Kaushik Iska

Questioner
DISC Type : c

Director of Engineering at ClickHouse

Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area, United States

Overview

Kaushik is a Director of Engineering at ClickHouse, where he leads database integrations. He is a database systems expert, previously co-founding and serving as CTO of PeerDB (YC S23), a Postgres replication company acquired by ClickHouse. His background includes roles at Google, Palantir, and SafeGraph.

Kaushik is a passionate open-source contributor and has been deeply involved in the PostgreSQL ecosystem for over a decade. He co-founded his company with a friend from high school, reflecting his value for long-term collaboration. His core interest lies in building fast, reliable, and elegant systems.

Unique fact: Kaushik represented India in the prestigious ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals.

Personality Overview

Price-Sensitive

Cautious & Analytical

Value Seeker

While they don't hesitate to ask questions, they are generally risk-averse and tend to be late adopters.  They generally do not appreciate an overfriendly approach and prefer to stay to-the-point. It is quite likely of them to ask for pricing or other concessions.

Topics They Care About

Postgres Replication
Co-founded PeerDB, a company acquired by ClickHouse, specifically to create a high-performance, native ETL and replication solution for PostgreSQL, a topic he remains deeply passionate about.
Database Performance
He focuses on high-throughput streaming and performance optimizations for large-scale data systems, recently authoring a detailed blog post on a new PostgreSQL extension, pg_stat_ch.
Open-Source Development
He is an active open-source contributor to projects like PeerDB and ClickHouse, demonstrating a commitment to community-driven software development.

Media Appearances

Kaushik has no verified media appearances

Work History

2-2026
Director of Engineering at ClickHouse
7-2024 - 2-2026
Engineering Manager at ClickHouse
6-2023
CTO and Co-founder at PeerDB (YC S23)
1-2019 - 6-2023
Senior Software Engineer at Google
10-2017 - 1-2019
Senior Software Engineer at SafeGraph

Education

2009 - 2013
B.Tech (Hons) from International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH)

More Information

Social Presence :

Prographics :

Exp : N/A Location : Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area, United States Job Level : N/A Designation : Director of Engineering at ClickHouse
URL has been copied!

Insights For Selling To Kaushik

During A Call Or A Meeting

DO's

  • Tell them that you will come back if you don’t have a good answer for a question
  • Keep some extra margin in hand as they will likely negotiate the pricing
  • Share as much information as possible regarding your product

DONT's

  • Don’t try to be too friendly or informal with them
  • Don’t overhype the product/pitch, keep it measured
  • Don’t depend too much on anecdotal evidence, it reduces their confidence

When Cold Calling

When Writing An Email

While Negotiating & Closing

    The secret to closing fast with Kaushik is

  • Ensuring that the product delivers ROI, cost-effective pricing and process compliance are very important for them.
  • Will you ever get a clear answer from Kaushik

  • It doesn’t come naturally to them but they can say no if they are not convinced.

Insights For Deal Planning

    How fast (or slow) will Kaushik move?

  • If they have the information that they need, they can move fast at making their decisions.
  • Can Kaushik take some risk or not?

  • They can take some risk if they are confident that they have analyzed the circumstances well.


You And Kaushik

Personality Compatibility


More Profiles

Discover additional public profiles from our index.

Search more profiles

Looking for someone else? Search here for anyone.

Or visit Humantic AI to know more.