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Chijioke Ugwuanyi - Machine Learning Engineer & Researcher at Carnegie Mellon University
Basics
| Name | Chijioke Ugwuanyi |
| Label | Machine Learning Engineer & Researcher |
| cugwuany@andrew.cmu.edu | |
| Url | https://github.com/xplorer1 |
| Summary | Senior software engineer and applied machine learning researcher with 7+ years building production systems across backend, data, and AI/ML. Currently pursuing M.Sc. in Information Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. Strong track record of end-to-end ownership, from design through implementation, testing, and deployment, in fast-paced environments. Experienced with distributed systems, data pipelines, AI agents, and building reliable platforms that deliver real customer impact. |
Work
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2024.05 - Present Senior Software Engineer
Diedev GmbH
- Led 4-engineer team to deliver major product upgrade that increased company revenue by 35% within six months through improved feature delivery and system performance
- Designed and deployed production API gateway in Rust handling 1,000+ RPS with sub-100ms p99 latency, implementing intelligent routing, rate limiting, and distributed tracing
- Modernized critical Python 2 services to Rust, reducing build times by 60% and deployment frequency from weekly to daily releases
- Built scalable backend services and data ingestion pipelines, taking end-to-end ownership from design through production rollout and monitoring
- Improved CI/CD pipelines and observability infrastructure, enabling faster iteration cycles and smoother cross-team collaboration
- Developed full-stack features using TypeScript and Python, contributing across backend APIs, data pipelines, and frontend interfaces
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2021.11 - 2024.07 Senior Software Engineer
Interswitch, Lagos, Nigeria
- Architected and built automated reconciliation system processing 100K+ daily transactions, reducing manual operations overhead by 25% and eliminating error-prone spreadsheet workflows
- Led technical scoping for enterprise clients alongside sales and product teams, translating business requirements into scalable solutions that closed 3 deals worth $200K+ combined
- Established engineering documentation standards and onboarding program, reducing new hire ramp-up time from 8 weeks to 4 weeks
- Built resilient, scalable features using Kafka/SQS messaging patterns for at-least-once delivery, ensuring data consistency across distributed services
- Implemented comprehensive logging, metrics, and tracing for operational excellence, maintaining high standards for documentation and enabling 40% faster incident resolution
- Owned full lifecycle of data infrastructure—from schema design and pipeline architecture through deployment, monitoring, and scaling to handle growing transaction volumes
- Worked cross-functionally with product, infrastructure, and data teams to design data models and ingestion strategies for new transaction types
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2021.01 - 2021.11 Software Engineer
Minerva Technologies, Nigeria
- Designed and built internal admin platform with role-based access control and audit logging, enabling support teams to independently resolve 90% of merchant issues without engineering escalation
- Developed automated merchant transaction reversal system using event-driven architecture, increasing support throughput by 50%+ and reducing average resolution time from 2 hours to 15 minutes
- Shipped backend APIs and frontend features for fintech application serving 3M+ users, implementing payment processing, user authentication, and transaction history
- Built machine learning pipeline for digital identity verification and fraud detection using scikit-learn and custom feature engineering, reducing merchant verification steps and time by at least 2 hours per day
- Thrived in fast-paced startup environment, staying focused as priorities shifted and shipping scalable systems weekly with strong testing and code quality standards
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2017.06 - 2021.11 Software Engineer
Adbasador Media Limited, Nigeria
- Built content management and delivery platform serving 50K+ daily active users, implementing caching strategies that reduced API response times by 40% and improved user engagement
- Led AWS cloud migration for monolithic application, implementing containerized microservices with CI/CD pipelines that reduced deployment downtime from 2 hours to under 10 minutes
- Developed real-time analytics dashboard and reporting tools using TypeScript/React and PostgreSQL, enabling business teams to track KPIs and make data-driven decisions
- Architected, designed, developed, and maintained 3 software solutions, re-engineering existing software quality to decrease page load times to less than 1 second
- Created optimized implementation plans ensuring smooth rollout resulting in 50% productivity enhancement; analyzed business processes and software requirements for implementation across multiple solutions
Volunteer
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2024.09 - 2025.10 Carnegie Mellon University Africa
Vice President Education
TechyTalkers Toastmasters Club
- Organized meetings, assigned speech roles, and ensured members progress through their educational pathways
- Connected new members with mentors, tracked individual progress, and recognized member achievements
- Created the meeting schedules, planned contests, and ensured high-quality learning experiences
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2024.01 - 2024.07 Lagos, Nigeria
Volunteer
The Lagos Food Bank Initiative
