Vetted Teaching Assistants in Pennsylvania

“Software engineer with ~2 years at UnitedHealth Group plus CMU coursework/TA experience, spanning backend modernization and cloud-native operations. Worked on migrating a customized open-source EDI system from Python 2 to Python 3 while improving SQLite database traceability via JSON exports, and has hands-on Kubernetes microservices deployment on Azure using Helm, HPA, and Jenkins-based Git-triggered CI/CD. Also built a large-scale real-time ride-hailing simulation using Kafka + Samza with explicit fault-tolerance strategies.”

“LLM/RAG engineer who built a production-style multi-agent orchestrator for resume-to-recommendation workflows (PDF ingestion through screening and recommendations), emphasizing prompt tuning and strict JSON output contracts. Currently building a RAG application for an NGO using Airflow (DAGs + embeddings) and tackling messy, missing/imbalanced data; has hands-on retrieval stack experience (FAISS/HNSW, bge embeddings) and uses rigorous evaluation metrics for groundedness and hallucination control.”

“CMU IoT coursework project builder who implemented an end-to-end TinyML gesture recognition system on a Particle Photon + ADXL345, streaming data via MQTT/Node-RED to a real-time Node.js frontend and deploying a quantized logistic regression model on-device. Also explored multi-drone coordination, implementing leader-follower offset control and a pivot/arc turning strategy to avoid collisions, and brings practical Docker/Kubernetes plus CI/CD workflow experience from internships.”

“Backend engineer with experience at UnitedHealth Group redesigning a high-traffic Spring Boot microservice from blocking to reactive architecture during peak season, cutting median latency by 47% for a service used by ~10M customers annually. Strong in Kubernetes-based deployment/scaling and pragmatic rollout strategies (blue-green/incremental traffic shifting) with performance and database troubleshooting.”

“Built ToolDreamer, a framework for selecting relevant tools for LLM agents by training a retriever on LLM-generated reasoning traces, and has hands-on experience building multi-agent systems in AutoGen (MAG-V) focused on question generation and tool-trajectory verification. Currently works as an AI-guides supervisor at Penn State, regularly communicating AI concepts to non-technical stakeholders.”