About
Uday Vatti
I build digital experiences during the week and study cars on the weekends. Both are about understanding form, function, and the details that make something memorable.
I started out building things for the web — backends, databases, eventually UIs. At some point I got obsessed with the part that most engineers hand off: the last mile between a design file and what a real person actually uses. That gap is where I've lived ever since.
At Labelbox I own multiple systems end-to-end — labelbox.com, alignerr.com, a design system, an auth SDK, an ML evaluation product, and a handful of internal tools. I design in Figma, build in Next.js, ship to GCP, and care about how the final thing moves and feels just as much as whether the API is efficient.
What drives me is the belief that great products don't come from design and engineering working in sequence — they come from people who can hold both at the same time. I've built things that looked good but didn't work, and things that worked but felt wrong. The goal is always both.
Cars are my other obsession. Not just driving them — the engineering, the design philosophy, why certain cars feel special and others don't despite the same spec sheet. It's the same question I ask about software.
Photography is how I slow down. I shoot mostly in San Francisco — car meets, city light, whatever catches my eye. It's the same instinct as design: noticing what makes something worth looking at.
If you're building something where the design and the code both need to be right — I'd like to hear about it.
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