
Akhil Cherian Verghese
Verified Expert in Engineering
Natural Language Processing Developer
New York, NY, United States
Toptal member since March 24, 2015
Akhil worked full-time as a software and AI engineer for 13 years (1 year at Krazimo, 6 years at Google, 4 years consulting on AI projects, and 2 years at IBM). He's designed, implemented, and shipped technically complex products for Google Workspace, involving coordinating efforts among large teams and meeting the highest engineering standards. Akhil is looking to lead GenAI projects for new clients—seeing what people are looking for in the world of AI at medium-sized enterprises.
Portfolio
Experience
- Python - 10 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 4 years
- Agentic AI - 3 years
- AI Agents - 3 years
- Agentic RAG Systems - 2 years
- RAG Systems - 2 years
- AI Voice Agents - 2 years
- AI Automation - 2 years
Preferred Environment
Git, Sublime Text, IPython Notebook, Jupyter Notebook, Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Agents, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure
The most amazing...
...thing I've built is a Custom AI CRM system that found leads, validated and converted them, managed accounts, and redeployed ad budgets to boost revenue by 30%.
Work Experience
CEO
Krazimo
- Developed and built a website (https://graphai.tech/) that allows users to analyze transactions on the blockchain by using natural language to create graphs that monitor events on the chain. This project involved multiple stages over six months.
- Boosted revenue by 10% and reduced operating costs by over $180,000 yearly for a restoration company in Denver using AI to address compliance communication with insurance companies (almost a full-time job for two people).
- Helped a translation company (https://linguacore.ai/) reduce operating costs by 80% using AI to do a first pass on the translation and flag paragraphs it was uncertain of.
- Built a multi-agent research tool for the scientific community that can assist with research processes, including code execution and compilation, state-of-the-art analysis, and more.
Senior Software Engineer
- Created an intelligent assistant to answer questions based on information contained in a massive dynamic system (standard approaches like plugging everything into an OOB LLM wouldn't work).
- Built and shipped a prediction tool based on SVMs to better identify the impact of changes and decisions on Google's support costs.
- Developed a completely new framework for computing metrics from an audit system with 1 million QPS and serving it at 2,000 QPS. Architected the system and coordinated the efforts of seven engineers.
NLP Engineer
Sensentia
- Built a natural language understanding system to analyze medical insurance documents.
- Wrote a variety of neural network and SVM-based classification algorithms to categorize tables and rows of medical insurance documents.
- Built a system to convert PDFs and tables to machine-parseable data.
NLP Developer
University of California, San Francisco
- Built a text classification algorithm to identify previously answered questions.
- Built a UI to provide easy adjustment of responses and additional info provided in the app.
- Designed the flow of information to the application in a HIPAA-compliant manner.
Co-founder and Head of AI
Butter.ai
- Built an AI assistant prototype that helped our team raise $3 million in funding from General Catalyst Partners.
- Designed and developed the algorithm that interprets a user’s input and returns the best answer from their data.
- Oversaw all technical design decisions on the platform and managed the interview process for hiring new engineers.
Software Engineer
IBM R&D
- Integrated our app with Box, Google Drive, and CMIS SDKs (in addition to the existing SharePoint and WFS) and handled server syncs for editing, deletion, and moving of files and folders, all within our app’s container.
- Developed for our email and associated app to provide a better user experience, including swipe features and intelligent sync logic with Exchange to prevent battery drain, particularly in poor network conditions.
- Wrote a Python script to analyze Android logs, particularly ANRs. Initially developed for my company, the code is currently available on GitHub and has received excellent feedback.
- A machine learning code review classification tool. Used SVMs for the text categorization, Groovy to scrape data from the servers and store it with MySQL, and Django to manage and present the data. Achieved an accuracy of over 80% in categorizing code.
- Received the IBM Manager’s Choice Award for demonstrating creativity and dedication in the pursuit of original solutions to problems outside my day-to-day work.
- Won the IBM hackathon twice out of over 100 projects. The second was for the implementation of three projects in three days, including the integration of an Outlook-like scheduling assistant and WebEx APIs into our calendar client.
Research Volunteer
Bioengineering Laboratory, Christian Medical College & Hospital
- Redid the code on multi-camera reconstruction at the Gait Lab. This involved implementing geometrical calculations to allow for the position of LEDs attached to a patient's legs to be determined using eight infrared cameras positioned around the lab.
