Ashish Gautam

Huntsville ·

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Experience · since 2019

Experience

Research Engineer (ML & Backend) at NASA IMPACT. Before that, ML and backend engineering at Houzz, Event Horizon Partners and Diagonal Software.

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01 · Relay line · 2019 — now

One handover at a time.

Stations sit on the rail at their real start dates. Each handover shows the gap between roles; each station shows the role, where I worked from, and the project I owned.

  1. Station 01

    Diagonal Software

    MAR 2019 — MAY 2021

    Software Engineer (Full-Stack Development)
    Hessen, Germany · remote

    Project

    ListInfo

    highlights
    • Led the backend development of the ListInfo hotel booking platform using Python, Django, and Django REST Framework, architecting RESTful APIs that served 100K+ daily requests.
    • Deployed and managed the full application stack on AWS using EC2, ALB, ELB, and ECR for containerized deployments, achieving 99% uptime.
    • Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines for automated testing, building, and deploying Docker containers to AWS ECS, reducing release cycles by 50%.
    • Optimized PostgreSQL database performance through query tuning, indexing strategies, and connection pooling, resulting in a 40% reduction in average query execution time.
    About Diagonal Software 

  2. Handover · NO GAP

    Station 02

    Event Horizon Partners

    MAY 2021 — FEB 2023

    Software Engineer (ML & Backend)
    Seattle, WA · remote

    Project

    Trading Platform

    highlights
    • Developed a quantitative analytical trading platform while strictly adhering to Agile methodologies, ensuring timely and high-quality deliverables.
    • Integrated Python with Django and the Django REST Framework for reliable backend services, managing SQL databases and emphasizing cross-functional collaboration.
    • Built responsive, intuitive interfaces using React.js on the frontend, integrating Plotly.js for data visualization and Context APIs for robust state management.
    • Streamlined platform releases by implementing Git version control and CI/CD pipelines to enable smooth deployments to AWS, including Lambda functions for event-driven processes.
    • Implemented comprehensive observability using Prometheus + Grafana for metrics, Loki + Grafana for log aggregation, and AWS CloudWatch for infrastructure monitoring across the entire trading platform.
    • Utilized Django, React.js, Plotly, and scikit-learn to enhance platform functionality, resulting in improved data processing and visualization capabilities.
    About Event Horizon Partners 

  3. Handover · 2-MONTH GAP

    Station 03

    Houzz

    APR 2023 — JUL 2024

    Software Engineer (ML & Backend)
    Palo Alto, CA · remote

    Project

    Houzz Moodboard

    highlights
    • Boosted website performance by 20% by leading the migration of a legacy PHP-based system to a modern Python/Django backend with Server-Side Rendered (SSR) architecture, reducing API response times by 35%.
    • Developed an automated background removal pipeline for importing product images from external sources, leveraging OpenCV and deep learning models (U-Net) to process 5,000+ images daily with 95% accuracy.
    • Architected and managed heavy AWS infrastructure including EC2, ECS, S3, RDS (PostgreSQL), and CloudFront, ensuring 99.9% uptime across production services.
    • Implemented automated CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins with blue-green deployment strategies, reducing deployment downtime by 90% and enabling zero-downtime releases.
    • Configured KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling) for dynamic workload scaling, reducing infrastructure costs by 25% during off-peak hours.
    • Managed infrastructure as code using Ansible and Terraform, provisioning and maintaining Amazon RDS instances, load balancers, and auto-scaling groups across multiple environments.
    About Houzz 

  4. Handover · 1-MONTH GAP

    Station 04

    NASA IMPACT

    AUG 2024 — NOW

    Research Engineer (AI & Backend)
    Huntsville, AL · part-time

    Project

    Data Acquisition Request System

    highlights
    • Drove a 30% increase in data delivery speed to clients through the implementation of the new Tasking Management System, significantly improving data ingestion and request handling for the NASA CSDA program.
    • Initiated and built an agent-based data search project leveraging LLMs with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using LangChain and LangGraph, enabling users to intelligently search and retrieve specific data from a massive STAC metadata catalog.
    • Developed a RAG-based automatic metadata file generator for the CSDA program, utilizing local LLM models with Weaviate and ChromaDB as vector databases and maintaining a knowledge graph for NASA Spatiotemporal Asset Catalog compliance.
    • Managed scalable infrastructure across AWS (S3, EC2, RDS, Lambda, Step Functions) to ensure a robust and highly available system using technologies including Next.js and FastAPI.
    • Implemented data ingestion pipelines for new vendors, including Satellogic and Maxar DEM, within the CSDA system.
    • Developed and pioneered the new NASA CSDA tasking management system, utilizing a Django/Airflow backend and a React and TypeScript frontend to manage commercial satellite data requests and ingestion.
    About NASA IMPACT 

02 · Tech river · What carried forward

Company to company, in the tools I shipped with.

