Philip Knapp
@philipknapp
Senior software engineer building scalable, AI-driven backend systems—LLMs, RAG, and production ML pipelines with measurable impact.
United StatesWhat I'm looking for
I’m a Senior Software Engineer with 12+ years of experience designing and building scalable, high-performance systems. I focus on AI-driven applications and backend architectures, especially LLM-powered solutions, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, and machine learning pipelines.
At MathWorks, I built an AI-driven document intelligence platform using Python, OpenAI APIs, and NLP to solve unstructured knowledge silos through chunking, embedding generation, and semantic retrieval. I designed a RAG system with vector embeddings, PostgreSQL, and FAISS, and I improved production reliability by addressing LLM hallucinations with prompt engineering, response validation layers, and deterministic fallback logic. I also integrated AI services into .NET Core microservices, deployed event-driven AI pipelines on AWS, and built a model evaluation framework to continuously improve accuracy.
Earlier, at VectorZero, I developed predictive modeling and real-time inference services using Python and scikit-learn, and I deployed workloads on Google Cloud Platform with separated training and inference pipelines. Before that, I built backend systems for high-frequency IoT data using Python (Django) and C#, then supported device synchronization and tracking with REST APIs and database query optimization.
Experience
Work history, roles, and key accomplishments
Built an AI-driven document intelligence platform using Python, OpenAI APIs, and NLP to enable semantic retrieval over large engineering documents. Designed a production RAG system with embeddings/FAISS and validation fallbacks, integrated into .NET Core microservices, and deployed event-driven AWS pipelines while mentoring engineers.
Software Engineer
VectorZero
Jul 2018 - Jan 2020 (1 year 6 months)
Developed predictive modeling and time-series data pipelines in Python using scikit-learn, Pandas, and NumPy. Built real-time Flask inference services, improved model generalization with cross-validation and tuning, and scaled training/inference on GCP with MongoDB and Redis.
Software Developer
XY – The Findables Company
Jan 2016 - Mar 2017 (1 year 2 months)
Built backend systems using Python (Django) to process high-frequency IoT device data, resolving ingestion bottlenecks with batch processing and queue-based architectures. Developed C# synchronization services with retry/state reconciliation for fault-tolerant communication and implemented optimized MySQL time-series schemas and REST APIs for real-time tracking.
Web Developer
Webble
Jun 2015 - Jan 2016 (7 months)
Developed responsive UI components using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery, resolving cross-browser compatibility issues. Built internal tools with the MERN stack and improved performance using optimized MySQL schemas, SQL, and stored procedures for dynamic content rendering.
Summer Intern
ThoughtSTEM
Jun 2014 - Sep 2014 (3 months)
Built basic frontend UI components using HTML and CSS and supported backend development with simple Node.js application logic. Wrote unit tests using JavaScript testing frameworks and debugged frontend/backend issues while learning software development best practices.
Education
Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework
University of California San Diego
Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Science
2014 - 2018
Earned a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science at UC San Diego from 2014 to 2018.
Tech stack
Software and tools used professionally
Availability
Location
United StatesAuthorized to work in
Job categories
Skills
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