Engineers often see the world as a series of problems waiting for precision, but the best of them learn that clarity without empathy builds little that lasts. Their work matters most when it helps people navigate uncertainty, not just data.
Tanmay Agrawal builds technology with that conviction at its core. His career spans research labs, startups, and now Plix, where he develops systems intended to help safety workers make decisions more quickly and safely. Today, he shares how his professional life taught him that the most effective engineering is formed by understanding the people it serves.
Building Knowledge In Machine Learning
Agrawal began his professional career as an immigrant at UC Berkeley. When he first got there, he was stretching five dollars a day to cover meals and often relied on the campus food pantry to get by. Prize money from hackathons filled the gaps, an experience that was key to sharpening not just his focus but also his technical instincts.
During those coding sessions, he began noticing that Google could interpret and fill in the gaps of vague search prompts, those with minimal keyword matches. He then began looking into the ins and outs of how machines analyze and find meaning, marking the start of his self-taught study of AI in 2016 — half a decade before it would enter the mainstream.
As he learned more, he became intrigued by how machine learning, how it could decode unstructured human behavior — the subtleties of movement, tone, and context easily perceived in real life but more difficult to categorize through data. Looking deeper into this technology, the more he began to conceive of it as a powerful and unique way to transform data scarcity into strength.
At UC Berkeley’s Data-X Lab, Agrawal had his first real experience working with these models, working on a project for a system that could predict client outcomes for a recruiting agency. His first experience turning theory into systems that were put to work at real operations, this project showed him how algorithms gain meaning only when they solve tangible problems — a principle that would stick with him as the years went by.
Expanding His Experience
Shortly after graduating, Agrawal became a member of Moments of Space, a wellness startup where he became the first machine learning engineer. He developed systems that used AI to create meditative audio experiences tailored to each user, merging behavioral science with computation.
The company was later acquired by Gwyneth Paltrow’s team, and his code became part of a larger platform reaching thousands of users — his first exposure to the scale and responsibility of consumer-facing technology and a personal moment of validation that showed him what it meant to build systems that could help others.
Agrawal next joined NVIDIA’s Intelligent Video Analytics group, working alongside experts in computer vision at a pivotal moment for the field. From there, he accepted a research fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Center for Data Science and AI, working with mentors tied to Turing Award recipient Andrew Barto. He later became a mentor himself, helping graduate students through the Data Science for the Common Good program and guiding their projects to appeal to public institutions.
Those years cemented his view of leadership as steady, transparent work — the kind that lifts others rather than commands them.
Strengthening Public Safety At Plix
That conviction defines Agrawal’s work at Plix, the San Francisco Bay Area-based startup where he became the first engineer and now serves as a Technical Leader. Plix builds AI-native wearables for frontline workers: security officers, parking agents, and public-safety personnel who spend hours in uncertain and potentially dangerous environments.
Agrawal architected Plix’s core Safety Inbox algorithm, a system that analyzes video from body-worn cameras in near-real time. The software flags critical moments (whether those are falls, confrontations, or use-of-force events) so supervisors can be alerted on time. For clients, that responsiveness reduces the risk of disputes and empowers them to take more personal accountability over their hard work.
Underneath the technology lies his (and the company’s notion that its algorithm isn’t built to watch workers, but to safeguard them. The algorithm’s purpose is to serve as a tool that can establish fairness during tense moments. “Technology should make people safer, not more anxious,” he says. “If AI is going to be trusted, it has to have empathy built into its design.”
A Worldview Built On Helping Others
Agrawal’s career didn’t come without some difficult times: the cultural barrier that came with moving to the U.S. and the pressure to prove himself in an unfamiliar country set up a difficult start to his professional career. But to him, those early challenges ultimately helped him realize that true expertise isn’t measured by capital or social recognition, but by the sense of responsibility one carries for the systems they build and the people affected by them.
Today, that same sense of duty defines how Agrawal envisions the future of his work. He sees the next AI moving beyond mere expansion and into a greater interest in restraint — an era where, after its sped-up growth over the past few years, engineers can now use these greater advancements to create more careful and specific products. His goal is to build a company grounded in principle, creating technologies that help others as much as they advance capability.
“I want to create a generation-defining company that never compromises on its values,” he said. “Being principled makes decisions straightforward. It’s how you build something that lasts.”
Finding Purpose Through Tech
The work of Tanmay Agrawal shows how early struggle can result in an even stronger conviction, from a student in a new country at Berkeley to an engineer shaping technology that protects and improves human lives. Each stage, from his hackathon nights to a staff member at Plix, reflects the same intent: to build tools that serve people first. His story is not about sudden success but steady purpose, proof that integrity can go hand in hand with progress and speed.
Spencer Hulse is the Editorial Director at Grit Daily. He is responsible for overseeing other editors and writers, day-to-day operations, and covering breaking news.