Time runs left to right. Each band is a tool I used in production at that company, drawn from my role bullets. Read across to see what carried forward; read down to see a company’s whole stack.

Diagonal SoftwareMAR 19 — MAY 21

Software Engineer (Full-Stack Development)

Project ListInfo

  • Led the backend development of the ListInfo hotel booking platform using Python, Django, and Django REST Framework, architecting RESTful APIs that served 100K+ daily requests.
  • Deployed and managed the full application stack on AWS using EC2, ALB, ELB, and ECR for containerized deployments, achieving 99% uptime.
  • Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines for automated testing, building, and deploying Docker containers to AWS ECS, reducing release cycles by 50%.

Event Horizon PartnersMAY 21 — FEB 23

Software Engineer (ML & Backend)

Project Trading Platform

  • Developed a quantitative analytical trading platform while strictly adhering to Agile methodologies, ensuring timely and high-quality deliverables.
  • Integrated Python with Django and the Django REST Framework for reliable backend services, managing SQL databases and emphasizing cross-functional collaboration.
  • Built responsive, intuitive interfaces using React.js on the frontend, integrating Plotly.js for data visualization and Context APIs for robust state management.

HouzzAPR 23 — JUL 24

Software Engineer (ML & Backend)

Project Houzz Moodboard

  • Boosted website performance by 20% by leading the migration of a legacy PHP-based system to a modern Python/Django backend with Server-Side Rendered (SSR) architecture, reducing API response times by 35%.
  • Developed an automated background removal pipeline for importing product images from external sources, leveraging OpenCV and deep learning models (U-Net) to process 5,000+ images daily with 95% accuracy.
  • Architected and managed heavy AWS infrastructure including EC2, ECS, S3, RDS (PostgreSQL), and CloudFront, ensuring 99.9% uptime across production services.

NASA IMPACTAUG 24 — NOW

Research Engineer (AI & Backend)

Project Data Acquisition Request System

  • Drove a 30% increase in data delivery speed to clients through the implementation of the new Tasking Management System, significantly improving data ingestion and request handling for the NASA CSDA program.
  • Initiated and built an agent-based data search project leveraging LLMs with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using LangChain and LangGraph, enabling users to intelligently search and retrieve specific data from a massive STAC metadata catalog.
  • Developed a RAG-based automatic metadata file generator for the CSDA program, utilizing local LLM models with Weaviate and ChromaDB as vector databases and maintaining a knowledge graph for NASA Spatiotemporal Asset Catalog compliance.

  • Read across

    Python and AWS run through every role.

    The same foundation since 2019, from booking APIs to NASA data systems.

  • Read the turn

    LLMs, RAG and Earth data arrive at NASA IMPACT.

    The newest four bands all start in August 2024.

  • Read down

    Houzz was the infrastructure years.

    Kubernetes autoscaling, Terraform and blue-green CI/CD all sit in one column.

Education

  • Aug 2024 — May 2026

    Master of Science, Computer Science

    University of Alabama in Huntsville

    Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, Advanced Operating Systems, Data Structures & Algorithms, Big Data

  • Mar 2015 — Mar 2019

    Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics & Communications

    Institute Of Engineering, Pulchowk Campus

    Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Technology, Object-Oriented Programming, Digital Signal Processing

Publications

  • 2026 · M.S. Thesis

    Mitigating Reconstruction Loss in Neural Compression for Remote Sensing Downstream Tasks Using Weight-Decomposed Low-Rank Adaptation

    Applied DoRA adapters to a neural codec's synthesis transform, no retraining, no bitstream change, via label-free distillation from a segmentation teacher, improving downstream consistency mIoU from 0.643 to 0.723 (+8.04 pp) at unchanged PSNR/MS-SSIM, outperforming JPEG, JPEG 2000, and WebP at low bitrates.

    Read

  • 2020 · arXiv

    Comparative Analysis of Multiple Deep CNN Models for Waste Classification

    Benchmarked deep CNN architectures for automated waste sorting on TrashNet plus a self-collected dataset; fine-tuned ResNet-18 to 87.8% validation accuracy and deployed it in a smart dustbin prototype that physically segregates waste.

    Read

Strengths

Languages & Frameworks

  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript

AI/ML & GenAI

  • PyTorch
  • TensorFlow
  • scikit-learn

Vector & Graph Databases

  • Weaviate
  • ChromaDB
  • pgvector

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda)
  • SageMaker

MLOps & DevOps

  • Terraform
  • Ansible

Data & Observability

  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
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