§ 01Chef's Story

A Recipe for Curiosity

Machine Learning Engineer who approaches problem-solving as an end-to-end AI pipeline — ingesting complex real-world inputs, performing structured feature engineering, training transformer-based architectures, and deploying scalable inference systems. 3+ years across predictive modeling, computer vision, and LLM-powered RAG workflows.

Karthik Mannem headshot

Karthik Mannem

Head Chef · AI Kitchen

Location

Los Angeles, CA

Education

M.S. Computer Science, CSUN

GPA

3.92 / 4.0

Experience

3+ years ML Engineering

Email

mannemkarthik01@gmail.com

M.S. Computer Science

California State University, Northridge

Aug 2024 – May 2026

3.92 / 4.0

B.Tech Computer Science & Engineering

Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute

Aug 2020 – May 2024

9.21 / 10.00

Certifications

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Foundation & Associate) – AWS

Fundamentals of Deep Learning – NVIDIA

Program Essentials in Python Programming (Intermediate) – CISCO

Model Validation 2 Expert – Handshake AI

2020The Apprenticeship Begins

B.Tech CS at Vel Tech, Chennai. First lines of Python — the building blocks of everything.

2022Community Chef

GDSC Content Lead — organized workshops for 200+ students, led a team of 8.

2023First Production System

Freelance ML Engineer — deep learning models, Docker pipelines, production APIs.

2024Crossed the Ocean

B.Tech complete (9.21 GPA). Relocated to Los Angeles for M.S. CS at CSUN.

2025Generative AI Analyst

Handshake AI — evaluated 1,000+ LLM outputs, reduced inconsistencies by 20%.

2026Kitchen is Open

M.S. complete (3.92 GPA, May 2026). Ready to ship intelligent systems full-time.

§ 03Signature Recipes

Tonight's Menu

Six production-grade AI systems — crafted from raw data, seasoned with algorithms, served ready to ship.

flip ↺
LLM + RAGAI Health Soup

Preventive Care Recommendation Agent

Ingest
Embed
Retrieve
+2

LLM-powered healthcare decision support system. Analyzes patient age, medical history, and risk factors to generate personalized screening and vaccination guidance aligned with CDC guidelines.

ADVANCED
LangChainOpenAI APIVector SearchFlask+2
6 ingredientsOpen Recipe →
← back

TECH STACK

LangChainOpenAI APIVector SearchFlaskDockerPython

KEY RESULT

Reduced hallucinations · Personalized healthcare recommendations

METRICS

Reduced hallucinated medical outputs by ~40% vs. zero-shot baseline

Latency under 2.5s per recommendation

flip ↺
Full-Stack + AIFull-Stack Fusion Platter

SplitWise Pro — AI Expense Sharing

Auth
Upload
OCR
+2

Full-stack expense sharing platform with OCR-based receipt parsing and cloud deployment. Integrated Firebase Auth, AWS S3, Google Vision API, and OpenAI for structured expense extraction.

ADVANCED
Next.jsTypeScriptNode.jsMongoDB Atlas+3
7 ingredientsOpen Recipe →
← back

TECH STACK

Next.jsTypeScriptNode.jsMongoDB AtlasFirebaseAWS S3OpenAI API

KEY RESULT

Automated expense parsing · Real-time balance calculation

METRICS

Receipt parsing accuracy >90% on test set

Sub-200ms API response for balance calculation

flip ↺
Computer VisionVision Authenticity Scanner

Fake Currency Detection

Preprocess
Augment
Model
+2

CNN-based image classification model using TensorFlow and OpenCV to detect counterfeit currency from 10,000+ images with robust data augmentation.

INTERMEDIATE
PythonTensorFlowOpenCVCNN+1
5 ingredientsOpen Recipe →
← back

TECH STACK

PythonTensorFlowOpenCVCNNNumPy

KEY RESULT

High accuracy · Robust to lighting variance

METRICS

Validation accuracy: 97.3%

False positive rate: <1.8%

flip ↺
ML · RecommenderPersonalized Streaming Platter

Netflix Recommender System

Load
Clean
Factor
+2

Collaborative filtering recommendation engine trained on Netflix viewing patterns, delivering personalized content suggestions at scale.

INTERMEDIATE
PythonScikit-learnPandasNumPy+1
5 ingredientsOpen Recipe →
← back

TECH STACK

PythonScikit-learnPandasNumPyCollaborative Filtering

KEY RESULT

Highly personalized content discovery at scale

METRICS

RMSE of 0.89 on test set

Precision@10: 0.74

flip ↺
NLP · RegressionNLP Prediction Dessert

BERT Product Length Predictor

Tokenize
Fine-tune
Transform
+2

Fine-tuned BERT on Amazon e-commerce dataset to predict product length from titles, descriptions, and metadata with log transformation and model ensembling.

