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Cristian Cardellino
Verified Expert in Engineering
Python Developer
Córdoba, Cordoba, Argentina
Toptal member since May 29, 2021
Bio
Cristian holds a PhD in computer science, specializing in deep learning for natural language processing. He has experience in both academia and industry, having worked as a research scientist, research engineer, data and machine learning engineer, and full-stack developer for different clients, universities, and companies around the world.
Portfolio
Perfect Score Too, LTD
Python, Algorithms, SciPy, NumPy
Nü4 Automation
Artificial Intelligence (AI), ChatGPT, Text Generation, OpenAI, OpenAI SDK...
Tappedout.NET
Apache Airflow, Django, JavaScript, React, Flask, Machine Learning...
Experience
- Python - 12 years
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) - 10 years
- Scikit-learn - 10 years
- Deep Learning - 10 years
- Machine Learning - 10 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 10 years
- Technical Writing - 8 years
- Recommendation Systems - 7 years
Work Experience
Senior Python Developer
2026 - 2026
Perfect Score Too, LTD
- Debugged and updated their core technology algorithms for handling edge cases.
- Reviewed their technology stack to keep them up to date and avoid possible sources of bugs.
- Researched new possible technologies to apply in future versions of their software.
Technologies: Python, Algorithms, SciPy, NumPy
AI Expert
2024 - 2025
Nü4 Automation
- Built an MVP for a system that used AI for business process optimization.
- Worked with a team of multiple people from different parts, designing the system from the bottom up.
- Built the back-end and AI application and was also the DevOps of the MVP.
Technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI), ChatGPT, Text Generation, OpenAI, OpenAI SDK, OpenAI API, Django, DevOps, AWS DevOps, PostgreSQL
Freelance Machine Learning and Data Engineer | Full-stack Developer
2016 - 2025
Tappedout.NET
- Developed a recommendation system for a trading card game.
- Set up an Airflow environment to automate the site tasks, especially data-related tasks.
- Helped move the site infrastructure to Docker and Docker Compose.
- Developed a machine learning system for bots to automatically pick strategic cards based on one of the game's mechanics.
- Architected a card embedding visualization platform with JavaScript and CSS.
- Set up many machine learning models for different tasks as microservices via Flask.
- Designed a visual application with React for the platform's user to build their decks.
- Contributed to a data model to detect spam bots from log files. Started by analyzing the data of many different logs and worked using clustering techniques to differentiate bots from humans.
Technologies: Apache Airflow, Django, JavaScript, React, Flask, Machine Learning, Recommendation Systems, Spark, Docker, CSS, Keras, TensorFlow, Artificial Intelligence (AI), NumPy, SciPy, Scikit-learn, Seaborn, Pandas, Jupyter Notebook, Pytest, MySQL, Data Science, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Data Engineering, JSON, Docker Compose, Apache Spark, PySpark, REST, Full-stack, Web Development, REST APIs, XML, APIs, API Development, Deep Learning, PyTorch, BERT, Microservices, Software Architecture, Leadership, Django REST Framework, Django ORM, Architecture, Back-end, Data Pipelines, Testing, SQLite, OAuth, Containerization, Models, Technical Consulting, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Celery, PSQL, Relational Databases, On-premise, Vector Databases, ChatGPT API, Full-stack Development, HTML, Bots, Automation, Unit Testing, Algorithms, Test-driven Development (TDD), Agentic AI
Machine Learning Consultant
2024 - 2024
Red Games Co.
- Analyzed their game data to assess the possibility of building an ML-based system to match their rule-based system.
- Took charge of designing features based on their data to build an entire ML pipeline for playing the game.
- Delivered a proof of concept of the pipeline via a web service.
Technologies: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Python, Relational Databases, Bots, Algorithms, Agentic AI
Data Scientist
2024 - 2024
CANARY WHARF ANALYTICS LTD
- Wrote 14 articles for the blog in different areas of artificial intelligence (AI).
- Designed articles with code to explain different concepts of industrial machine learning (ML).
- Started with the core code and content for a course on deploying machine learning (ML) models.
Technologies: Blogging, Data Science, Technical Writing, Content Writing, Writing & Editing, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer Vision, Time Series Analysis, Machine Learning, Python, TensorFlow, Deep Learning, Data Reporting, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Data Analytics, Pandas, SQL, ChatGPT, Large Language Models (LLMs), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Transformers, Diffusion Models, Technical Consulting, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Agentic AI
Python/Flask Developer
2024 - 2024
Fishtrust, LLC
- Worked with the client to add different features, such as handling spreadsheets via the Google Sheets API, generating PDFs with barcodes for various products, and automatically sending emails via Google service accounts.
