Software Engineer · NYC
Hi, I'm
Lavina Advani.
I build thoughtful digital products — and when I'm not coding, I'm dancing or making candles.
About
I'm a Senior Android Engineer with 9+ years in fintech, originally from Mumbai, India and now calling NYC home — a space I'm genuinely passionate about. I'm drawn to the weight of it: software that touches how people run their businesses and move their money has to be right. That sense of stakes drives how I approach clean architecture, thoughtful UX, and AI-native workflows that help teams move faster without cutting corners.
Outside of work, I'm trained in contemporary and Indian classical dance — movement has always been how I think and decompress. I also make candles, which turns out to be its own kind of craft and chemistry.
Where I've worked
I've spent the last six years at Block (formerly Square), building the Android side of Square POS — software that hundreds of thousands of sellers use every day to run their businesses. Some of the work I'm proudest of includes Live Cart View, a real-time checkout experience I led end-to-end, and Shipping on Retail, a fulfillment overhaul that gave retail sellers a meaningfully better way to process orders.
Before Square, I was at OfferUp working on the features people interacted with every session — photo messaging, search, home feed, and payments. You can find the app on the Play Store.
Research
Eye Simulation using 3D Animation — an exploration of integrating a 3D Blender-modeled eye into an Android app, optimized to run on low-resolution tablets. The project sat at the intersection of computer graphics and mobile engineering, long before either felt mainstream together.