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Anand Ramanathan, Machine Learning Developer in Bellevue, United States
Anand Ramanathan

Machine Learning Developer in Bellevue, United States

Member since April 29, 2020
Anand is an entrepreneurial software engineer and data scientist with over 20 years at Microsoft, Amazon, and startups in roles, including data scientist, AI engineer, and technical product manager. His expertise includes NLU, speech, conversational assistants, Microsoft Azure AutoML, deep learning in computer vision with 3D semantic segmentation. Anand has strong Python experience—both experimenting in Jupyter Notebooks and building robust, test-driven production quality software.
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Portfolio

Experience

Location

Bellevue, United States

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Python, Jupyter, Flask, React, Scikit-learn, PyTorch

The most amazing...

...web-based experience I've built end-to-end was Ganglion, a web app that empowers consumers to control what news they read without giving up their privacy.

Employment

  • Founder | Machine Learning Engineer

    2020 - PRESENT
    MLAI, LLC.
    • Conceived, designed, and built an end-to-end web app.
    • Automated the daily refresh of news content enabling the entire app to work on autopilot.
    • Manually labeled data to train a model for clickbait detection in news articles with 83% accuracy.
    • Optimized the performance to efficiently fetch around 5,000 distinct news articles every day from 400 news feeds.
    • Fetched and parsed news articles daily, updated models and predictions and uploaded an optimized view to AWS S3.
    Technologies: Natural Language Processing (NLP), Python 3, Flask, JavaScript, JSX, SpaCy, Bootstrap, RSS Feeds, JSON REST APIs, SaaS, Machine Learning, Exploratory Data Analysis, Pandas, Amazon Web Services (AWS), RESTful Development, SQL, Python, Statistical Learning, Deep Learning, NumPy, Data Science, REST, Fast.ai, React, Full-stack, Visual Studio Code, PostgreSQL, Seaborn, Keras, Deep Neural Networks, Algorithms, MacOS, Heroku, APIs, Architecture, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Sentiment Analysis, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, SciPy, Systems, Neural Networks, NLTK, Gensim, Semantic Analysis, Tf-idf, REST APIs, Web Scraping, Task Analysis

  • AI/ML Engineer

    2022 - 2022
    Healthcare Provider Client (via Toptal)
    • Conducted feasibility analysis of an ML model for the business problem.
    • Created estimates of data collection and annotation needed.
    • Provided candidate models to evaluate once data was available.
    • Answered all client's questions to their total satisfaction.
    Technologies: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Healthcare, 3D Image Processing, Image Processing, Medical Imaging, Task Analysis

  • Senior AI Engineer

    2021 - 2022
    RedRoute
    • Owned AI for the company; defined the AI roadmap for the company, combining several ideas from business, product, and technology as well as from academia, research, and industry.
    • Led the audio-related data science roadmap and work; mentored/technically managed an experienced audio data science researcher.
    • Built a real time audio barge-in detection model that performed very well with low resource requirements, compared to several prior attempts.
    • Improved the performance of an eCommerce intent detection model by 2-5%—analyzing and relabeling the data, manually prioritizing and labeling high impact utterances, retraining and redeploying the model, and creating and monitoring looker dashboards.
    • Increased customer handle rates by adding richer responses for eCommerce customers; this was done by answering frequently asked questions based on information from the customer's website and knowledge base. Created dashboards to monitor these changes.
    • Created a transcriber/speaker diary tool to transcribe conversations.
    • Built several dashboards and looks (queries) in Looker to monitor the impact of different changes.
    • Educated the team on Kanban and influenced the deployment of a variant of Kanban in the company.
    • Contributed to other areas of the company, including preparing to scale and establishing and improving processes and the business/sales/marketing/product strategy.
    Technologies: Python, Python 3, TensorFlow, Deep Learning, Realtime, IVR, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Dialog Systems, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ansible, Docker, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Google Speech-to-Text API, Labeling, Jupyter Notebook, Jupyter, Kanban, Looker, ETL, MongoDB, Snowflake, Flask, Technical Hiring, Source Code Review, Code Review, Task Analysis, Interviewing, Team Management

