about

Hi! My name is Stephen Jayakar, and I’m a Software Engineer living in the beautiful city of San Francisco. I moved around the U.S. growing up but fell in love with the Bay Area while earning my Bachelor’s at U.C. Berkeley.

I’ve always been passionate about tech and video games. Long before I could write legitimate programs, I picked up advanced technical skills by figuring out how to launch a Minecraft server for my friends or mod games to suit my tastes. As I got older, I realized the video game industry wasn’t the right fit for me professionally, but tech itself remained fascinating. This led me to pivot into general software engineering, although I still hold a deep love for graphics, low-level programming, and the art behind video games.

My journey in faith has been equally challenging and rewarding. Raised Christian, I struggled to reconcile my scholarly pursuits with the anti-intellectualism I often encountered in the churches I grew up in. It was especially challenging because both of my parents are very intelligent people. However, the more I learned about my faith, the more convinced I became of its depth and truth. Lots of people + Christians don’t know the research that’s out there, plus how compelling the Christian story is when you read it how it’s meant to be read. The Bible Project has been a huge part in helping me reconstruct my faith, as well as reading writings from famed computer scientist Donald Knuth and C.S. Lewis (everyone knows who that is; you should read Mere Christianity!).

I started to love writing about my interests + projects when I was in college as I found that I learned way better when I a) took really detailed notes about what I was learning and b) attempted to externalize my learnings to engage the protégé effect. Some people enjoyed my writings, which then encouraged me that maybe I wasn’t really alone in how strongly I feel about things.

I’m also into a ton of side hobbies that get varying degrees of attention from me including:

  • Music: I play violin, guitar, & sing
  • Video games, but you already knew that
  • Photography
  • Mixology: when bars shut down in 2020, I decided to take matters into my own hands and started experimenting with creating cocktails.