Her Story
About Ayushi
Ayushi Agarwal serves as a Senior Software Engineer at Google, where she builds AI ML platforms designed to help enterprises trust and adopt AI in real-world applications. With nearly 15 years in the field, she previously dedicated a decade to developing machine learning platforms at PayPal, including patented and open-sourced data science platforms used daily by thousands of engineers and data scientists. She then joined CHIME, a fintech neobank, as one of its founding engineers, where she created data science and machine learning platforms for real-time fraud protection that safeguarded 60 to 70 million dollars in annual losses and supported the company's path to IPO. Ayushi earned her bachelor's degree in India in 2011 and completed her master's degree in computer science at the University of Southern California in 2016. Her work focuses on closing the gap between AI performance in controlled settings and reliable operation in production environments, including efforts to improve memory quality, context retention, and evaluation guardrails for AI agents. She is pursuing IEEE senior membership and has spoken at conferences including Women in Data Science and JupyterCon. Ayushi also contributes to nonprofits such as School on Wheels in Los Angeles and multiple NGOs in India.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Ayushi
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute it to my parents and my kids. I was fortunate to grow up with parents who gave me the confidence to dream big. My father taught me to be bold and my mother believed in me long before I believed in myself. Their faith, encouragement, and quiet support still give me the confidence to keep going.
Today, my two daughters are my biggest motivation. They remind me that they’re watching not just what I achieve, but how I achieve it. I want them to see that curiosity, persistence, and showing up every day matter more than perfection.
Finally, I’m motivated by the work itself. My work lets me solve hard problems, and that’s what I love — I get to build technology that helps make knowledge and AI more accessible and useful for billions of people. Knowing that my work can create impact at that scale gives me a strong sense of purpose every day.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't wait until you feel ready. Feeling ready is often a signal that you have already waited too long. Be comfortable with challenges. Don't gravitate towards the safe well-defined work. The messy complex ambiguous problems are where we learn the most and where careers are built. Combine curiosity with being mentored by the right people.
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