Michael Perju
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since July 29, 2021
Michael has a degree in AI with a strong background in algorithms and data structures. He was a researcher at the Royal Holloway University of London, delivered a paper titled "Disentangled Representation Learning," and led projects for clients such as Bosch, the Mayor of London, and GLAs Greater London Authorities. He has worked with professors from universities such as UCL and Pittsburgh for UK, EU, US, and African cities on projects from data science, to government, Healthtech, and IoT.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Linux, Docker, Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Kubernetes, Terraform, JavaScript, Go, Node.js, React, Architecture, Microservices, APIs, Web Services, Back-end, GitHub, React Native, PIP
The most amazing...
...platform builds I led were for clients such as the Mayor of London, Washington, New York, and other eight cities across the EU, US, and Africa.
Work Experience
Back-end Engineer
Condukt Ltd
- Refactored a legacy front end with React in two weeks, which was used for the Tide bank demo (Tide.co).
- Delivered a webhooks feature in two weeks, which was an essential business requirement, and helped onboard new clients.
- Integrated monitoring and alerts with New Relic, Metabase, and BigQuery.
- Redesigned Cloud Build CI/CD pipelines for atomic, predictable deployments.
Full-stack Developer
THIS ONE LIMITED
- Helped build the startup from scratch in a record three months, both on the front and back end.
- Reduced a Google Cloud Run service to 512 MB of memory instead of eight GB, reducing the projected monthly cost from $600 to $10.
- Reduced the latency from two seconds to 0.3 seconds, imperceptible to the human eye.
Software Engineer
Kryptomon
- Worked on all layers of the product using React, Node.js back end, containerization with Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and Kubernetes deployments for the product used by 1000+ people weekly.
- Managed a team of five people, front-end, back-end, and the QAs included in product feature delivery. Maintained the Jira workspace, planning, daily catch-ups and.
- Implemented company-wide CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation with Terraform, security protocols (credentials, keys storage, TLS), data collection with Segment.io, and metrics/alerts with tools like New Relic.
Go Developer
The Daily Wire
- Developed and improved Go services for scalability purposes, making them capable of handling 60,000 requests at a time.
- Maintained existing Go codebase with a 3+ million users database.
- Worked around a suite of technologies within the entire system architecture: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Shopify, Stripe, sockets, and AWS.
Full-stack Software Engineer
Moneyhub Financial Technology Ltd
- Implemented tools to showcase the financial capabilities of the app for the sales team, which requires a deep understanding of the platform, tools, technologies, and work across all the codebase.
- Implemented live preview systems, contributing to better UX and adding technical improvements to the notifications.
- Contributed to new customization features to accommodate clients' needs without complicating the codebase or branching the product development.
Head of Technology
Tech City Ventures
- Led the development of projects for clients such as Bosch, CPC Connected Places Catapult, the Mayor of London, and GLAs Greater London Authorities across all 13 London boroughs and for cities like Washington, New York, Berlin, Nairobi, and Johannesburg.
- Developed modular solutions for technology ecosystem platforms such as https://tech.london in the US/EU area, making the product easily internationally scalable within days.
- Adopted efficient technical decisions and communicated with clients on a technical level, alongside the company management team.
- Grew the team, hired new members, conducted technical interviews, evaluated the cultural fit, and delegated tasks, as well as training on a variety of technology solutions such as JavaScript, Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Conducted research alongside two university professors and AI experts for a data science product. Developed a robust infrastructure and architecture for the product to be pitched to government officials and junior data scientists.
Undegraduate Researcher
Royal Holloway University of London
- Delivered a research paper titled "Disentangled Representation Learning." (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18rSndK8WJP4bL89ljXtP3_EkUds-x8RN6tFLRSZ5kxo).
- Researched representation learning using autoencoders and variational autoencoders. The course prerequisites were familiarity with neural networks, convolutional neural networks, calculus.
- Achieved the disentanglement by using the latest research on variational autoencoders by Ilyes Khemakhem, Diederik P. Kingma, Ricardo Pio Monti, and Aapo Hyvärinen. (https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04809).