- Rewrote and extended the documentation to give the client better tools for setting up a development environment.
- Deployed the new features live to the client's website using NGINX and Supervisord.
Technologies: Python, Flask, Linux, Google Sheets, Linode, SQLite, OAuth, NGINX, Deployment, Supervisord, AI Prompts, Relational Databases, Full-stack Development, HTML, Unit Testing
AI Engineer
2023 - 2024
OctoML, Inc.
- Tested the client's tool for natural language processing (NLP) and image generation. Fine-tuned an image generation model based on LoRA.
- Recorded UX interactions with the client's UI and wrote a technical report on possible improvements to the client.
- Developed simple applications using the client's provided SDK and the API for testing purposes.
Technologies: Python, PyTorch, Machine Learning, Testing, Natural Language Processing (NLP), TensorFlow, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), ChatGPT, Large Language Models (LLMs), Image Generation, Stable Diffusion, Llama 2, Quality Assurance (QA), Diffusion Models, Technical Writing, Models, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Technical Consulting, OpenAI, OpenAI API, AI Chatbots, Prompt Engineering, AI Prompts, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Vector Databases, ChatGPT API, Agentic AI
Postdoctoral Researcher
2023 - 2024
Inria
- Worked on two postdoctoral projects: Antidote as a research engineer and Orbis as a postdoctoral researcher.
- Managed another research engineer as a team leader and senior in Antidote. I made a major refactor on the original code used by the researchers to make it more maintainable. We are in the process of refactoring the application's demo website.
- Worked on Orbis, a computational social sciences project backed by the EU. Researched in argumentation mining, applied to political and social debates in deliberative democracy. I am the acting leader of work package four of the project.
- Wrote research papers on my findings. These are technical papers evaluated by peers for publication in conferences and journals.
- Acted as a reviewer at various conferences, evaluating the technical aspects, novelty, and overall condition for different research papers to be presented at these conferences.
Technologies: ChatGPT, Language Models, Python, Python 3, Leadership, Flask, Docker, FastAPI, Hugging Face, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), REST APIs, Web Development, Architecture, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Large Language Models (LLMs), Back-end, Data Pipelines, SQLite, Transformers, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Diffusion Models, Technical Writing, Containerization, NLU, Models, OpenAI, OpenAI API, AI Chatbots, Prompt Engineering, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Celery, PSQL, Relational Databases, On-premise, Vector Databases, Full-stack Development, HTML, Mistral AI, Algorithms, Agentic AI
Senior Researcher
2020 - 2023
MercadoLibre
- Helped develop team objectives and direction as the first employee in the research team. Aided the overall construction of the team for future members.
- Researched product representations using both natural language processing as well as computer vision techniques. Found multimodal representations of items in the marketplace.
- Researched cross-region domain adaptation as the marketplace is available in 18 different countries in Latin America.
- Conducted research with scalability in mind, as Mercado Libre is the largest marketplace in Latin America.
- Published two papers on my research and wrote technical documents and documentation for using internally by engineers of the company.
Technologies: Python 3, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Research, Computer Vision, BERT, Custom BERT, ChatGPT, Language Models, Data Analysis, Hugging Face, Architecture, Large Language Models (LLMs), Data Pipelines, Testing, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Transformers, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Diffusion Models, Technical Writing, NLU, Models, AI Chatbots, PSQL, Relational Databases, On-premise, Bots, Unit Testing, Algorithms, Agentic AI
Freelance AI Consultant
2018 - 2023
Santex Group
- Worked as a manager in an agreement between Santex and the National University of Córdoba for developing artificial intelligence (AI) applications in the industry.
- Acted as a freelance consultant for the company on applications involving artificial intelligence (AI), data science (DS), and natural language processing (NLP).
- Oversaw and acted as a consultant for the technologies provided by OpenAI to help develop a chatbot for internal use.
- Carried out technical interviews for possible candidates in technologies such as Python and Django and AI, DS, and NLP.
Technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Data Science, Machine Learning, Data Engineering, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Chatbots, Microservices, Data Analysis, NLU, Models, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Technical Consulting
Data Engineer
2021 - 2022
Honest Paws, LLC
- Helped the client identify problems in their codebase, fixing bugs and refactoring for better solutions, using Python, SQL, and Docker alongside the Google cloud services.