  • Data Scientist

    2018 - 2020
    Microsoft
    • Built models to evaluate over 100 datasets to discover methods to improve the AutoML library.
    • Improved the product on the benchmark against the competition by investigating and explaining a competing AutoML product's scoring methodology for imbalanced multi-class classification. I did this by digging deep into how metrics were computed.
    • Analyzed feature importances by training over 100 datasets with automatic feature engineering libraries to prioritize featurizers for our AutoML product.
    • Developed an end-to-end AutoML framework as part of a Hackathon project to understand what approaches would work best for AutoML.
    • Delivered a dataset analysis and onboarding tool, which enabled evaluating, filtering, cleaning, and onboarding of 20 datasets into our benchmarking corpus.
    • Built better complete performance graphs to improve confidence in the performance of each competitor across a corpus of over 100 datasets.
    • Identified gaps in our benchmarking dataset corpus distribution and added over 20 datasets to fill those gaps.
    Technologies: R, Microsoft Power BI, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, AutoML, Azure, Jupyter, Pandas, NumPy, Python, JSON REST APIs, REST APIs, SaaS, Machine Learning, Exploratory Data Analysis, Python 3, RESTful Development, Docker, SQL, Statistical Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, Visual Studio Code, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Seaborn, Azure IaaS, TensorFlow, Keras, Algorithms, Linux, Windows, APIs, Architecture, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), SciPy, Tidyverse, Ggplot2, Systems, Neural Networks, Azure Machine Learning, Flask, Agile, Source Code Review, Code Review, Task Analysis

  • Founder

    2015 - 2019
    Meon
    • Built a web platform that allows you to create apps in minutes, Meonapp.com.
    • Developed 80 apps in two days across several application domains.
    • Created apps for various clients on the platform, including a tailor management app, a music composition app.
    • Added capabilities for both general users and developers to build apps.
    • Enabled apps to be hosted as soon as built, reducing turnaround time greatly.
    Technologies: Heroku, PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, SaaS, RESTful Development, jQuery, JavaScript, SQL, REST, Full-stack, Visual Studio Code, Algorithms, Linux, MacOS, Java, APIs, Architecture, Systems, REST APIs, Source Code Review, Code Review, Task Analysis

  • Senior Software Engineer

    2017 - 2018
    Divensi, Inc.
    • Researched and developed a deep learning model for 3D point cloud semantic segmentation of imbalanced outdoor Lidar data, with near state-of-the-art results for outdoor Lidar.
    • Developed a V1 cloud-hosted decision support system web application utilized by several enterprise users for a remote startup client. Hired a technical team and transitioned the product. Offered a CTO position by the client CEO.
    • Built a data pipeline framework for machine learning experimentation with Lidar data.
    Technologies: PDAL, Laspy, LiDAR, Jupyter, TensorFlow, Python, JSON REST APIs, Machine Learning, Exploratory Data Analysis, Python 3, Pandas, RESTful Development, JavaScript, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), SQL, Deep Learning, Statistical Learning, NumPy, Data Science, REST, Fast.ai, Full-stack, PostgreSQL, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer Vision, Keras, Django, Django REST Framework, Deep Neural Networks, Algorithms, MacOS, APIs, Architecture, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Image Recognition, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, Convolutional Neural Networks, SciPy, Systems, Neural Networks, Agile, REST APIs, 3D Image Processing, Image Processing, Technical Hiring, Source Code Review, Code Review, Task Analysis, Interviewing, Team Management

  • Freelance Developer

    2012 - 2014
    Self Employment
    • Built nine educational games that were released to the App Store; iOS and cross-platform using the Corona SDK.
    • Performed App Store optimization to maximize adoption and saw over 30,000 downloads across games.
    • Developed a broad range of games, from running quizzes to new mathematical puzzles. The samurai game was highly appreciated by middle school teachers in the US.
    Technologies: ASP.NET, Corona SDK, Objective-C, REST APIs, SQL, iOS, Algorithms, MacOS, Architecture, Systems, Task Analysis

  • Founder

    2009 - 2011
    Thouwords, LLC.
    • Built a web application to make a textual website more visual by performing topic modeling with Alchemy API. Obtained images for each topic from Wikipedia APIs.
    • Created a Wikipedia visual navigator using topic modeling and Wikipedia API to get images.
    • Developed a web application to create rich ebooks for kids using pictures, video, and text books. The application was used to create picture books for kids and shared with parents.
    Technologies: AlchemyAPI, ASP.NET, Machine Learning, JavaScript, SQL, Statistical Learning, Algorithms, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), APIs, Architecture, Sentiment Analysis, Systems, Semantic Analysis, REST APIs, Technical Hiring, Source Code Review, Code Review, Task Analysis, Interviewing, Team Management