Software Engineer
Bytex
- Engaged corporate clients such as CISCO, VMware, and a startup from Portugal, mostly on front-end development.
- Led the development of a BI tool for Professional Medical Services https://p-m-s.com in the US to help them track and recover money from insurance companies and automate cumbersome bureaucratic and manual processes.
- Developed the core "commit" system, similar to how Git works, ensuring rigorous automated testing and maintenance, as well as CI/CD.
- Led code reviews and managed a team of five great, outsourced engineers and reported directly to the executive director of operations.
Experience
House Price Prediction San Francisco
The work included data preprocessing, using the data to train a linear regressor in Scikit-learn, and designing a system architecture to host a basic HTML front end, Flask Back end, and a worker service to process and return the data.
Undergraduate Research | Disentangled Representation Learning
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18rSndK8WJP4bL89ljXtP3_EkUds-x8RN6tFLRSZ5kxo/edit?usp=sharingWe succeeded in achieving the disentanglement by using the latest research on Variational Autoencoders by Ilyes Khemakhem, Diederik P. Kingma, Ricardo Pio Monti, and Aapo Hyvärinen: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04809.
Tech London
https://tech.londonUrban Links Africa
Energy Launchpad
https://energylaunchpad.com/Thirty3
11 Go Projects
https://github.com/MihaiPerju/go/tree/master/projectsWork includes serverless architecture (AWS Lambda, API Gateways), Wit.ai, Wolfram, Go Fiber, MongoDB, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Slack bots, DNS tools, and channels.
Company Information Solution – UK, France, Germany, Italy
https://demo.condukt.coEducation
Master's Degree in Artificial Intelligence
University of Leeds - London, England
Bachelor's Degree in Artificial Intelligence
Royal Holloway, University of London - London, England
Certifications
CISCO CCNA
CISCO
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, React, API Development, REST APIs, Stripe, Amazon EC2 API, Pandas, Google Maps, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Socket.IO, Puppeteer, NumPy, Pygame, Scikit-learn, Keras, Wit.ai, Twilio API, SQLAlchemy, Google Maps SDK, Shopify API
Tools
GitLab CI/CD, Git, GitHub, Docker Compose, NGINX, Figma, Amazon EKS, Terraform, Kibana, Istio, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Apache, MetaMask, BigQuery
Languages
Python, JavaScript, Go, ECMAScript (ES6), TypeScript, HTML, HTML5, SQL, C++, GraphQL, Wolfram, C, CSS, Rust
Frameworks
Redux, Express.js, Material UI, Jest, Flask, Next.js, Django, React Native
Paradigms
REST, Test-driven Development (TDD), Microservices, Unit Testing, API Architecture, DevOps, API/Services Architecture, Microservices Architecture, Testing
Platforms
Docker, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Linux, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Apache Kafka, Firebase, Mapbox, Blockchain
Storage
PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Databases, NoSQL, MySQL, RDBMS, Redis, Relational Databases, Amazon DynamoDB, Google Cloud
Other
Architecture, Back-end, Full-stack, MERN Stack, Software Engineering, Software Architecture, Back-end Development, Product Development, API Integration, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Algorithms, Data Structures, Machine Learning, APIs, CI/CD Pipelines, Web Services, Distributed Systems, Data Science, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), Web Security, Serverless, Cloudflare, Containers, Technical Leadership, Team Leadership, Internet of Things (IoT), Conda, PIP, eCommerce, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Operating Systems, Information Security, Computer Vision, Linear Algebra, Calculus, Variational Autoencoders, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Networks, IP Networks, DNS, Data Reporting, Fintech, Animated Prototypes, Finance, Data Engineering, Service Meshes, Encryption, Cryptography, Networking, CTO, Mapbox SDK, API Gateways, AWS Cloud Architecture, Web Servers, OpenAI, Robotics, Data Mining, Metabase, Rideshare Services
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