# Pranab Krishnan CTO and Co-Founder Pranab Krishnan is a technology entrepreneur, machine learning researcher, and co-founder & CTO of Zeal, a staffing operations platform that makes it easier for staffing companies to onboard, pay, and bill. Based in San Francisco, Pranab leads Zeal’s technical vision, oversees the engineering team, drives product architecture, and ensures the platform scales to support high-volume staffing operations. Prior to Zeal, Pranab worked in machine learning engineering at MITRE and as a bioinformatics fellow at the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). He also served as a data analyst at The Wharton School. He is a Y Combinator alumnus through Zeal’s inclusion in the YC Summer 2019 cohort. Under his technical leadership, Zeal has secured $30M in funding. Beyond his day job, Pranab engages with the broader fintech and startup community, shares insights on product engineering and embedded finance, and contributes to discussions around scalable infrastructure, compliance automation, and fintech innovation. ## Education BS, Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania ## Expertise Software Engineering, Product Management, Entrepreneurship, Leadership ## **Blogs by Pranab Krishnan** ### Product Update: December 2025 January 1, 2026 ### Product Update: November 2025 December 1, 2025 ### Product Update: September 2025 October 1, 2025 ### Product Update: July 2025 August 5, 2025 ### Product Update: June 2025 July 3, 2025 ### New and Improved Tax Setup Page November 23, 2022 ### Dig Into The Details with Disbursement Statuses October 6, 2022 ### Manage International Contractors Without Missing a Step September 29, 2022 ### Consistency is Key — Introducing Zeal’s Job Queue Webhook September 1, 2022 ### Sharing Zeal’s Changelog August 26, 2022 ### Zero Penalties with Zeal's Zero Wage Filing Feature August 18, 2022 ### Engineering Culture @ Zeal August 16, 2022 ### Keep Organized with Employer Documents and Updated Filing Statuses August 4, 2022 ### Support your Savers with New Deduction Types at Zeal July 7, 2022 ### Build with Clarity and Flexibility — Introducing Custom Names for Earning Components June 30, 2022 ### Harness Deposit Schedules at Any Rate with Accelerated Payments June 24, 2022 ### Aggregate your Data with YTD and QTD APIs June 16, 2022 ### Upload and View With Ease—Zeal’s Revamped ID Verification Flow June 9, 2022 ### Preview Check Data June 2, 2022 ### Increase Employer Flexibility with Editing in the White-label May 26, 2022 ### Pay Your Way with Commodity Wages May 19, 2022 ### Launch your Payroll Product Faster Using Zeal’s Tax Page Component May 5, 2022 ### Streamline Payroll Reporting with the Reports API April 28, 2022 ### Making Taxes Less Taxing April 21, 2022 ### The Deductions API — Helping Deduce the Best Deductions April 19, 2022 ### Improve Employee Onboarding with Tooltips April 14, 2022 ### Never Miss a Tax ID Again With Alerts April 7, 2022 ### Save Time With Pre-Filled Documents April 5, 2022 ### Tune Your Data Structure with Metadata and External IDs March 31, 2022 ### Reducing Tax Complexity with Constraints March 29, 2022 ### Onboard Contractors in Minutes — Contractor On-The-Fly Onboarding March 22, 2022 ### Disbursing Your Own Funds? Check Out Prepaid Checks March 17, 2022 ### Introducing Tax Exemptions March 15, 2022 ### Announcing Onboarding Paperwork API November 26, 2021 ## **Guides by Pranab Krishnan** Zeal is a financial technology company, not an FDIC insured depository institution. Banking services provided by Bangor Savings Bank, Member FDIC. FDIC insurance coverage protects against the failure of an FDIC insured depository institution. Pass-through FDIC insurance coverage is subject to certain conditions. Mastercard® Debit Card is issued by Bangor Savings Bank, Member FDIC, pursuant to license by Mastercard International Incorporated. Mastercard is a registered trademark, and the circle design is a trademark of Mastercard International Incorporated. Spend anywhere Mastercard is accepted.