Hire Suparn Patra
Custom web scraping projects year-round. Full-time engineering roles for the right long-term fit. Any stack, agent-native.
7+ years running production scrapers at Class Central. CS PhD (Thesis Submitted). Speaker at SymfonyLive and Zyte.
For companies with scraping problems
Seven years of production scraping behind every engagement: reverse-engineering, un-blocking, and running at scale. Three ways to work together:
Scraping stack audit
A working call to review your current setup: target sites, proxies, browser choice, scheduling, and storage. Written follow-up shows what is brittle, what to change first, and what tools to buy or drop, with reasons for each recommendation.
Turnaround: 5 business days.
Anti-detection review
I run your target site with your stack, reproduce the blocks, and hand back an ordered fix list: the exact tells that got you flagged (fingerprint, headers, TLS, cadence) and how to close each one, with a follow-up walkthrough over Google Meet.
Turnaround: 5 business days.
Custom scraper build
Scoping call to lock the target, shape, and volume, followed by a fixed-fee quote. Then build, deploy, and hand-off docs covering extraction, storage, scheduling, and basic monitoring. Runs on your infra or mine. Ongoing maintenance quoted separately.
Turnaround: quoted per scope.
Something else? Book a call to scope it. Or explore Scraping Central for tutorials, tool reviews, and free first-party tools (Catalog108, Fingerprint Check, Proxy Benchmark).
For teams hiring full-time
I would expect to be productive on the product within two weeks and able to own engineering end-to-end from there. I also bring things outside the job description: data-driven long-form articles for SEO / GEO, Hindi-language YouTube content for the Indian community, periodic platform security audits, and hands-on support.
Not the strongest pure engineer you will ever hire. Useful in multiple seats. What changed for me is agents: I ship at a rate I could not solo.
Stack
- Languages
- Python, PHP, TypeScript, JavaScript, Bash
- Frameworks / UI
- Symfony, Next.js, React, TailwindCSS, WordPress
- Web scraping
- Scrapy, Playwright, Selenium, Puppeteer, BeautifulSoup
- Data
- SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite), MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis
- Infra / DevOps
- Linux, Docker, GCP, Nginx, GitHub Actions
- AI / ML / GenAI
- OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Ollama, LangChain, MCP servers, RAG, embeddings, vector search, scikit-learn, PyTorch, HuggingFace, sentiment analysis
- Data / Analytics
- Web scraping and data collection at scale, ETL pipelines, pandas, NumPy, Jupyter, BigQuery, Google Analytics 4, Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, dashboards, funnel and cohort analysis
- Ops & collaboration
- Google Workspace, Slack, Mailgun, Google Cloud Console, Figma, Asana
Comfortable across the whole stack: infra, backend, frontend, content, data, and the agent-native workflows (Claude Code and friends) to move faster on all of it.
Track record
- Full Stack Engineer (contractor) at Class Central. Kept the world's largest MOOC catalog up to date with first-party scrapers, and shipped product features across the stack.
- Built 20+ interactive learning tools that run entirely in-browser (Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL / PGlite / DuckDB, Prolog, Scheme, Mermaid, KaTeX, Graphviz).
- Owns and ships five lab subdomains: hash, fractal, chaos, physics, and math.
Logistics
- Location
- Jaipur, India (open to relocation for long-term FT roles)
- Compensation
- Depends on project, scope, and commitment. Let's discuss on the call.
- Commitment
- Long-term preferred
- Start date
- Let's discuss on the call
For universities, conferences, and L&D teams
Teaching and speaking on the same practical topics I ship in production. Backed by a BEd in Physics and Mathematics, a PhD research programme in Computer Science, and a decade of authorship on Class Central. Three ways to work together:
Corporate training on emerging trends
Half-day, 2-day workshop, or 4 to 8 week cohort. Topics: Python programming, PHP (Symfony), web scraping and anti-bot, agent-native shipping with Claude Code, GenAI and LLM integration, RAG and embeddings, IoT security, cloud fundamentals (GCP), cryptographic hashing, and so on.
Delivery: remote or in-person.
Student cohorts and job-readiness training
Learning computer science the practical way. Full-stack plus agent-native, project-first curriculum. Add-ons on request: GATE, UGC NET, or ISRO CS prep; interview coaching; publication mentoring for student research (I have co-authored six papers with graduate researchers).
Delivery: cohort or 1-to-1.
Conference talks and guest lectures
Existing decks: Efficient Web Scraping with Symfony and PHP (SymfonyLive June 2025), Reverse-engineering Websites for Scraping (guest talk hosted by Zyte), chaos-based cryptography research (AIRCC). Custom decks on request across scraping, AI agents, and applied cryptography.
Delivery: remote or in-person.
Also available for one-off consulting
- Security audit: application security review and hardening checklist for web apps and scraping infrastructure.
- Fixing LLM-generated code: debugging, refactoring, and hardening AI-drafted code for production.
- Startup infrastructure design and planning: cloud stack choice, scaling roadmap, CI/CD, monitoring, cost controls.
- SEO / GEO audit: technical SEO plus AI-agent discoverability (structured data, llms.txt, how your content surfaces in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google).
Selected proof
- Talks: Efficient Web Scraping with Symfony and PHP (SymfonyLive Online, June 2025; Symfony blog write-up), Before the First Line of Code (guest talk hosted by Zyte), IEEE LWMOOCs 2022 featured speaker.
- Peer-reviewed publications: 8+ papers and book chapters across hashing, chaos-based cryptography, IoT security, and MOOC analytics. Full list on /about.
- Class Central authorship: bylined articles on the world's largest MOOC discovery platform.
FAQ
- How soon can you start?
- Let's talk on the call.
- Contractor, EOR, or direct hire?
- Any structure works.
- Timezone overlap?
- Based in IST (UTC+5:30); comfortable with US-morning and EU-afternoon overlap.
- Do you take one-off scraping jobs?
- Yes. Scoped and fixed-fee.
- Do you take on corporate training, cohorts, or conference talks?
- Yes. See the training section on this page or book a call to scope.
- Do you take on security audits, LLM code fixes, infra planning, or SEO / GEO audits?
- Yes. See the "Also available for one-off consulting" block on this page, or book a call to scope.
- Will you relocate?
- Yes. For full-time work only and long-term commitment.
- Do you work with AI agents?
- Yes. Agent-native by default (Claude Code and friends). It is how I ship at this rate.
- NDA, IP, code ownership?
- Standard NDAs are fine. All code and deliverables belong to the client on delivery. I keep no copies of client data.
- What targets will you scrape?
- Public data only. No paywalled or account-locked content without explicit permission. I review the site's terms and robots policy before we scope a build.
- References or past work?
- Public: 7 years of Class Central authorship, 8+ peer-reviewed publications, five lab subdomains under suparnpatra.com, and Scraping Central. Private references available on request.
- Trial project or paid trial period?
- For full-time roles: happy to do a 1 to 2 week paid trial. For scraping work, the stack audit or anti-detection review is the trial.
- Languages?
- Fluent English (research, teaching, and content). Native Hindi.
- Payment terms?
- Scraping projects: 50% up front, 50% on delivery, via Razorpay, Wise, or bank transfer. Full-time roles: monthly invoice.
Book a call
30 minutes over Google Meet. Scraping consulting or full-time roles. Please add a sentence of context when booking so I can come prepared.
Prefer email? contact@suparnpatra.com