Bogdan-Ioan is available for hire

Bogdan-Ioan Ouatu

Verified Expert in Engineering

Back-end Developer

Location

Bucharest, Romania

Toptal Member Since

July 27, 2022

Bogdan has architected and designed data-intensive and machine learning applications while working as a full-stack developer and later AI engineer for US and EU-based companies. He is a problem solver and generalist, so he returned to freelancing and consulting to solve clients' seemingly impossible problems and work with niche technologies after finishing his computer science and AI degrees with a 4.0 GPA.

Portfolio

Freelance

Python, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Linux, JavaScript, Machine Learning...

Adore Me

Python, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Jupyter, Research, FastAPI, REST APIs...

University of Bucharest

Algorithms, University Teaching, Training, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Python...

Experience

Python - 5 years Research - 5 years Machine Learning - 4 years PyTorch - 3 years Text to Speech (TTS) - 3 years JavaScript - 3 years Recommendation Systems - 2 years Trading - 2 years

Availability

Full-time

Preferred Environment

Linux, MacOS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Jupyter, GitHub

The most amazing...

...thing I've built, from gathering requirements and user interviews to deployment, is an intuitive BI web app for sentiment analysis.

Work Experience

Consultant

2019 - PRESENT

Freelance

Created business intelligence apps in Streamlit and Vue for different clients to help them explore natural language data, such as customer support logs and net promoter score forms.
Built a location-based money transfer platform as a proof of concept for a finance startup to showcase their Open Banking APIs. This proof of concept was selected for the Central Europe Open Banking competition and won a special prize from Google.
Taught Machine Learning for programmers willing to transition from regular development jobs and lectured on competitive programming to high school and university students.
Developed Forex scripts and indicators for retail investors, helping them generate consistent alpha for two months.
Designed and developed an analytics and back-testing web app for a UK client to trade stocks and options.
Implemented an on-device speech-to-speech translation prototype with results comparable to state-of-the-art tools for the English-Chinese language pair.

Technologies: Python, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Linux, JavaScript, Machine Learning, MetaTrader 4, REST APIs, Vue, PostgreSQL, Flask, APIs, CSS, HTML, Docker, Django, Containerization, Requirements Analysis, Full-stack, System Architecture, Architecture, API Integration, Pandas, Relational Databases, Asyncio, NumPy, User Interface (UI), Software Architecture, Jupyter, SQL, NGINX, Networking, Operating Systems, Data Science, Bash, Shell, Prototyping, Bots, PyTorch, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), GPT, Web Development, Databases, Scraping, REST, Git, Data Processing, Web Frameworks, Django REST Framework, Scripting, Data Analysis, Backtesting Trading Strategies, Trading, Jupyter Notebook, Algorithmic Trading, Technical Writing, IT Consulting, OpenCV, DSP, Image Processing, ETL, Speech Recognition, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Leadership, Beautiful Soup, Scrapy, Twitter, Laravel, SQLAlchemy, OAuth, Back-end, Back-end Architecture, Data Analytics, GitHub, Forex, MetaTrader, Arbitrage, Statistical Analysis, Amazon Web Services (AWS), BigQuery, API Architecture, OpenAI API, Apache Airflow, Pytest, Forex Trading, MetaTrader 5, PDF Scraping, RESTful Web Services, Data Scraping, Data Pipelines, Go, Azure, Java, Cloud Infrastructure, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Algorithms, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Optimization Algorithms, Appium, React, Next.js, Text to Speech (TTS), Voice Cloning, Distributed Systems, Spotify API

Artificial Intelligence Engineer

2021 - 2022

Adore Me

Developed and deployed the company's first data-driven recommender system that is currently in production and makes around 15–20% of recommendations for operations worth around $120 million per year in revenue.
Created an aspect-based sentiment analysis algorithm to gather product preferences directly from clients' wishes and automatically integrate them into the recommender system.
Built a BI app on top of the aspect-based sentiment analysis algorithm to help product owners prioritize work by letting them mine and analyze submitted forms from clients, substantially changing the focus of two teams.
Developed a similarity and clustering color algorithm to find complementary products and comparable items when predicting the performance of to-be-launched garments.
Built a Google Calendar data analytics pipe to compute and monitor time spent in team meetings to identify harmful patterns and potential burnout for a few colleagues.

