Product thinking × mechanical engineering × software

Janani Manathattai

I’m a product-minded mechanical engineering student at UCLA who turns ambiguous problems into scoped, testable solutions—from engineering proposals and robotic mechanisms to internal software products and medical research tools.

Explore my work ↓ Download résumé
Janani Manathattai standing under the UCLA Royce Hall arches
UCLA
B.S. Mechanical Engineering
Expected 2029
3rd in CAproposal → nationals qualifier
4 → 2CareClaims contributors needed
29 partsrobotic sorting system
20%Boeing pipeline efficiency gain
01 / WORK & PROJECTS

Problems I’ve framed, scoped, and built through.

Product proposals, intern-owned tools, robotics, and research instrumentation—organized around the decisions I made, the work I owned, and the evidence behind the result.

Engineering product proposalTSA TEAMS / 2023

Increasing Los Angeles Bicycle Adoption

I helped turn low bicycle adoption in Los Angeles from a broad policy challenge into a scoped product-and-infrastructure proposal with defined users, barriers, features, risks, costs, and rollout criteria. The resulting concept balanced customer needs, technical feasibility, public safety, and financial impact strongly enough to place third in California and qualify our team for nationals.

  • Defined the product problem: analyzed why existing bike-share options were not earning adoption, focusing on accessibility, payment limitations, reliability, customization, perceived safety, and station availability.
  • Designed the connected experience: combined QR unlocking, route and docking guidance, mobile and cash-kiosk payments, mileage incentives, two bike sizes, and recyclable airless tire inserts into one service.
  • Evaluated defects and hazards: addressed flat tires, theft, extreme heat, unsafe intersections, vehicle conflicts, and poor lane separation instead of treating the mobile app as the entire solution.
  • Built a feasible rollout: targeted 100 stations in high-density areas and ten miles of heavy-traffic corridors, modeled a $14 million implementation cost, and proposed a two-month ridership pilot before permanent infrastructure changes.
Read the full 10-page proposal ↗
Problem framingUser experienceMarket researchProduct strategyCost modelingRollout planning
3rd in CaliforniaState placement that qualified the team for nationals
100 × 25Stations and bikes per high-density location for a 2,500-bike network
$14M planEstimated implementation within LA’s $200M annual transportation budget
10 mi / 2 moTargeted safety corridor and pilot designed to validate impact before permanent conversion
Mechanical design + roboticsSummer 2026
SolidWorks rendering of the Automated Quality Sorting Manipulator with conveyor, dual gantry, articulated arm, and gripper

Automated Quality Sorting Manipulator

In a four-person team, I helped define a robotic sorting product that could move accepted or defective components from a conveyor into collection and reject areas while remaining modular and manufacturable. My scope covered power architecture, actuation decisions, manufacturing strategy, tolerance planning, and performance analysis that converted theoretical results into a prioritized validation roadmap.

  • Structured the system: integrated a conveyor, dual Y gantries, wheel-driven X translation, a 3-DOF articulated arm, and a motorized gripper across five independently testable subassemblies.
  • Defined power and control needs: mapped distributed motors and servos, AC-to-DC conversion, voltage regulation, independent axis control, and synchronized gantry motion to prevent skewing and binding.
  • Planned for manufacturing: selected machinable 1060 aluminum and lighter 3D-printed ABS, used standard hardware where practical, and set ±0.002 inch targets at critical bearing, shaft, screw, mount, wheel, and pivot interfaces.
  • Used analysis to prioritize improvements: identified excess theoretical thrust but only 22.7% efficiency and 1.94 mm/s traverse speed, making cycle time more important than increasing available force.
  • Defined the next iteration: recommended a coarser or multi-start lead screw followed by physical testing for backlash, payload, accuracy, vibration, and system coordination before adding machine vision.
View the complete 86-page CAD and engineering report ↗
SolidWorks3-DOF actuationMotor + servo systemsDFMTolerance analysisPower architecture
29 parts / 5 systemsComplete SolidWorks assembly spanning conveyor, Y gantry, X gantry, arm, and gripper functions
1,681 NPredicted axial thrust from a 2.5 N·m actuator under modeled conditions
±0.002 inCritical-interface tolerance target
22.7%Calculated lead-screw transmission efficiency
1.94 mm/sCalculated traverse speed identified as a cycle-time constraint
31.43 kgModeled full-system mass across a 130.81 cm assembly length
Healthcare software + data standardsVetsEZ / EZ Labs · 2026