- Wrote a Java application to process the data from the cameras to generate a moving simulation of the patient's gait.
- Contributed to the creation of a cost-effective mechanism for foot pressure mapping using the minimum number of sensors and created an accurate method, using eight pressure sensors at about a hundredth the cost of some traditional mapping systems.
- Used Arduino and Rosbridge to integrate the feedback from the sensors and generate a pressure map.
- Awarded the highest rating possible by my mentor for my project and reports.
Intern
JP Morgan
- Created a searchable database for new project transitions.
- Moved existing transitions to the database, allowing for easy inserts, deletes, and modifications, reducing the time for these operations from over twenty minutes to a few seconds.
- Wrote various snippets of VB script to automate reporting on headcount data (previously a two-hour process undertaken manually every week).
- Automated numerous other day-to-day tasks, significantly reducing task times.
- Received the highest possible ratings from my project mentors.
Experience
How Our AI CRM Gets People Their Botox
https://krazimo.com/jason-emer-md-how-our-ai-crm-got-people-their-botox/PitchMee: Gamifying Sales Training
https://krazimo.com/pitchmee-gamifying-sales-training/Legal AI You Can Trust
https://krazimo.com/caselogic-legal-ai-you-can-trust/Making Blockchain Data Easy
https://krazimo.com/graphai-making-blockchain-exploration-as-easy-as-asking/Let the Phones Run Themselves!
https://krazimo.com/blink-concierge-let-the-phones-run-themselves/AI Report Generation for Carbon Emissions
https://krazimo.com/15rock-from-sustainability-research-to-decarbonization-plans/JSTFYD: Paid Faster, Paid More
https://krazimo.com/how-jstfyd-changed-the-game-for-restoration-claims/ClearTax Android Application
https://cleartax.in/apphttps://goo.gl/STfA4E
IBM MaaS360 for Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fiberlink.maas360.android.control&hl=enMaaS360 is an MDM (mobile device management) provider, which means that the app controls every aspect of the device. Even when minimized, it essentially acts as a second operating system, restricting certain actions and protecting your data.
It also had several secondary applications (Docs, Email, and more). Since the app was far too large to be installed together, each component was designed separately, and I was partly responsible for ensuring smooth communication between the various sub-applications.
IBM MaaS360 for Android (Docs)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fiberlink.maas360.android.docsIBM MaaS360 for Android (Email)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fiberlink.maas360.android.pimGait Analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDN_OT4HMFoFoot Pressure Mapping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwjtM_rZF3gAndroid Swipe Layout
https://github.com/daimajia/AndroidSwipeLayoutYou can follow the conversation here - https://github.com/daimajia/AndroidSwipeLayout/issues/40 (my handle is harshevilgeek)
Android Log Analyzer
https://github.com/HarshEvilGeek/Android-Log-AnalyzerEducation
Dual Bachelor's Degree and Master's Degree in Physics and Engineering
Birla Institute of Technology and Science - Rajasthan, India
Certifications
Introduction to Model Context Protocol
Anthropic
Introduction to Agent Skills
Anthropic
Claude Code in Action
Anthropic
Building with the Claude API
Anthropic
ProHIPAA for Leaders
ProHIPAA
Deep Learning Specialization
Deeplearning.ai
Skills
Libraries/APIs
TensorFlow, Keras, React, Pandas, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), SpaCy
Tools
Claude Code, Eclipse IDE, Android Studio, Subversion (SVN), Xcode, Sublime Text, Git, Dialogflow, Vim Text Editor, Sublime Text 3, MATLAB, IPython Notebook, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), n8n
Languages
Java, Python, CSS, CSS3, C++, C, TypeScript, VBScript, JavaScript, Swift, SQL
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Android, Docker, MacOS, Parse, iOS, Jupyter Notebook, Azure, Blockchain, Ethereum
Frameworks
Flask, AngularJS, Django
Paradigms
Agile Software Development, Test-driven Development (TDD), Automation
Storage
PostgreSQL, SQLite, MySQL
Other
Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), AI Agents, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Gemini, Full-stack, RAG Systems, RAG Architecture, Agentic RAG Systems, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), AI Voice Agents, AI Automation, Agentic AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Conversational AI, AI Chatbots, Cloud Infrastructure, AI Avatars, Full-stack Development, Prompt Engineering, Product Engineering, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Learning, User Interface (UI), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Data Science, Telephony, Reporting
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