- Facilitated outreaches and workshops on food distribution to indigent communities in Lagos, Nigeria
- Community outreach and social impact initiatives
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2024.01 - 2025.12 Carnegie Mellon University Africa
Member
Data Science Club, CMU-Africa
- Led a team to participate in the Disability AI Hackathon where we used disability datasets to build solutions for disabled people in Africa
- Came out in the top 5 in the hackathon competition
- Applied machine learning and data science skills to address social challenges
Education
Skills
| Programming Languages | |
| Python | |
| TypeScript | |
| JavaScript | |
| Java | |
| Rust | |
| C/C++ | |
| SQL | |
| Bash/Shell |
| Machine Learning & AI | |
| PyTorch | |
| TensorFlow | |
| NumPy | |
| Pandas | |
| Scikit-learn | |
| XGBoost | |
| Computer Vision | |
| Adversarial ML | |
| LLMs | |
| Multi-Agent Systems | |
| RAG Systems |
| Backend & Web Development | |
| Express.js | |
| Spring Boot | |
| FastAPI | |
| Node.js | |
| REST APIs | |
| WebSocket | |
| Microservices | |
| Event-Driven Architecture |
| Frontend Development | |
| React | |
| Next.js | |
| HTML/CSS | |
| Responsive UI | |
| Real-time Streaming |
| Data Engineering | |
| PostgreSQL | |
| Kafka | |
| Redis | |
| Data Pipelines | |
| ETL Workflows | |
| Event-Driven Systems |
| Infrastructure & DevOps | |
| AWS | |
| Docker | |
| Kubernetes | |
| CI/CD | |
| GitHub Actions | |
| Jenkins | |
| Monitoring | |
| Distributed Tracing |
| Software Engineering Practices | |
| System Architecture | |
| API Development | |
| Database Design | |
| End-to-End Ownership | |
| Agile/Scrum | |
| Test-Driven Development |
Languages
| English | |
| Native speaker |
| Igbo | |
| Native speaker |
Interests
| Machine Learning | |
| Adversarial Robustness | |
| Computer Vision | |
| MLOps | |
| AI Safety |
| Research | |
| AI Research | |
| Computer Science | |
| Data Science | |
| Human-Computer Interaction |
Projects
- 2024.01 - 2024.12
Hoppscotch API Live Sync
Production-ready feature for automatic API collection synchronization, enabling code-first API development workflow. Built intelligent framework detection for 7+ frameworks with real-time polling and persistent sync state.
- Open source contribution to Hoppscotch
- Intelligent framework detection (FastAPI, Express, Spring Boot, ASP.NET, Django, Flask, Rails, Laravel)
- Real-time polling with content hashing for change detection
- Service-oriented architecture with TypeScript
- Solved complex technical challenges including path parameter normalization and persistence
- Wrote comprehensive 6-part blog series documenting implementation
- 2024.01 - 2024.12
AI Village - Multi-Agent GitHub Issue Fixer
Real-time multi-agent system demonstrating LLM collaboration for fixing open-source GitHub issues. Implemented WebSocket streaming architecture with React frontend and FastAPI backend.
- Multi-LLM roundtable debate system with three distinct AI personas
- WebSocket streaming for instant UI updates during LLM inference
- Scout agent for GitHub issue discovery and analysis
- Human-in-the-loop review panel for quality control
- Evolved from Streamlit proof-of-concept to production-ready React + FastAPI system
- Integrated Ollama API for local and remote LLM inference
- 2024.01 - 2024.12
Evaluating Model Robustness to Adversarial Attacks
Research on CIFAR-10 and VGGFace2 that revealed ResNet-50 models drop from 87% to 9% accuracy under FGSM attacks, but adversarial training can recover 55% robustness.
- Adversarial robustness research on CIFAR-10 and VGGFace2 datasets
- Evaluated pretrained CNNs (ResNet-50, VGG16, MobileNetV2, EfficientNet)
- Implemented white-box and black-box attack scenarios
- Demonstrated adversarial training effectiveness
- Compared resilience across different model architectures
- 2024.01 - 2024.12
Multimodal Emotion Recognition
Designed and evaluated deep learning models combining audio, visual, and textual signals to improve emotion recognition robustness.
- Multimodal learning combining audio, video, and text signals
- End-to-end experimentation pipelines using Python and TensorFlow
- Rapid iteration on model architectures
- Analysis of trade-offs between complexity, accuracy, and real-world usability
- 2024.01 - 2024.12
MLOps Pipeline - End-to-End Data Engineering
Engineered comprehensive data engineering pipeline including data ingestion, orchestration, transformation, and analysis for production ML systems.
- Scalable data processing workflows with proper error handling
- Data validation, quality checks, and transformation pipelines
- Production-ready ML system infrastructure
- 2024.01 - 2024.12
AI-Assisted Coding Productivity Study
Conducted controlled self-experiment comparing AI-assisted and manual coding workflows, analyzing impacts on productivity, cognitive load, and learning outcomes.
- Controlled experimental design
- Productivity and cognitive load analysis
- Understanding developer interaction with AI tools
- 2023.01 - 2023.12
Comparative Analysis of Classification Models
Research to identify the best machine learning model for loan approval prediction based on accuracy and area under curve metrics.
- Evaluated Logistic Regression, Random Forest, SVM, KNN, MLP, and XGBoost
- Performance comparison using accuracy and AUC metrics
- Cross-validation and model selection
- 2023.01 - 2023.12
Plaid Shell Implementation
Implemented a fully featured Linux shell from scratch using C programming language, including command parsing, process management, job control, and I/O redirection.
- Systems programming in C
- Command parsing and execution
- Process management and job control
- I/O redirection and piping
- Understanding of Unix internals