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Arman Kassam, Full-Stack Engineer and Computer Science student at Tufts University

hey, I'm Arman.
nice to meet you.

Full-Stack Engineer @ AirPLAi Sports
CS & International Relations @ Tufts | Boston, USA & Vancouver, CAN

I used to argue about how the world works.
Now I build things that make it work a little better.

My Journey

Most of my life: Competitive debater and Model UNer. Dreaming of working for the UN.

May 2022: Wrote and presented a TED-Ed keynote on the fragility of Canadian democracy through the lens of Star Wars.

September 2023: Began college at Tufts University with an international relations focus.

January 2024: Stumbled through my first ever CS class. Realized that coding is basically trying to debate a compiler, except instead of using English, you're using C.

January 2025: After many of unsuccessful cold calls, someone finally called back. Landed my first software engineering internship at Cerebro Sports.

March 2025: Won my first ever hackathon with Text-To-Braille due to its innovation in accessibility, laying the groundwork for a more accessible braille printer.

August 2025: Recruited to basketball AI startup AirPLAi Sports as one of their first engineers. In addition to full-stack work, I contribute to marketing, business strategy, and investor relations.

September 2025: Chosen as Founding Engineer at ed-tech startup Ludus Language. Architected the entire backend and launched on web and the App Store.

Debate and software engineering follow the same process: define the problem and constraints, evaluate approaches, select the best solution, then execute flawlessly under pressure. The difference is the audience - a judge versus a compiler.

While international relations is no longer my primary focus, my humanities background shapes how I build. I combine user-first thinking (why and for who is this a problem?) with systems-first thinking (what's the right architecture to solve it?). Turns out years of arguing about the world is pretty good training for figuring out how I can use my expertise to improve it.

Where I've Built

AirPLAi Sports (Aug 2025 - Present)

• Owned development of full-stack multi-tenant dashboard which now generates $75,000 in annual revenue
• Designed and implemented an automated basketball data ETL pipeline, increasing upload efficiency by 90%
• Built first-of-their-kind basketball shot charts which link directly to the video of the play
• Architected the web fetch tool for our flagship AI, handling queries in under a second

tspythonnextjsreactpostgresgcp

Ludus Language (Sept 2025 - Nov 2025)

• Joined as founding engineer and only technical member of the team
• Built wikiglot to fix translation, decreasing costs by 100% and increasing accuracy by 30%

tsjsreactgcp

Cerebro Sports (Feb 2025 - Aug 2025)

• Custom-built Hubspot to monday.com automation
• Implemented a box score ETL pipeline which increased ingestion efficiency by 97%
• Managed database redesign and backfill

tspythonpostgresgraphqlgcp

Research & Leadership

Engineering Diplomacy substack

• Partnered with Tufts professor Shafiqul Islam to develop a new problem-solving framework combining scientific rigor and social context
• Granted Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship to work on developing an Engineering Diplomacy book

Tufts Global Orientation

• Coordinated 200-participant international student orientation with $65,000 budget
• Brought in Bodaborg and a scavenger hunt as new events, both of which were rated in the top three activities by participants and peer advisors alike

Tufts Hemispheres

Lead a group of fifteen writers for the International Security working group, brainstorming, advising on, and editing articles on cyberspace, AI, and diplomacy
• Interviewed former Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary-General Nahla Valji for the 2026 journal

Tufts Debate Society

• Elected treasurer, handling budgeting and expenses
Lead club meetings once a week, running practice rounds and creating skill development drills
• Mentor younger members of the team via helping with casewriting and competing with novice debaters

Projects

Wikiglot

Free and open-source translation package with 15 languages and features like accent correction

ts

Text-To-Braille

Hackathon-winning system which encodes imprints Braille translations of digital text

c++arduino

Safar

iOS city-ranking app meant to be the Beli for travel, currently in progress

swiftsupabase

Monastery Chores

Chore tracker for my household with auto-assignment and quality checks

tsnextjssupabase

Jumbocast Stats

Statistics web scraper for any NESCAC team which provides live stats and basic analysis

pythonpandasbs

Let's get in touch