Ridwan Bello Salahuddeen

Highly skilled Machine Learning Engineer and Data Engineer with over 10 years of experience in developing and deploying high-performance ML systems and scalable data pipelines, specializing in Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, and enterprise data infrastructure.

Available

ML & Data Engineering Specialist

Expert in Large Language Models, Data Engineering, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Production AI Systems

LLM Development

Fine-tuning, optimization, and deployment of transformer models for production use cases

RAG Systems

Building scalable retrieval-augmented generation systems with vector databases

Data Engineering

Designing and implementing scalable data pipelines, ETL processes, and data infrastructure

Production AI

Deploying and scaling AI systems with high throughput and low latency

About Me

Professional Summary

Results-driven Machine Learning Engineer and Data Engineer with over 10 years of experience identifying opportunities for business growth and efficiency through advanced data analysis and scalable data infrastructure. Proven track record of leading the end-to-end technical execution of data science projects, from defining data acquisition and analytics strategy to deploying production models and data pipelines on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).

Expertise in designing and implementing enterprise-grade data pipelines, ETL processes, and data warehouses. Extensive experience in Apache Airflow, Spark, and distributed computing systems. Proven ability in directing junior data scientists and engineers, managing stakeholder relationships, and presenting results to senior leadership. Extensive commercial experience in Python, Spark, and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) to build and scale ML solutions and data infrastructure.

Machine Learning
Data Engineering
Cloud Platforms
ML Infrastructure

Personal Information

Full Name

Ridwan Bello Salahuddeen

Location

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Email

ridzy619@gmail.com

Phone

+1 470-778-1174

Professional Experience

ML Engineer, Legal Document Processing

Apple (Contractor)
Feb 2025 – Present
  • Led the development and deployment of custom OCR pipeline for legal documents, with a custom deskew logic that improved Levenshtein distance by 12% and table extraction by 7%.
  • Trained a document quality estimation model using MLflow for model lifecycle management, applied to over 200k legacy scanned documents, eliminating the need for hard copy of high-quality documents.
  • Engineered a hierarchical, hybrid chunking and retrieval strategy using DSPy for prompt optimization and LangChain for RAG orchestration, combining small and large segments for improved RAG performance while using small-sized LLMs, reducing hallucination by 45%.
  • Developed a multi-stage metadata extraction pipeline using DSPy for prompt optimization and Pydantic for schema validation, which generates metadata schema for document collections and extracts structured data from documents.
  • Developed knowledge graph using Neo4j for the documents, enabling metadata-aware processing queries that go beyond regular retrieval and generation, with Redis for caching and Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming.

Co-Founder & Technical Lead

Byte Analytics
August 2022 – Present
  • Led the design and development of system architecture for a scalable financial reconciliation system, directing a team of engineers.
  • Engineered and delivered regulatory International Financial Reporting Standards 9 (IFRS 9) compliance systems for two top banks in Nigeria, managing projects from conception to deployment and stakeholder acceptance.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

BeeKeeperAI (Healthcare) & RigrAI (Video)
Jan 2023 – Feb 2025
  • Let the training of a light weight Clip-based model for location estimation from images, currently adopted by Norwegian police.
  • Directed the fine-tuning and deployment of a Llama model for forum summarization on darkweb data, utilizing weight orthogonalization and LoRA; currently used by some LEAs in Europe.
  • Engineered scalable model serving infrastructure with FastAPI, Docker, and Nvidia Triton Inference Server, implementing comprehensive monitoring and load balancing for efficient video processing; used by Canadian polics, Danish police and Interpol.
  • Led the implementation and deployment of a BERT-based token classification model for PHI detection, achieving 97.3% F1 score.

Senior Data Science Engineer

Tribes.ai
Jan 2022 – Nov 2022
  • Led development of core Apache Airflow pipeline templates for auto-generating client-specific pipelines, reducing processing time by 45% and accelerating delivery of data products.
  • Optimized large-scale batch ETL using Spark (Dataproc), BigQuery, and Datastore for improved performance, showcasing experience with distributed data processing.

Enterprise Data Science Engineer

Sterling Bank PLC
Sep 2021 – Jan 2022
  • Led the end-to-end design, development, and deployment of fraud detection models, improving F1-score performance and presenting outcomes to business leaders to inform strategy.
  • Architected and optimized data processing workflows using Azure Synapse and Databricks for production deployment, demonstrating experience with cloud-based data processing.

Data Science Engineer

Access Bank PLC
Mar 2017 – Sep 2021
  • Developed and deployed a real-time transaction monitoring system using anomaly detection models and Spark Streaming, achieving a 46% reduction in the false-negative rate.
  • Drove initiatives for database performance optimization through efficient schema design and indexing on cloud infrastructure (AWS), reducing query latency by 30% and influencing data strategy.

Technical Skills

ML Frameworks

PyTorch 95%
TensorFlow 90%
JAX 85%
NLP (LLMs, Transformers) 92%
Keras 90%
scikit-learn 92%

ML Infrastructure

Model Serving (Triton, FastAPI) 88%
Distributed Training (NCCL) 85%
Pipeline Design 90%
Monitoring & Validation 87%

GPU Acceleration

CUDA 85%
CuDNN 82%
TensorRT 80%

Data Engineering

Apache Airflow 90%
Apache Spark 88%
ETL/ELT Pipelines 92%
Data Warehousing 85%
PostgreSQL 85%
Neo4j 80%
Redis 82%
Apache Kafka 78%

Cloud & DevOps

AWS 90%
Azure 85%
GCP 80%
Kubernetes 82%
Docker 88%
CI/CD 85%

Programming

Python 95%
SQL 90%
R 85%
Java 75%
Shell Script 80%

LLM & RAG Technologies

Large Language Models 95%
RAG Systems 92%
Transformer Models 90%
Fine-tuning (LoRA, QLoRA) 88%
Vector Databases 85%
Prompt Engineering 90%

Education

Master of Science in Machine Learning

Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI (MBZUAI)
2022 – 2024

Specialized in advanced machine learning techniques and applications.

Master of Science in Statistics and Computer Science

Georgia State University
2023 – 2025

Combined statistical methods with advanced computer science applications.

Bachelor of Technology in Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Ladoke Akintola University of Technology
2009 – 2014

Foundation in engineering principles with focus on electrical systems.

Certifications

  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and AI Engineer
  • Udacity: Deep Learning Nanodegree, Data Engineering Nanodegree
  • End-to-End ML with TensorFlow on GCP

Projects & Publications

Memoization-Aware Bayesian Optimization for AI Pipelines with Unknown Costs

Published at ICLR 2024, this work presents a novel approach to reducing hyperparameter tuning costs in ML pipelines.

Read Paper →

Pothole Anomaly Detection

Research paper critically appraising approaches for real-time pothole detection in developing nations.

Read Paper →

Deep Learning Model for Potholes Data Augmentation

Exploratory analysis of modified deep learning models for potholes data augmentation at IEEE Conference.

Read Paper →

Hyperparameter Optimization Thesis

Master's Thesis on efficient hyperparameter optimization for large-scale ML systems.

View Thesis →

Hyperparameter Tuning Costs Research

Research on reducing hyperparameter tuning costs in ML, Vision and Language Model Training Pipelines.

Read Paper →

Get In Touch

Contact Information

Email

ridzy619@gmail.com

Phone

+1 470-778-1174

Location

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Connect With Me

Send Me a Message