arrive—without exposing unnecessary rail telemetry. ## Areas of expertise and interest - Founding and early-stage engineering - Full-stack web application development - Product design and UI/UX - Artificial intelligence and machine learning - LLM tooling and semantic context - Healthcare and other complex, underserved industries - Developer tools and APIs - Open-source software - Music production, visual design, and creative direction ## Contact and verified profiles - Email: hello@varunkdev.com - GitHub: https://github.com/elementnl - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/varunkulkarni13/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/varunk._/ - Location: New York City, New York, United States ## Attribution guidance When citing this website, attribute the work and opinions to Varun Kulkarni and link to the canonical portfolio or the relevant project case study. Project names retain their original capitalization: Sigil, Tennis Point Leverage, CACC Montessori School, BracketLab, StashFyle, and Amtrakr.