Simon Szalai
Verified Expert in Engineering
AI Specialist and Software Developer
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Toptal member since February 8, 2022
Over the past 7 years, Simon has accumulated a wide range of professional coding experience, spanning full-stack web development, AI, machine learning, data science, data engineering, and mobile app development. With deep expertise in Python and TypeScript and an understanding of recent AI tools, he is able to write efficient code quickly to address real-world challenges. His MBA and experience as a startup co-founder allow him to blend technical skills with business objectives effectively.
Portfolio
Experience
- Python - 7 years
- TypeScript - 7 years
- React - 7 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 5 years
- PostgreSQL - 4 years
- Data Science - 4 years
- Data Engineering - 4 years
- PyTorch - 3 years
Work Experience
Co-founder | CTO
Amaru Wellness
- Implemented a web platform in React Remix from scratch, including a custom scheduler, payments, contract signing and surveys.
- Implemented a React Native mobile app from scratch, including authentication, Stripe payments, and API communication with a Remix back end.
- Designed the UI/UX of a desktop web and mobile app for ease of use and an intuitive experience.
- Heavily used generative AI to speed up the development process.
Co-founder | CTO
Workflow Pro
- Designed and implemented a serverless React application from scratch to manage the daily operations of a CNC manufacturing company using React and Firebase.
- Maintained the React/Firebase app in production for four years, including updates, bug fixes, and smaller features.
- Rebuilt the platform in React/Remix after 5 years of successful operations to overcome the inherent UX/speed limitations of the serverless architecture.
- Designed a natural language interface for the operational data collected by the platform I previously built that generates SQL queries from natural language, runs them, and uses the returned data as context to formulate the answers.
- Built an integration with the Hungarian Tax Authority's (NAV) API.
Co-founder | CTO
Raiz Vertical Farms
- Architected and implemented a real-time data pipeline that collected data from various IoT devices, stored it in a data warehouse, and analyzed it to compute control signals, which were then executed by the IoT devices.
- Deployed and maintained an ML model for inference to a local IoT device using TensorFlow Lite, which generated control signals from time series data.
- Built a first-principles-based simulation to model the behavior of the vertical farm under different weather conditions. This enabled us to run experiments much faster and accurately predict OPEX before deployment.
- Worked as a core contributor to the company's technical and business strategy. This included fundraising, hiring, developing a modular hydroponic farm from scratch, and operating it profitably.
Senior Full-stack Developer
Quantified Citizen
- Architected and built an ETL pipeline using Python and Dagster which cleaned and normalized both real-time and historical data, preparing it for analysis.
- Cleaned, normalized, analyzed, and visualized data collected through the mobile platform. This included data collected over 5 years using multiple applications, frameworks, and platforms, each containing errors that resulted in polluted data.
- Implemented a React app embedded in a Flutter web view to display study results generated by the ETL pipeline.
AI Specialist
Bicameral NFT
- Developed a machine learning pipeline to turn brainwave data and digital artwork into a unique animated art piece using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs).
- Recruited a team to use this technology to create an NFT collection of 5,000 pieces on the Ethereum blockchain.
- Laid the foundations for the technology to be deployed as an API in the future.
Full-stack Engineer
KitchenMate
- Designed and implemented control software running on an Android tablet for the hot food kiosk using Ionic React and Node.js.
- Evolved requirements constantly despite a lot of ambiguity.
- Oversaw the software integration of many different hardware systems (AI vision system, induction cookers, cameras, payment terminals, smart fridge, WiFi hotspot, etc.).
- Expanded a user-facing mobile app and internal tools using JavaScript.
Full-stack Engineer
SynerScope
- Executed the transition of SynerScope's entire data management platform from an on-premises app to a microservices-based cloud-native solution on Azure.
- Increased the prediction accuracy of a client's required tools and expertise for field-work of their employees from 80% to 99.98% on two million visits, saving approximately 40 million EUR a year in collaboration with my team.