- Developed many Google Cloud Functions needed for the client to manage their data pipeline to provide their business analysts with clear views of the data.
- Assisted the client by teaching them best practices and explaining different use cases of their available technologies.
- Created several cloud functions using Google Cloud that connected their data pipeline in Google BigQuery to a dashboard via Mixpanel.
- Used a pipeline that applied the Google Cloud natural language processing tool and wrote the results seamlessly for local storage and Google Cloud Storage.
Technologies: SQL, Python, Pandas, NumPy, Google BigQuery, Mixpanel, Python 3, Google Cloud, Google Cloud Storage, Docker, Google Cloud Functions, Google Cloud ML, Data Engineering, REST, REST APIs, Microservices, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Data Pipelines, Testing, Containerization, Relational Databases, Serverless, Unit Testing, Test-driven Development (TDD)
Adjunct Professor
2015 - 2022
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
- Taught students about SQL and MongoDB as a professor of database courses.
- Led classes as a professor of programming paradigms, where I trained students on functional programming, object-oriented programming, and actor-based concurrency in Haskell and Scala.
- Instructed supervised machine learning, deep learning, and recommendation systems as part of the school of data science and machine learning specialization courses.
- Researched many NLP topics, particularly text classification, named entity recognition (NER), sentiment analysis, and argumentation mining. Helped in the writing of several publications.
- Took part in the MIREL Project (https://www.mirelproject.eu/), an EU project in charge of research for mining and reasoning over legal texts. I was part of several publications directly related to this project as a professor and PhD student.
Technologies: Databases, Scala, Akka, SQL, MongoDB, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Haskell, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), NumPy, SciPy, PyTorch, Deep Learning, Keras, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), SpaCy, Gensim, fastText, Word2Vec, MySQL, Text Mining, Entity Extraction, Named-entity Recognition (NER), Text Classification, Sentiment Analysis, Argument Mining, Technical Writing, XML, Chatbot Conversation Design, Microservices, Hugging Face, Architecture, Large Language Models (LLMs), Data Pipelines, SQLite, OAuth, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Transformers, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), NLU, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), PSQL, Relational Databases, On-premise, Website Data Scraping, Automation, Algorithms
Senior Full-stack Developer
2021 - 2021
Xofia
- Designed a search engine for keywords related to the oil extraction industry. The keywords were extracted from HTML files and searched via PostgreSQL full-text search.
- Implemented the search engine with an API via Python FastAPI and the Django web interface. Wrapped all the apps with the help of Docker and Docker Compose.
- Deployed the application as a droplet in DigitalOcean with the help of Docker to create a beta version for the client to showcase.
Technologies: Python, FastAPI, Django, PostgreSQL, Beautiful Soup, Docker, Docker Compose, DigitalOcean, Search Engines, Information Retrieval, Text Mining, REST, Full-stack, Web Development, REST APIs, Microservices, Django REST Framework, Django ORM, Architecture, Back-end, Data Pipelines, Containerization
Intern
2014 - 2014
Inria
- Developed a website to help with the automatic licensing of datasets.
- Handled everything from design and front end to the back end.
- Developed a natural language processing suite to give an RDF representation of a written license automatically.
- Published a paper in ISWC 2014 presenting the tool.
Technologies: Scala, Play Framework, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), JavaScript, jQuery, Flask, Python, Scikit-learn, SpaCy, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), Gensim, NumPy, SciPy, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Technical Writing, Back-end
Teaching Assistant
2011 - 2013
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
- Worked as a teaching assistant in three different courses: Programming Paradigms, Networks, and Software Engineering.
- Oversaw and graded students' deliverables for the three courses, the networks, and the software engineering courses.
- Checked, tested, and provided feedback to the students regarding improvements to the software engineering course project completed in Django.
- Reviewed the networks course deliverable, a complete peer-to-peer (P2P) system for data transfer written in Python.
- Assisted the Programming Paradigms course professor in the practical part where we saw different programming paradigms such as declarative, functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming.
Technologies: Python, Django, Linux, Technical Writing, XML, Google Sheets, Agile
Junior Full-stack Developer
2012 - 2012
Machinalis
- Helped develop the ContinoIN platform in Django and Python.
- Tracked and fixed many bugs using Jira as a reporting tool.
- Coded unit tests for Python and Django with the unit test framework.
