Sakhshi Nasha - Rookie of the Month September 2026

1) Let’s start with you!

Tell us a bit about yourself – your background, current role, and what excites you most in the world of tech.

Hi! I am Sakshi Nasha, a Senior Software Engineer based in Pune, India, and an active contributor and volunteer within the PostgreSQL community.

Alongside my professional software engineering background, I am deeply passionate about open-source technologies and diversity in tech. Within the PostgreSQL ecosystem, I focus on community engagement, knowledge sharing, and speaking on database technologies at various technical platforms. Through my journey as an open-source advocate and certified cloud architect, I strive to make tech more accessible while continually learning and building within the vibrant PostgreSQL community.

2) Why PostgreSQL? What inspired you to explore or switch to PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL captured my interest because of its rock-solid reliability, powerful feature set, and extensibility, but what truly inspired me to dive deep was the incredible warmth, collaboration, and open-source spirit of its global community, which turned a tool I relied on for applications into a vibrant ecosystem I am proud to contribute to.

3) What are you working on with PostgreSQL right now?

Share the cool stuff you’re building, learning, or solving using PostgreSQL.

Right now, I am actively building bridges between ecosystems by planning cross-community collaborations between the OpenSearch User Group (which I lead) and the PG Pune chapter(where I am a volunteer) to foster joint, multi-disciplinary knowledge sharing, while simultaneously sharpening my technical focus on advanced security implementations and enterprise-grade performance tuning in PostgreSQL.

4) What’s been your biggest learning or challenge on this journey?

A lesson, mistake, or an aha moment, we’d love to hear about it!

Navigating the learning curve of optimizing high-traffic systems suffering from severe database bottlenecks and slow query performance, which taught me to move past trial-and-error and adopt a rigorous, data-driven approach to dissecting execution plans and strategically restructuring data models.

5) Your wisdom to rookies like yourself?

Dive in fearlessly and own your voice, don’t wait until you feel like an “expert” to start grabbing opportunities like volunteering or speaking, and never hesitate to ask for help, because the PostgreSQL community is genuinely built to lift beginners up.

6) Finally, describe your PostgreSQL journey in one word.

Yep, just one!

Transformative

7) Who or what has influenced your PostgreSQL learning the most?

A mentor, a community, a course, a project, tell us what or who helped you grow.

The global PostgreSQL community itself—from the brilliant engineers who write the documentation and blogs to the welcoming organizers and peers I met at PGConf.EU, has been the single biggest influence on my learning, showing me that open-source growth happens best through shared knowledge and mutual encouragement.

8) What’s one PostgreSQL concept or feature you finally understood and felt proud of?

That lightbulb moment when something clicked, we all have one!

Mastering Advanced Query Execution Planning and Index Optimization, where I finally understood how the query planner evaluates cost models, reads execution plans to spot sequential scan bottlenecks, and uses partial or expression indexes to drastically transform query performance.