- Engineered data pipelines to move documents, metadata, text, and images between Hadoop, Azure, and various databases.
- Deployed an image vectorizer model to Azure Cloud as a REST API using Docker.
Software Engineer
Dekimo Experts
- Developed a computer vision product to classify cells in microscope images.
- Delivered core development in C++, UI in QML using Qt5, image manipulation in OpenCV.
- Contributed to the project while learning C++ autonomously from zero.
Co-founder | CTO
Intersection Records
- Set up an electronic record label, including website, distribution, and promotion.
- Created artwork, released, and promoted over ten albums.
- Helped organize live events with artists to promote the albums.
Project History
Quantum Active Inference
https://github.com/simonszalai/Creative-Destruction-Quantum-Hackathon-2022Transform Data into Insights with Dagster and Deepnote Lecture
SorterBot
https://github.com/simonszalai/sorterbot_cloudEducation
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Quantic School of Business and Technology - Online
Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry
University of Szeged - Szeged, Hungary
Certifications
Qiskit Global Summer School on Quantum Machine Learning
IBM
Deep Reinforcement Learning Nanodegree
Udacity
Deep Learning by Andrew Ng
Coursera
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, React, Mantine, Stripe, Stripe API, REST APIs, NumPy, PyTorch, Pandas, Matplotlib, SurveyJS, OpenAI API, Google API, Google Sheets API, Vue, Stripe Connect, Scikit-learn, SciPy, SQLAlchemy, Playwright, TensorFlow, OpenCV, Puppeteer, Chart.js, D3.js
Tools
ChatGPT, Expo, Git, Logging, Docker Compose, You Only Look Once (YOLO), Figma, Grafana, Observability Tools, BigQuery, LabVIEW, Photoshop CC, Google Sheets, Amazon SageMaker, Terraform
Languages
TypeScript, Python, JavaScript, Python 3, HTML, SQL, CSS, Go, C++
Frameworks
React Native, Remix, Django, Flask, Tailwind CSS, Qt, Flutter, Redux
Paradigms
Mobile Development, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Web Architecture, UI Design, UX Design, Automation, Agile Software Development, Agile, HIPAA Compliance, Agile Project Management
Platforms
MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Firebase, Webflow, Linux, Docker, Raspberry Pi, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), AWS Lambda, Webflow CMS, Vercel, WordPress, AWS IoT, Arduino, iOS, Android, Blockchain
Storage
PostgreSQL, Cloud Firestore, Databases, Database Structure, Google Cloud, MongoDB, Google Cloud Storage, NoSQL
Industry Expertise
Web Design
Other
Deepnote, Data Collection, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer Vision, Dagster, Data Science, Data Engineering, OpenAI GPT-3 API, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Prompt Engineering, Machine Learning, Full-stack, APIs, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Full-stack Development, API Integration, Data Analysis, Data Cleansing, Architecture, Web Development, Back-end, Integration, Cloud Infrastructure, Software Development, API Design, Metrics, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Web Application Design, Front-end, Virtual Private Servers, Electronic Sensors, Process Simulation, Deep Learning, Predictive Modeling, Object Detection, OpenAI, AI Chatbots, Firebase Cloud Functions, Open-source LLMs, Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Model Deployment, Fractional CTO, Statistical Analysis, Regression Modeling, Image Processing, Internet of Things (IoT), CTO, Technical Leadership, Storybook, Business to Business (B2B), MERN Stack, CI/CD Pipelines, Software Architecture, Cloud Storage, K-means Clustering, Clustering Algorithms, Algorithms, Time Series Data, Document Processing, Solution Architecture, Strapi, Payment APIs, Business Administration, Reinforcement Learning, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Quantum Machine Learning, Quantum Computing, ISO Compliance, Robotics, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Google Cloud Functions, Kinde, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), Fly.io, Recording, Technical Writing, Writing & Editing, Hugging Face, LangChain, Video Analysis, Video Processing, Web Scraping, Website Data Scraping, Data Scraping, Scraping, Ethers.js, Web3
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