

Joao Diogo de Oliveira
Verified Expert in Engineering
Machine Learning Engineer and Developer
Fortaleza - State of Ceará, Brazil
Toptal member since October 20, 2022
Joao is an AI/ML architect and hands-on AI coach with 15+ years driving change across Fortune 100s (P&G, Hearst) and high-impact startups in healthcare, energy, and media. He holds a master's in computer engineering with multiple ML certifications. He's led 15+ GenAI automations and coached diverse engineering teams—from developers to senior architects—on integrating AI tools and agents across the SDLC, shipping systems that transform how teams work.
Portfolio
Experience
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 8 years
- Machine Learning - 7 years
- Data Analytics - 6 years
- Computer Vision - 6 years
- PyTorch - 4 years
- Deep Learning - 4 years
- Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) - 3 years
- AI Agents - 3 years
Preferred Environment
PyTorch, Machine Learning, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Computer Vision, Deep Learning, Data Analysis, Agentic AI, AI Architecture
The most amazing...
...thing was building 3D AI models, architecting voice AI agents for smart glasses, and leading 15+ GenAI automations at a Fortune 100, from zero to production.
Work Experience
AI Engineering Lead
Hearst - Technology
- Grew from a single AI project to technical lead of a 10+ project portfolio across 7+ Hearst companies over 2.5 years, coaching diverse engineering teams—from developers to architects—on transforming workflows with AI tools and agents.
- Achieved 93% accuracy in translating human language requests about financial data into complex SQL BigQuery queries, enabling users without SQL knowledge to access financial data such as loans and bonds.
- Designed and delivered multiple Hearst automation projects—using AI Agents, RPAs, scripts, etc. that transformed manual operational workflows into end-to-end automation.
- Replaced a 10+-year legacy healthcare system with a GenAI MVP in 3-4 weeks and replicated text-to-SQL (93% accuracy) across four companies, establishing reusable evaluation and deployment patterns adopted enterprise-wide.
- Leveraged GenAI to extract features and analyze 1+ million archaeological images, significantly restoring and preserving past knowledge in a cost-efficient manner.
AI Solutions Architect
RealWear - Main
- Architected a multi-agent voice AI back end (LangGraph and Pipecat) that evolved a beta LLM prototype into a production-ready platform for industrial smart glasses.
- Designed and shipped MCP integration with OAuth 2.1 and Auth0 Token Vault, enabling secure hands-free access to Email, Teams, and Calendar on wearable devices.
- Implemented end-to-end observability (Langfuse, OpenTelemetry, Azure Insights) covering traces, token costs, and audio diagnostics, improving debugging speed and release confidence.
- Ran startup-performance experiments optimizing cold/warm boot latency for STT/TTS init, memory store, and skill loading across cloud and edge.
AI Technical Lead
Vasilis K. Pozios, M.D.
- Enabled forensic psychiatrists to ingest thousands of pages of records, auto-extract and de-identify PHI, and generate structured forensic reports in a fraction of the manual time.
- Led the full product delivery of a forensic psychiatry SaaS from zero to production, coordinating front-end, back-end, and AWS infrastructure into a unified release cadence.
- Delivered HIPAA-aligned PHI masking and de-identification, enabling safe processing of sensitive medical and criminal records across a multi-tenant platform.
- Built an interview transcription pipeline with hierarchical summarization and adaptive rate limiting for forensic psychiatric evaluations.
AI Facilitator & Internal Consultant
Toptal
- Designed and facilitated hands-on technical workshops — including a 3-day LLM coaching sprint for 100+ engineers — combining live labs with applied exercises to build practitioner-level fluency.
- Designed and facilitated a 2-day hands-on AI-assisted coding workshop for FranklinCovey, building live demos and labs covering IDE assistants, prompt patterns, and AI code review — with adoption metrics targeting 20–30% faster iteration.
- Facilitated advanced sessions on Quantum Computing and Reinforcement Learning, adapting content and pacing to mixed-proficiency audiences of experienced engineers.
- Provided vision and strategic guidance for internal AI projects, including infrastructure, techniques, and models to achieve project goals.
Machine Learning Developer (via Toptal)
EIS - Main
- Conducted a feasibility study and implemented a POC for capturing, counting, and geo-locating valves in oil and gas plant scans.
- Developed an AI model to identify valves in image batches from plant scans, improving detection accuracy and efficiency.
- Implemented a method to automatically process and slice cloud point data, extracting images and transforming them into 2D representations.
- Labeled 3D data to train deep learning models for 3D segmentation, successfully applying models such as PointNet and PointNet++ to real data.
- Developed an inference pipeline to label unseen data and output labeled point clouds, enhancing data processing capabilities.
AI Developer (via Toptal)
Peyton & Greyson Solutions Inc,
- Developed an AI application for automatic proposal writing, saving 20% of a specialized employee's time and increasing efficiency.
- Architected the entire IT solution, encompassing database selection, AWS serverless services, a web app back end, API configuration, and AI model deployment.
- Tracked team development, ensuring milestones were met and successfully delivering from demos to critical project deliverables.
IT Engineer | Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Freelance Clients
- Developed an AI project for energy prediction of solar and wind farms, totaling 2.6 GW of installed power, optimizing energy output and management.
- Built a computer vision model for face recognition, enhancing security and identification processes.
- Created a computer vision model to assist in pneumonia detection through X-rays, improving diagnostic accuracy.
- Provided consulting services for wind certification of two offshore projects, predicting a combined installed power of 2GW.
- Managed and maintained over 20 distributed Linux servers, ensuring their security, updating, and creating key performance indicators (KPIs) for performance tracking.