Technologies: Python, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Jupyter, Research, FastAPI, REST APIs, Prefect, REST, APIs, Docker, Recommendation Systems, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Containerization, NoSQL, Distributed Systems, Async/Await, Requirements Analysis, System Architecture, Architecture, API Integration, CI/CD Pipelines, Pandas, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Relational Databases, Asyncio, NumPy, User Interface (UI), Serverless, Software Architecture, Linux, SQL, Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, Data Visualization, Statistical Learning, Bash, Zsh, Streamlit, PyTorch, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), GPT, Databases, Git, RabbitMQ, Data Processing, Web Frameworks, Scripting, Data Analysis, Jupyter Notebook, R, OpenCV, DSP, Image Processing, ETL, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Back-end Architecture, Data Analytics, GitHub, Fortran, BigQuery, Kubernetes, Elasticsearch, API Architecture, Apache Airflow, Pytest, PDF Scraping, Data Scraping, JavaScript, Data Pipelines, GraphQL, Cloud Infrastructure, Algorithms, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Optimization Algorithms, React

Graduate Teaching Assistant

2020 - 2021

University of Bucharest

Taught "Formal Languages & Automata Theory" to over 100 undergraduate students, of which 20 were a special group of competitive programmers.
Organized and held laboratories where students learned to implement different domain-specific algorithms.
Automated home projects and grading using GitHub Classroom and Python scripts.

Technologies: Algorithms, University Teaching, Training, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Python, Pytest, JavaScript, Java, Optimization Algorithms

Full-stack Developer

2020 - 2021

Adore Me

Built an influencer marketing platform to allow the company to spend an extra $9 million per year on marketing without increasing the customer acquisition cost.
Developed a data scraping app to gather prospects to integrate and automate Instagram messaging in the app before any API support, which helped the company reach 100,000 prospects in one year.
Handled feature development, database modifications, bug fixing, code reviews, deployment, CI/CD with GitHub Actions, and server management while creating and solving tickets on Notion and Jira.

Technologies: JavaScript, Python, PHP, SQL, NGINX, Web Development, Databases, Bots, Scraping, Web Scraping, Stripe, Sentry, Vue, Laravel, Flask, APIs, CSS, HTML, Docker, MySQL, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Containerization, Async/Await, Requirements Analysis, Full-stack, API Integration, Selenium, REST APIs, Jira, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Relational Databases, Software Architecture, Linux, Networking, Operating Systems, Bash, Zsh, Shell, Prototyping, REST, Git, Web Frameworks, Facebook API, Celery, Redis, Scripting, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Beautiful Soup, OAuth, Back-end, Back-end Architecture, GitHub, Terraform, Elasticsearch, API Architecture, RESTful Web Services, Data Scraping, Optimization Algorithms, React

Software Developer

2018 - 2018

Housatonic

Developed a project management app compatible with Microsoft Project.
Maintained the project, fixed bugs, and refactored old code.
Communicated directly with clients, offered them support via email, collected reported bugs, and created tickets that the team and I would solve later.

Technologies: C#, Xamarin, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), API Integration, SQL, Git, OAuth, Back-end, GitHub, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, .NET

Experience

Parse Bank Statements

https://github.com/ouatu-ro/parse-bank-statement

Many Romanian banks currently do not export data in a friendly format, so parsing PDF bank statements is required. The project was about a simple script parsing bank statements for Raiffeisen and Alpha Bank. Every financial department can use it for easier auditing transactions made on company credit cards, saving 25 hours a year of error-prone work. I also use it to track my expenses.

Python Dependency Scripts

https://github.com/ouatu-ro/python-dep-scripts

This project provides terminal commands to facilitate some of the most challenging problems in the Python ecosystem, including Python version management, virtual environments, and dependencies. It ties together two other tools, pyenv, and Poetry. For more details, the README file in the GitHub repository reads as a tutorial and an article.