CareClaims Intake Gateway

CareClaims combines fragmented healthcare-claim regulatory stages into one product, and I owned the intake gateway that receives EDI and CMS-1500 inputs and tells facilities what must change before a claim can be accepted. I evaluated open-source parsing options, selected an X12-based framework, and shaped it around TR3 guidance and client-specific requirements, helping reduce the active contributors needed for the workstream from four to two.

  • Researched the foundation: compared open-source intake and parsing approaches against regulatory coverage, extensibility, implementation risk, and the client’s operational needs before selecting the X12 framework.
  • Owned the intake workflow: developed HTTP receipt, normalization, claim-state tracking, configurable validation, and the path from X12 837 submissions to generated 999 acknowledgments.
  • Improved the error experience: connected machine-readable compliance output with human-readable summaries that identify the affected segment, element, position, error code, and corrective context.
  • Hardened the product: added automated coverage for empty submissions, rule-state concurrency, acknowledgment generation, and edge cases so the feature could be maintained by a smaller team.
Product ownershipOpen-source evaluationX12 EDICMS-1500TR3 guidanceError UX
4 → 2 peopleContributors needed after making the feature set more efficient and maintainable
One gatewayEDI and CMS-1500 intake paths feeding a unified regulatory workflow
837 → 999Standards-aware ingestion, validation, acknowledgment, and correction guidance
2 audiencesMachine-readable compliance output plus actionable facility-facing explanations
Full-stack product engineeringVetsEZ / EZ Labs · 2026

Subscription & License Management Platform

I served as both product owner and full-stack engineer for an internal SaaS platform that replaced scattered software-license tracking with one searchable and auditable source of truth. I took the product from stakeholder discovery through prioritization, architecture, implementation, testing, and cloud deployment while continuously converting operational feedback into workflow improvements.

  • Led discovery and scope: interviewed internal stakeholders, mapped current and desired workflows, wrote technical specifications, and prioritized the highest-value administrative pain points.
  • Designed the core journeys: built universal search, assignment and reassignment, renewals, expiration notifications, unassigned-seat monitoring, and audit history.
  • Connected adjacent products: linked DevOps license-request tickets to approval, decline, create-and-assign, and close-ticket flows while preserving decision messages and role eligibility.
  • Owned delivery quality: designed APIs and PostgreSQL data structures, handled concurrency and PII protection, expanded integration testing, and deployed containerized services through Azure.
Product ownershipRequirementsReactTypeScriptPostgreSQLAzure
0 → deployedDiscovery, requirements, prioritization, architecture, implementation, and rollout
6 core flowsSearch, assignment, reassignment, renewals, notifications, and auditing
Cloud-nativeContainerized deployment across Azure services
Medical instrumentation + computationUCLA Health / 2023–2026

Respiratory DAQ & 5DCT Validation

I partnered with radiation-oncology researchers to turn experimental and imaging needs into reusable tools for collecting respiratory signals and validating 5DCT patient data. I owned major portions of the instrumentation and analysis workflow, balancing researcher usability, low-latency feedback, data quality, and long-term maintainability.

  • Translated research needs: worked with graduate researchers to define what breathing metrics, waveform controls, and imaging checks were necessary for day-to-day experiments.
  • Built the LabVIEW workflow: integrated P409X transducers with DAQmx and created modular SubVIs for calibration, voltage-to-pressure conversion, signal conditioning, digital filtering, waveform processing, and live monitoring.
  • Automated MATLAB analysis: wrote functions to sort 5DCT datasets, improve artifact visibility, flag potential registration errors, and separate false positives for researcher review.
  • Improved adoption and maintenance: simplified Front Panel controls, optimized data flow, modernized legacy code, and established commenting standards so future lab members could extend the tools.
LabVIEW DAQmxSubVI architectureMATLABP409X transducersDigital filtering5DCT imaging
3+ yearsProgression from research intern to lab assistant
Full signal chainDAQ, calibration, conditioning, conversion, filtering, and visualization
5DCTAutomated sorting, registration-error detection, and false-positive review
02 / EXPERIENCE

Experience across software, research, and engineering.

Roles where I paired product judgment with technical execution—aligning stakeholders, deciding what to build, and staying close enough to the engineering to validate the result.

Jun 2026 — Present

VetsEZ / EZ Labs

AI Product Engineering Intern · Remote
  • Functioned as product owner and engineer for two intern-led tools, gathering requirements, mapping workflows, defining success criteria, writing technical specifications, prioritizing scope, and carrying features through rollout.
  • Owned the subscription management product end to end and owned the intake/validation/999 acknowledgment portion of the CareClaims MVP across React, TypeScript, Node.js, Fastify, PostgreSQL, Docker, and Azure.
  • Used the X12 framework and TR3 implementation guidance to build reusable client-specific CareClaims features, helping reduce the contributors required for that workstream from four people to two.
  • Converted stakeholder feedback and standards requirements into product decisions, then expanded unit and integration testing to verify the workflows before release.
May 2023 — Jun 2026

UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine

Lab Assistant · Radiation Oncology Laboratory
  • Developed the LabVIEW DAQ signal chain for P409X transducers, including reusable SubVIs for calibration, voltage-to-pressure conversion, conditioning, digital filtering, waveform processing, and real-time monitoring.
  • Created MATLAB algorithms to organize 5DCT patient data, improve artifact visibility, identify potential registration errors, and surface false positives for researcher review.
  • Partnered with graduate researchers to debug computational models, modernize legacy tools, optimize Front Panel controls and data flow, and establish documentation standards for maintainable research software.
Jun 2024 — Aug 2024

Boeing

Core Analytics & Maintenance Department Intern
  • Analyzed 787 maintenance manuals, service records, and customer-reported issues to identify recurring installation challenges.
  • Translated technician and engineering pain points into an improved damaged-part routing process and more useful maintenance-data retrieval.
  • Refined a Generative AI data pipeline to surface more relevant historical records and improve processing efficiency by 20%.
03 / TECHNICAL TOOLBOX

Skills grouped by how I use them.

No proficiency bars—just the tools and methods I’ve applied directly in the work above.

Mechanical Design & Manufacturing

Designing mechanisms that can be built, assembled, and tested.

SolidWorksMechanical assembliesMechanism designKinematicsDFMTolerance stack-upMaterial selectionProcess planning

Instrumentation & Analysis

Turning sensor signals and imaging data into usable engineering information.

LabVIEWDAQmxMATLABSensor acquisitionCalibrationSignal conditioningDigital filteringMathematical modeling

Software & Data

Building full-stack applications, APIs, and validation pipelines.

PythonC++JavaReactTypeScriptNode.jsFastifyPostgreSQLAPI designAzure

Product Development

Carrying technical work from an initial need to a verified deliverable.

Requirements gatheringTechnical specificationsDesign documentationVerification planningUser-centered designCross-functional workTechnical presentations

04 / CONTACT

Let’s build something useful.

I’m interested in mechanical design, robotics, medical technology, technical product development, and software that connects to real physical systems.

Emailmjanani1427@gmail.com ↗ Phone949-656-9906 ↗ LinkedInView profile ↗ RésuméDownload PDF ↓