Product Owner | Country Manager
Prewind
- Developed AI models for deep learning, weather forecasting, and energy prediction across multiple markets, enhancing predictive capabilities.
- Conducted comprehensive business and data analytics for customers, providing actionable insights.
- Established a European institute in Brazil successfully, expanding the organization's reach and impact.
- Managed a portfolio of clients with a combined energy production of 3+ GW, optimizing energy management and client satisfaction.
Team Leader
Stop the Traffik
- Analyzed key tech issues in a volunteer organization and developed a plan to address them, leading a team of 11 volunteers across nine countries.
- Led a team of ML/AI specialists to develop an AI model for sentiment analysis, automating the classification of trafficking articles and eliminating manual labor.
- Guided a team of ML/AI specialists to enhance a legacy model, improving the classification of articles into relevant and non-relevant categories.
- Steered through meetings the project success and engagement to deliver the proposed outcomes to the organization. Participated in all parts of development (AI, DevOps, Python) to make sure that commitments were met and delivered.
NLP Engineer (via Toptal)
Mercatus Center at George Mason University - Main
- Developed a text classification model for documents within 96 labels, using various NLP techniques for NAICS code probabilities.
- Explored and combined advanced text classification techniques, improving F1 score by 15%.
- Used Amazon SageMaker to provide an effective and insightful training and inference pipeline.
- Achieved F1 scores in some categories up to 0.95 and 0.98 (from 0 – 1) in others using different techniques, which increased from 0.4 to 0.7.
Managing Director
Niway Group
- Managed daily investment operations, including a shopping mall and business towers, and represented the group before government bodies.
- Reversed a seven-year financial loss into profit through significant operational changes.
- Oversaw the financial management of constructing three 12-floor towers, with a total cost of R$43 million.
Engineering Manager
Procter & Gamble
- Implemented multiple line update projects across plants in France, Italy, and Spain, enhancing operational efficiency.
- Developed and deployed cost-saving solutions across multiple factories, resulting in significant savings.
- Led technical discussions with suppliers to ensure compliance with project requirements and specifications.
Supply Chain Leader
Procter & Gamble
- Led the design and implementation of a global pilot project to remodel the company's logistics sector, improving efficiency and reducing costs.
- Addressed inventory cost issues, achieving a reduction from $12 million to $7 million.
- Created a cross-docking supply chain prototype, resulting in annual savings of $2 million.
- Coached and guided team members, ensuring coordinated efforts and successful project outcomes.
Experience
CV: X-ray Pneumonia Detection
https://github.com/joao-d-oliveira/X-Ray_PneumoniaDetectionPower Generation Forecast for Wind and Solar Farms
http://www.ren.ptSurgery Assistance Software
NLP in Healthcare | Score Clinical Patient Notes
https://www.kaggle.com/c/nbme-score-clinical-patient-notesCV: Image Captioning | Identifying Objects and Writing Caption
Computer Vision | Face Detection
Email NLP/NLU/NER Analysis
Education
Master's Degree in Computer Science
University of Porto - Porto, Portugal
Exchange Program Coursework Toward Master's Degree in Computer Science
Delft University of Technology - Delft, Netherlands
Certifications
Quantum Excellence Certificate
IBM | Qiskit Global Summer School 2022
AI for Healthcare
Udacity
Machine Learning
Stanford University
Deep Reinforcement Learning
Udacity
Advanced Computer Vision - Machine Learning
Udacity
Skills
Libraries/APIs
PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, Pandas, LSTM, Matplotlib, Keras, Pydantic, OpenCV, PyTorch Lightning, FFmpeg
Tools
You Only Look Once (YOLO), ARIMA, GitHub, Amazon SageMaker, Claude Code, SARIMA, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, NLPP, Oracle Demantra, Microsoft Copilot
Languages
Python 3, SQL, Python, R, Python 2, C++
Platforms
Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Jupyter Notebook, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, Docker, Backendless, AWS Lambda, IBM Cloud Platform
Storage
Data Pipelines, PostgreSQL, MySQL
Industry Expertise
System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
Paradigms
Agile, DevOps, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Anomaly Detection
Frameworks
LangGraph
Other
Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Structures, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Algorithms, Team Leadership, Project Design & Management, Computer Vision, BERT, Natural Language Processing (NLP), APIs, Data Science, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), Datasets, Language Models, OpenAI, Image Processing, Large Language Models (LLMs), Models, AI Programming, Data Processing Automation, Real Estate, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Supply Chain Optimization, Forecasting, Information Extraction, Energy, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Neural Networks, Regression Modeling, Data Processing, Data Transformation, CSV, Data Analysis, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Back-end, Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), OpenAI GPT-4 API, Workshop Facilitation, Analytics, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Sentiment Analysis, Point Clouds, Point Cloud Data, Gemini, AI Agents, Multimodal Models, Multimodal GenAI, Agentic AI, AI Architecture, AI Automation, Cursor AI, Gemini API, AI Tools, Architecture, AI-assisted Development, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Data Analytics, Finance, Process Management, Logistics, Statistics, Computer Vision Algorithms, Data Visualization, Big Data Architecture, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Hugging Face, Cloud Platforms, Early-stage Startups, Web Development, Word Embedding, OpenAI GPT-3 API, API Integration, Speech Recognition, Scraping, Facial Recognition, Image Recognition, Speech-to-Text (STT), AI Enablement, Quantum Computing, Healthcare IT, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Object Detection, Generative Models, AI Design, Amazon RDS, Image Generation, CTO, Transformers, IBM Cloud, Qiskit, AgentGPT, Speech to Intent, LangChain, Prompt Engineering, GitHub Copilot Chat, Cline, Google Antigravity
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring