Open to opportunities

Amir Salazar

@amirsalazar

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Senior Machine Learning Engineer specializing in AI and data-driven solutions.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I am looking for a role that fosters innovation, encourages collaboration, and offers opportunities for professional growth in machine learning and AI.

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at UberAI, I lead innovative GenAI initiatives that integrate cutting-edge technologies like LLaMA-2 and LangChain. My work focuses on enhancing user experience through contextual destination suggestions and optimizing model performance to ensure millisecond-level latency across production endpoints.

Previously, at Amazon, I developed image-based product similarity models and engineered facial recognition systems, significantly improving operational efficiency and user verification processes. My expertise spans across various domains, including computer vision, natural language processing, and MLOps, allowing me to create scalable solutions that drive business impact.

With a Master's Degree in Mathematics from the University of Florida, I possess a strong analytical foundation that complements my technical skills. I am passionate about leveraging machine learning to solve complex problems and continuously seek opportunities to innovate and improve processes.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Current

Uber

Aug 2021 - Present (3 years 10 months)

Led GenAI initiatives integrating retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) using LLaMA-2 and LangChain with Qdrant for vector search, powering contextual destination suggestions on the Uber home screen. Designed prompt evaluation workflows using LangSmith and OpenAI Evals to track LLM drift and prompt consistency in production settings.

LLaMA 2 Lang Chain Qdrant Langsmith OpenAI Evals fastAPI Redis PostgreSQL Triton Inference Server Runpod Docker Ansible RunPod

Machine Learning Engineer II - Maps

Uber

Aug 2021 - Present (3 years 10 months)

Created a scalable model packaging system with Docker and Flask for ML inference on edge devices used by field survey teams, improving field coverage automation. Built image segmentation pipelines for high-res map stitching using OpenCV and KMeans clustering, reducing human QA workload on manual mapping corrections.

Docker Flask OpenCV KMeans Clustering MLFlow AWS Lambda API Gateway fastAPI Pydantic

Machine Learning Engineer II

Amazon

Oct 2017 - Present (7 years 8 months)

Built an image-based product similarity model using Siamese Networks and contrastive loss, powering visual search across fashion and home décor verticals. Engineered facial recognition modules using MTCNN and ArcFace to verify identity in delivery locker check-in flows, reducing false-positives by 21%.

Siamese Networks MTCNN ArcFace fastAPI Qdrant Pytorch Lightning Docker Flask ALB AWS Lambda DistilBERT

Machine Learning Engineer I

Amazon

Oct 2017 - Present (7 years 8 months)

Designed and trained object detection pipelines using YOLOv3 and RetinaNet to count inventory units from warehouse camera feeds, reducing manual audits. Created a document OCR system using Tesseract + CRNN to digitize supplier invoices and packing slips at scale, improving data entry throughput by 60%.

YOLOv3 RetinaNet Tesseract Flask Gunicorn Docker ECS NLTK SpaCy CVAT Django REST Framework

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

University of Florida

Master's Degree, Mathematics

Completed a comprehensive curriculum in Mathematics, focusing on advanced topics and research methodologies. Gained a strong foundation in quantitative analysis and problem-solving.