COVID-19 Data Visualization

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant loss of human life worldwide and taught us essential lessons to protect ourselves and others by staying informed. This project aims to provide the data regarding vaccination, variants, and notification rate to be easily seen and understood. The demo app offers many options, such as comparing data from multiple countries, selecting preferred plots for data visualization, and displaying the official PDFs from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control webpage containing a data description.

Eletron Voice Cloning

A state-of-the-art (with regard to how natural the voice sounds) text-to-speech synthesis application for the Romanian language that can clone women's voices with less than one hour of speech. The cloned voice achieves a 4.47 +-.15 out of 5 naturalness score as measured by a medium human opinion score on the Likert scale compared to real voices' 4.80+-.14.

A direct comparison was made to the previous SotA and Google Translate Romanian voice. Over 90% of subjects find Eletron to have a more natural voice, and 100% of subjects find it more natural than Google Translate voice.

I made Eletron for my undergrad thesis. It is based on the Tacotron model and trained using GCP resources and the SWARA dataset.

Predicting FAANG Stocks

Developed a multitude of strategies for predicting FAANG stocks for a period of five days. The strategies were data-driven and back-tested against historical data. This project won the Quant Challenge competition and was held by the London Stock Exchange Group.

Skills

Languages

JavaScript, Python, PHP, SQL, Bash, C#, CSS, HTML, C++, Go, GraphQL, Java, Python 3, R, Fortran, Ruby

Frameworks

Streamlit, Laravel, Flask, Web Frameworks, Appium, Django, Selenium, Scrapy, .NET, Next.js, Django REST Framework

Libraries/APIs

PyTorch, REST APIs, Pandas, OpenCV, SQLAlchemy, Stripe, Vue, Asyncio, NumPy, TensorFlow, Facebook API, Google Speech API, Beautiful Soup, React, Spotify API

Tools

Jupyter, Git, GitHub, BigQuery, Pytest, NGINX, Zsh, Shell, Sentry, Apache Airflow, Jira, RabbitMQ, Celery, Terraform

Paradigms

Data Science, REST, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Requirements Analysis, ETL, Back-end Architecture, API Architecture, DevOps

Platforms

Jupyter Notebook, Linux, MacOS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Visual Studio Code (VS Code), MetaTrader 4, Docker, Twitter, MetaTrader, MetaTrader 5, Xamarin, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Kubernetes, Azure

Storage

MySQL, Relational Databases, Data Pipelines, Databases, PostgreSQL, NoSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch

Other

Research, Machine Learning, Recommendation Systems, Graphs, Data Visualization, Text to Speech (TTS), Voice Cloning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Web Development, Scraping, Web Scraping, FastAPI, APIs, Async/Await, Full-stack, API Integration, Neural Networks, Data Processing, Scripting, Data Analysis, Algorithms, IT Consulting, Speech Recognition, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Back-end, Data Analytics, PDF Scraping, RESTful Web Services, Data Scraping, GPT, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Optimization Algorithms, PDF, Networking, Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Operating Systems, GPU Computing, Statistical Learning, Prototyping, Bots, Prefect, Containerization, Distributed Systems, System Architecture, Architecture, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, Backtesting Trading Strategies, Trading, Technical Writing, DSP, Image Processing, Leadership, OAuth, Forex, Arbitrage, Statistical Analysis, Forex Trading, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), UX Prototyping, CI/CD Pipelines, User Interface (UI), Serverless, Stock Analysis, Algorithmic Trading, University Teaching, Training, Learning Management Systems (LMS), OpenAI API, Cloud Infrastructure

Education

2020 - 2022

Master's Degree in Artificial Intelligence

The University of Bucharest - Bucharest, Romania

2016 - 2019

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

The Alexandru Ioan Cuza University - Iasi, Romania

Certifications

FEBRUARY 2020 - PRESENT

Neural Networks and Deep Learning

Coursera

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