- Applied a design given to me by the website owners with HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap.
Technologies: Django, Python, jQuery, JavaScript, Bootstrap 3, CSS, Full-stack, Web Development, Testing, Agile, Jira, Unit Testing, Test-driven Development (TDD)
Project History
Recommendation System for MTG Site
I was in charge of tappedout.net's deck recommendation system. I developed a microservice-style framework with Flask that runs a RESTful API that, given a set of cards, runs a hybrid recommendation system based on collaborative filtering and content-based filtering using scikit-learn and Surprise. I was in charge of the data extraction from the database, model training, model testing, API design and building (with security layer), and testing.
Spanish Billion Word Corpus and Embeddings
This resource consists of an unannotated corpus of the Spanish language of nearly 1.5 billion words, compiled from different corpora and resources from the web, and a set of word embeddings created from this corpus using the Word2Vec algorithm provided by the Gensim package. These embeddings were evaluated by translating to Spanish Word2Vec's word relation test set.
Licentia
As part of my internship at INRIA in France, I built the website Licentia, a suite of services to support users looking for a suitable license for their datasets. The application has four main components: find a license for the data given some restrictions, check if a license is compatible with the user's intentions, visualize and download and RDF license, and convert a written license into RDF representation.
ANTIDOTE ACTA Module
https://gitlab.com/wimmics-antidote/antidote-actaThe module is a Python library implementation of a paper model from the ANTIDOTE project. I was in charge of a major refactor from the original code, which was outdated and had become unmaintainable. I've developed a Python installable module with the latest technologies available: PyTorch, HuggingFace, and Lightning.
Personal Blog
I have a personal blog where I write technical content, mostly in Spanish but also in English. I have been writing in the blog for the past 10 years, and I keep it up to date as well with my scientific publications, my courses, and any technical writing that I find useful for the community.
Education
2013 - 2018
PhD in Computer Science
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba - Córdoba, Argentina
2008 - 2013
Master's Degree in Computer Science
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba - Córdoba, Argentina
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Scikit-learn, PyTorch, Pandas, NumPy, SciPy, React, Keras, TensorFlow, SpaCy, Flask-RESTful, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), Beautiful Soup, PySpark, REST APIs, API Development, Django ORM, OpenAI API, jQuery
Tools
Named-entity Recognition (NER), Apache Airflow, Gensim, Pytest, Seaborn, Docker Compose, ChatGPT, Google Sheets, AI Prompts, Celery, Jira, Jekyll, GitHub Pages, NGINX, Supervisord
Languages
Python, Scala, SQL, Python 3, HTML, JavaScript, XML, Haskell, CSS, C, Markdown
Frameworks
Django, Flask, Spark, Scrapy, Apache Spark, Django REST Framework, Akka, Play Framework, Bootstrap 3
Paradigms
Microservices, Testing, Unit Testing, Test-driven Development (TDD), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), ETL, REST, Automation, Agile, DevOps
Platforms
Linux, Docker, Jupyter Notebook, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Mixpanel, DigitalOcean, Linode
Storage
Databases, MySQL, Data Pipelines, PSQL, Relational Databases, On-premise, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, JSON, SQLite, Google Cloud, Google Cloud Storage
Other
Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning, Recommendation Systems, Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Word2Vec, Data Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Text Mining, Text Classification, Word Embedding, Technical Writing, Web Scraping, APIs, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Research, Data Analysis, Large Language Models (LLMs), Back-end, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Transformers, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Models, Website Data Scraping, Full-stack Development, Bots, Agentic AI, Data Structures, fastText, FastAPI, Entity Extraction, Sentiment Analysis, Full-stack, Web Development, Data Scraping, Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Chatbots, Computer Vision, BERT, Custom BERT, Language Models, Software Architecture, Leadership, Hugging Face, Architecture, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Containerization, Scraping, NLU, Technical Consulting, OpenAI, AI Chatbots, Prompt Engineering, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Vector Databases, ChatGPT API, Mistral AI, Serverless, Formal Methods, Languages, Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Functions, Search Engines, Information Retrieval, Argument Mining, Google Cloud ML, Chatbot Conversation Design, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Image Generation, Stable Diffusion, Llama 2, Quality Assurance (QA), OAuth, Content Writing, Writing & Editing, Blogs, Blogging, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Diffusion Models, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), Deployment, Time Series Analysis, Data Reporting, Data Analytics, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Text Generation, OpenAI SDK, AWS DevOps
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