  • Senior Technical Program Manager

    2000 - 2009
    Microsoft
    • Built BizTalk Server, an enterprise messaging and workflow platform from idea to product. Released three versions of BizTalk Server.
    • Created the first .NET based Outlook API, and released two versions of it.
    • Built a service delivery platform for mobile telecom providers using .NET and SOA, including several WS- standards like WS-reliability and WS-eventing.
    • Defined and led the inclusion of the REST API in .NET WCF.
    Technologies: Windows Communication Framework (WCF), Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), Outlook, BizTalk Server, .NET, JSON REST APIs, SDKs, SQL, REST, C++, Algorithms, Windows, ASP.NET, C#, APIs, Architecture, Systems, Workflow, RSS Feeds, Agile, REST APIs, ETL, Technical Hiring, Task Analysis, Interviewing, Team Management

  • Technical Product and Program Manager

    2006 - 2007
    Amazon
    • Captured the end-to-end Amazon retail messaging and workflow blueprint by collaborating with over 40 teams at Amazon that used the messaging and workflow framework.
    • Defined and led the creation of an internal distributed configuration store modeled on DNS.
    • Proposed a well-received vision for (the then new) Amazon cloud. It was based on true elasticity and automatic scalability.
    • Acting upon the vice president's suggestion, I presented the proposal to a special future architecture group. They incorporated it into their plans.
    • Drove the adoption of a distributed configuration store across teams in the company.
    Technologies: Java, Workflow, Engineering, SDKs, SaaS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), REST APIs, RESTful Development, SQL, C++, Algorithms, APIs, Architecture, Technical Hiring, Task Analysis, Interviewing

  • Senior Software Engineer

    1998 - 2000
    Microsoft (via Aditi)
    • Built a code profiler for Visual Studio Internal tools in C++.
    • Developed an XSD (XML Schema Definition) library in C++.
    • Created a persistence layer for an XSLT based BizTalk schema mapper.
    • Ported the FrontPage server extensions to a pre-release version of C#.
    Technologies: Profiling, CODE, Visual Studio, XSLT, XSD, XML, ATL, C++, SQL, Algorithms, Windows, ASP.NET, .NET, C#, APIs, Architecture, Systems, Technical Hiring, Source Code Review, Code Review, Task Analysis, Interviewing, Team Management

Experience

  • Ganglion
    https://www.ganglion.me

    A web application that empowers consumers to manage their news consumption experience providing full control and complete privacy.

    I conceived, designed, built, and deployed this project end-to-end and automated the daily refresh of news content, updating machine learning models and word cloud images of the most common news topics. This set up the entire app to work on autopilot.

    I optimized the performance to efficiently fetch approximately 5,000 distinct news articles every day from 400 news feeds and manually labeled data to train a model for clickbait detection in news articles with 83% accuracy. I trained and updated models to detect sentiment, objectivity, infer which articles have clickbait headings, perform NER, and generate word clouds. I fetched and parsed news articles daily, updated and generated models and document embeddings, created word cloud images, and uploaded to AWS S3 runs within hours.

  • AutoML
    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/machine-learning/automatedml/

    This is an automated machine learning framework in Microsoft Azure. I was the data scientist on this team, improving the automated machine learning performance by running ML on a large corpus of benchmark datasets, and identifying ways to improve our ML pipeline.

  • Meon - Web Platform That Creates Apps in Minutes
    https://youtu.be/ZCM7V_QH1zk

    This is a Ruby on Rails-based web app that creates a wide variety of apps and starts using them immediately-in minutes. I conceived, designed, and built this product entirely on my own. I created 85 apps from a wide range of domains on this platform in just two days. Using this product, I built business apps for various early clients. The video below shows a tour of the variety of apps created in Meon, most of them in less than five minutes.

  • An AI Web App

    An AI web app with a complex data model designed and built for a client of my employer. It was built using Python, Django, Django REST Framework, TypeScript, and Angular; it was deployed to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

  • Sumurai
    https://www.quora.com/Which-android-games-make-you-smarter

    Sumurai is a math puzzle game conceived, designed, and implemented by me in 2016. It enabled young kids to learn arithmetic by playing a challenging puzzle game. I collaborated with researchers, educators, and customers to improve the game. It received great feedback from researchers and teachers in the US who used it with their students.

  • Smart Run

    An iOS educational game I designed, built, launched, and marketed. It merged an educational experience with a fast-paced running game. It was designed to add more educational content without modifying the core game code.

