Data Scientist & AI/ML Engineer

Amrutha Vinayakam

I build ML systems that turn messy data into decisions people trust.

01 — About

A little background

I'm a data scientist and AI/ML engineer who likes shipping models all the way to production — not just notebooks. My recent work spans LLM-powered applications, forecasting, and analytics that leadership actually uses.

I've worked across nonprofits, startups, and Big Four consulting, which taught me to translate between business questions and technical answers quickly.

I hold a master's degree from Fordham University and I'm currently focused on applied AI — retrieval, agents, and evaluation done properly.

02 — Experience

Where I've worked

  1. Data Scientist · Food Bank of South Jersey

    Dec 2025 — Present

    Pennsauken, NJ

    • Architected a centralized Azure data warehouse, designing scalable schemas, ingestion processes, and standardized reporting layers, reducing data discrepancies by 15% and saving 8 hours/week.
    • Built an ensemble of Random Forest and Logistic Regression models to segment agencies on demographic and behavioral data, driving a 15% increase in distribution across 200+ partner agencies.
    • Deployed an XGBoost demand forecasting model on historical distribution and program data, improving planning accuracy and directing resource allocation decisions for weekly operational reviews.
    • Delivered executive-ready Power BI dashboards and governed KPI reporting, enabling weekly and monthly operational reviews by translating program needs into reusable analytics views.
    • Aligned Grants, Marketing, and Finance stakeholders on shared KPIs, converting data insights into program strategies adopted in leadership decision-making across the organization.
  2. Artificial Intelligence Engineer · Dreamline AI

    Jul 2025 — Dec 2025

    Florida, Remote

    • Elevated user behavior prediction by 25% by developing an ensemble of XGBoost and Logistic Regression models on user, property, and policy data, with LLM-based feature enrichment for program rules, while optimizing for latency and cost.
    • Increased match accuracy by 10% by segmenting users with K-Means clustering for program alignment, validated with t-tests to ensure statistical significance of key insights.
    • Engineered an automated evaluation suite using F1, confusion matrices, and cross-validation, ensuring model reliability across releases; maintained a 95% testing coverage rate.
  3. Graduate Teaching / Technical Assistant · Fordham University GSAS

    Sep 2023 — Dec 2024

    New York, NY

    • Developed and maintained 5+ ETL data pipelines for academic datasets, reducing data quality issues by 40% by standardizing ingestion, cleaning, and data-validation steps for 30+ students.
    • Created 4+ interactive Tableau dashboards for feedback and enrollment KPIs, improving faculty decision-making efficiency by 50% by consolidating metrics into self-serve visual reporting.
    • Implemented a Transformers-based classification model, achieving 92% accuracy by fine-tuning Hugging Face models to automate research content tagging and save 10+ hours/month.
  4. Artificial Intelligence Engineer · Radical AI

    May 2024 — Oct 2024

    New York, NY

    • Accelerated model quality by 25% and real-time processing speed by 30% by iterating on feature pipelines and training workflows using Python, SQL, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Keras.
    • Boosted production chatbot response accuracy by 15% by refining NLP pipelines with Hugging Face Transformers and the OpenAI API, including prompt and retrieval tuning.
    • Reduced inference latency by 20% by preprocessing and optimizing text pipelines using SpaCy and NLTK for large-scale datasets.
    • Optimized pipeline efficiency by 35% by integrating LangChain and LlamaIndex components to increase throughput and support scalable agent workflows.
    • Drove up user support engagement by 15% by contributing to AI virtual agent features that expanded real-time assistance coverage.
  5. Data Analyst · KPMG

    Aug 2020 — Jul 2023

    India

    • Sharpened monthly revenue projections by 20% by building financial forecasting models from historical claims and billing data for chronic care programs.
    • Productionized forecasting models (ARIMAX, SARIMAX) and XGBoost in Azure ML Studio for repeatable training and scoring, automating monthly runs to support revenue planning.
    • Presented ROI models to cross-functional finance stakeholders, influencing $2M+ investment decisions across 3 digital health pilots.

03 — Projects

Things I've built

AI Tax Portal (Tessera)

AI tax-review platform prototype: a priority-ranked dashboard, click-any-value source-document traceability, and a trustworthy-AI inspector with explainable confidence — one coherent workflow across 240 returns and 2,500+ documents.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • AI UX
  • Explainable AI
  • Design Systems

Vigor — AI Fitness Coach

Serverless AI health & fitness coach that chats with you and generates personalized workout and meal plans in seconds, built on AWS Bedrock and Lambda with the Spoonacular API.

  • AWS Bedrock
  • AWS Lambda
  • Python
  • Pydantic
  • Spoonacular API

AI Financial Advisor

Conversational financial planning assistant with retrieval over market data and guardrailed recommendations.

  • Python
  • LangChain
  • RAG
  • Streamlit

Career Research Agent

Autonomous agent that researches companies and roles, then compiles tailored briefs for job applications.

  • Agents
  • OpenAI API
  • Web Scraping
  • Python

LLM Benchmarking

Framework for benchmarking LLMs across tasks — comparing model quality, latency, and cost with reproducible evals.

  • Python
  • LLMs
  • Evals

AceBot

Voice-enabled AI companion app (GPT-4 + Flutter) with text/voice chat, news updates, motivational quotes, and mental-health support resources. Winner of the Wolfram Award at Taskformer's AI Chatbot Hackathon.

  • Flutter
  • Dart
  • GPT-4
  • GCP
  • Speech-to-Text

04 — Skills

What I work with

Languages

  • Python
  • SQL
  • R
  • TypeScript

ML / AI

  • PyTorch
  • scikit-learn
  • LLMs & RAG
  • LangChain
  • Hugging Face
  • NLP
  • Forecasting

Cloud & Data

  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Snowflake
  • Spark
  • Airflow
  • dbt

Tools

  • Git
  • Docker
  • Tableau
  • Power BI
  • FastAPI

06 — Hackathons

Built under pressure

  • In Progress

    Agentic Cinema: The Blockbuster Hackathon

    2026

    Building an agentic AI workflow on Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform to automate media & entertainment production challenges — among 7,900+ competitors, submissions due September 2026.

  • Winner — Wolfram Award

    Taskformer's AI Chatbot Hackathon

    2024

    Built AceBot, a voice-enabled Flutter chatbot with GPT-4: quick answers, news, motivation, and mental-health support resources in one companion app.

  • Participant

    AWS AI Agent Global Hackathon

    2025

    Built Vigor, a fully serverless AI health & fitness coach (AWS Bedrock + Lambda) that generates personalized workout and meal plans in seconds — among 9,400+ participants worldwide.

07 — Contact

Let's talk

Recruiting, collaborating, or just want to compare notes on ML? Drop a message — it goes straight to my inbox.