Toptal Engineering Blog

The Toptal Engineering Blog is a hub for in-depth development tutorials and new technology announcements created by professional software engineers in the Toptal network.

authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

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authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

In this ask-me-anything-style Q&A, leading Toptal cybersecurity expert Ilia Tivin responds to colleagues’ questions on AI in cybersecurity and provides data and network protection tips and best practices.

5 minute readContinue Reading

Ilia Tivin

Ilia is a cybersecurity professional and developer with wide-ranging experience in the government, defense, manufacturing, and finance sectors. A former cloud security architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he now advises executive clients on planning, prioritizing, and executing strategic security initiatives.

5 Pillars of Responsible Generative AI: A Code of Ethics for the Future

Generative AI advances raise new questions around data ownership, content integrity, algorithmic bias, and more. Here, three experts at the forefront of NLP present recommendations for developing ethical generative AI solutions.

12 minute readContinue Reading

Madelyn Douglas

Madelyn is the Lead Editor of Engineering at Toptal and a former software engineer at Meta. She has more than six years of experience researching, writing, and editing for engineering publications, specializing in emerging technologies and AI. She previously served as an editor at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering and her research on engineering ethics was published at IEEE’s NER 2021 conference.

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Computer Vision Pipeline Architecture: A Tutorial

Build a simple, reusable foundation for your video processing apps and alleviate the common challenges of video manipulation.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Nathan Babcock

Nathan is a front-end developer and video processing expert. He developed Hypetrigger, an open-source computer vision tool for use with streaming services. Nathan also spent five years as a full-stack engineer at Motorola Solutions, where he worked with React, Angular, Svelte, and native web components, and led the development of the company’s internal design system.

Tested Solutions: Working With React Design Patterns

Design patterns offer a convenient way to tackle challenges with tried-and-tested solutions, saving developers time and effort. Here’s how React design patterns allow for coherent modules with less coupling.

15 minute readContinue Reading

Mudassir Ijaz

Mudassir is a full-stack software engineer specializing in JavaScript frameworks and libraries. He has built many React apps as a senior engineer and has worked across the globe at companies like SAP, Bit, Kwanso, and VoicePing.

In this ask-me-anything style Q&A, leading Toptal AI developer Joao Diogo de Oliveira fields questions from fellow engineers about resources for pivoting to ML, approaches to large language models, and the most critical future applications of AI.

6 minute readContinue Reading

Joao Diogo de Oliveira

Joao is an AI developer with more than 10 years of experience at Fortune 100 companies like Procter & Gamble and startups in the healthcare, energy, and finance industries. Joao holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Porto and has multiple certifications in ML and deep learning.

Advantages of AI: Using GPT and Diffusion Models for Image Generation

Generative AI is taking the world by storm, with potentially profound impacts on the content we create. Learn the basics of AI image generation and produce sophisticated artistic renderings with this tutorial.

7 minute readContinue Reading

Juan Manuel Ortiz de Zarate

Juan is a developer, data scientist, and doctoral researcher at the University of Buenos Aires where he studies social networks, AI, and NLP. Juan has more than a decade of data science experience and has published papers at ML conferences including SPIRE and ICCS.

Ask an NLP Engineer: From GPT Models to the Ethics of AI

Want to expand your skills amid the current surge of revolutionary language models like GPT-4? In this ask-me-anything-style tutorial, Toptal data scientist and AI engineer Daniel Pérez Rubio fields questions from fellow programmers on a wide range of machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence topics.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Daniel Pérez Rubio

Daniel is a data scientist, developer, and former CTO who has specialized in NLP for more than six years, most recently focusing on large language models (LLMs). His experience includes being a senior data scientist at BASF and Daimler.

Toptal Engineering Expert

Gabriel Courtemanche

Gabriel is a highly efficient and reliable professional who possesses a broad skill set for web application development. He's been working on a range of products and clients—from working on scalability problems in production engineering teams at Shopify and Autodesk to launching new applications for startups. Most of his work consists of leading technical teams, by creating an easy development environment, fixing technical debts, providing best practices code examples, and mentoring devs.