Skills

  • Languages

    Ruby, Python 3, Python, SQL, JavaScript, Snowflake, Objective-C, C#, Java, XML, XSD, XSLT, TypeScript, Lua, R, C++

  • Frameworks

    Ruby on Rails (RoR), Flask, Corona SDK, ASP.NET, .NET, Windows Communication Framework (WCF), CODE, Bootstrap, Angular, AngularJS, Unity, Cocos3d, Django, Django REST Framework, Realtime

  • Libraries/APIs

    REST APIs, Pandas, Matplotlib, NLTK, SpaCy, NumPy, Scikit-learn, Fast.ai, PyTorch, TensorFlow, SciPy, ATL, LSTM, OpenCV, React, jQuery, Django ORM, Keras, Tidyverse, Ggplot2, Google Speech-to-Text API

  • Tools

    AutoML, Azure Machine Learning, Gensim, Seaborn, Microsoft Power BI, Jupyter, Visual Studio, JSX, Named-entity Recognition (NER), Trello, H2O AutoML, Ansible, Looker

  • Paradigms

    REST, Agile, RESTful Development, Data Science, ETL, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), App Store Optimization (ASO), Kanban

  • Other

    Natural Language Processing (NLP), Algorithms, SaaS, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Exploratory Data Analysis, APIs, Technical Hiring, Source Code Review, Code Review, Task Analysis, Interviewing, Architecture, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Image Recognition, Sentiment Analysis, JSON REST APIs, SDKs, Deep Learning, Statistical Learning, Web Scraping, 3D Image Processing, Image Processing, Team Management, Laspy, PDAL, AlchemyAPI, BizTalk Server, Outlook, Systems, Engineering, Workflow, Profiling, Convolutional Neural Networks, Deep Neural Networks, Neural Networks, Data Structures, RNN, Recurrent Neural Networks, Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), Sequence Models, Hyperparameters, Regularization, Semantic Analysis, Rankings, Tf-idf, RSS Feeds, Discrete Mathematics, Graph Theory, Games, 2D Games, Mathematics, Game Art, LiDAR, Full-stack, IVR, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Dialog Systems, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Labeling, Time Series Analysis, Reinforcement Learning, Time Series, Fintech, Cryptocurrency, Medical Imaging

  • Platforms

    Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Visual Studio Code, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure IaaS, Linux, Windows, MacOS, Heroku, iOS, Docker, Azure, Jupyter Notebook

  • Storage

    PostgreSQL, MongoDB

  • Industry Expertise

    Healthcare

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in Engineering
    1990 - 1994
    Indian Institute of Technology - Roorkee, India

Certifications

  • Fundamentals of Reinforcement Learning
    MAY 2022 - PRESENT
    University of Alberta | via Coursera
  • TensorFlow Developer Certificate
    APRIL 2022 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI
  • DeepLearning.AI TensorFlow Certification
    APRIL 2022 - PRESENT
    Coursera
  • Cryptocurrency Forecasting Using Machine Learning in Power BI
    JANUARY 2022 - PRESENT
    Coursera
  • Discrete Mathematics and Analyzing Social Graphs
    FEBRUARY 2021 - PRESENT
    Higher School of Economics, National Research University | via Coursera
  • Natural Language Processing with Classification and Vector Spaces
    JUNE 2020 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Natural Language Processing with Probabilistic Models
    JUNE 2020 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Mathematics for Machine Learning: Linear Algebra
    MAY 2020 - PRESENT
    Imperial College London | via Coursera
  • Data Structures
    APRIL 2020 - PRESENT
    UC San Diego | via Coursera
  • Data Structures
    APRIL 2020 - PRESENT
    UC San Diego and HSE | via Coursera
  • Algorithmic Toolbox
    MARCH 2020 - PRESENT
    UC San Diego | via Coursera
  • Algorithmic Toolbox
    MARCH 2020 - PRESENT
    UC San Diego and HSE | via Coursera
  • Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter Tuning, Regularization and Optimization
    MAY 2018 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Sequence Models
    MAY 2018 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Convolutional Neural Networks
    MAY 2018 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Neural Networks and Deep Learning
    MAY 2018 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Structuring Machine Learning Projects
    MAY 2018 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Deep Learning Specialization (Six courses)
    MAY 2018 - PRESENT
    DeepLearning.AI | via Coursera
  • Statistical Learning
    AUGUST 2016 - PRESENT
    Stanford Online
  • Introduction to Mathematical Thinking
    NOVEMBER 2015 - PRESENT
    Stanford | via Coursera
  • Human Computer Interaction
    JUNE 2013 - PRESENT
    UC San Diego | via Coursera

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