INTERMEDIATE
PythonBERTHuggingFaceScikit-learn+1
5 ingredientsOpen Recipe →
← back

TECH STACK

PythonBERTHuggingFaceScikit-learnPandas

KEY RESULT

Stable regression · Reduced prediction variance

METRICS

R² of 0.81 on test set

Ensemble reduced variance by ~18%

flip ↺
Forecasting + Agentic AIDemand Forecast Banquet

Retail Demand Intelligence Platform

Backtest
Select
Calibrate
+2

End-to-end retail demand forecasting system with a tool-calling LLM agent and a full AWS deployment. Per-series model selection, calibrated uncertainty, and a closed MLOps loop with automated drift detection.

ADVANCED
PythonScikit-learnFlaskAnthropic API+4
8 ingredientsOpen Recipe →
← back

TECH STACK

PythonScikit-learnFlaskAnthropic APIOpenAI APIAWS BedrockTerraformDocker

KEY RESULT

7.9% WAPE · won 154/240 series · drift-triggered auto re-selection

METRICS

Gradient-boosted model won 154/240 series at 7.9% WAPE

74.2% measured interval coverage vs. 80% nominal target

Full Kitchen on GitHub ↗
§ 04Expertise Lab

What I Actually Build

Six specialisations. Each one proven by shipped work, not just listed skills.

LLM Systems & RAG

Production-grade retrieval-augmented generation

EXPERT

Design and deploy LLM pipelines that answer domain-specific questions with cited, grounded responses. Not demos — shipped systems.

LangChainOpenAIFAISSPineconeChromaDBPrompt Eng.

Proven by

Preventive Care RAG Agent — 38% hallucination reduction on CDC corpus

LangChainOpenAIFAISSPinecone+2

ML Engineering

End-to-end model development & training

EXPERT

From raw dataset to production inference: feature engineering, model selection, training pipelines, and evaluation frameworks.

PyTorchScikit-LearnXGBoostPandasMLflowWeights & Biases

Proven by

BERT Product Predictor — ensemble of transformer + gradient boosting for regression

PyTorchScikit-LearnXGBoostPandas+2

Computer Vision

Custom CNN architectures for visual tasks

EXPERT

Building convolutional networks from scratch — not just transfer learning. Augmentation strategy, class balancing, precision tuning.

PyTorchOpenCVAlbumentationsONNXTorchVision

Proven by

Fake Currency CNN — 97.3% accuracy on custom banknote dataset with 5-layer custom architecture

PyTorchOpenCVAlbumentationsONNX+1

Recommender Systems

Collaborative filtering & latent factor models

EXPERT

Matrix factorisation, latent factor decomposition, and hybrid approaches. Offline metrics that correlate with real user satisfaction.

SVDSurpriseScikit-LearnPandasNumPy

Proven by

Netflix Recommender — SVD with 50 latent factors, Precision@10 of 0.74 on held-out set

SVDSurpriseScikit-LearnPandas+1

AI Deployment & Infra

Containerised, production-ready AI systems

EXPERT

Docker, Flask APIs, cloud deployment, and monitoring. Systems that actually stay up after the demo ends.

DockerFlaskFastAPIAWSVercelGitHub Actions

Proven by

All 6 projects deployed end-to-end with Docker + REST APIs, not just Jupyter notebooks

DockerFlaskFastAPIAWS+2

LLM Evaluation

Safety, accuracy & alignment assessment

EXPERT

Designing rubrics for hallucination detection, factual grounding, and response quality at scale. Professional annotation workflow experience.

AnnotationRubric DesignHallucination DetectionRAGASTruthfulQA

Proven by

Handshake AI — evaluating LLM outputs for accuracy and safety in production systems

AnnotationRubric DesignHallucination DetectionRAGAS+1
§ 04Ingredients Shelf

The Pantry

Every great dish starts with quality ingredients. Hover to explore the depth.

Category

Base Ingredients

PythonJavaTypeScript

Category

Cooking Tools

TensorFlowPyTorchOpenCVScikit-learn

Category

AI Spices

LangChainTransformersHuggingFaceRAGPrompt Engineering

Category

Data Prep

PandasNumPyFeature EngineeringData Preprocessing

Category

Serving & Deployment

DockerFlaskREST APIsGit

Category

Cloud & DB

AWS (EC2, S3)MongoDBPostgreSQLMySQL

Category

Frontend

Next.jsReactNode.jsExpress
§ 05Evolution

The Journey

Seven years. One direction. Every year a sharper focus on intelligent systems.

2020

CS Foundations

Fell into Python at 3am debugging a loop that wouldn't end. Never stopped.

PythonAlgorithmsData Structures

2021

ML Fundamentals

First neural network. First overfit. First moment of understanding why regularisation exists.

Scikit-LearnNumPyLinear Algebra

2022

Leadership + Workshops

GDSC Content Lead. Taught ML to 200+ students. Realised teaching clarifies your own thinking.

GDSC LeadPyTorchTeaching

2023

Production AI Systems

Built CNN for currency detection, Netflix recommender, first freelance ML contracts.

CNNOpenCVRecommender SystemsFreelance

2024

LLM Systems & CSUN

M.S. CS at CSUN. Built RAG pipelines and SplitWise AI.

LangChainRAGFAISSGPA 3.92

2025

Generative AI Analyst

Joined Handshake AI as a Generative AI Analyst — deep RAG workflows, production evaluation frameworks, LLM alignment research at CSUN.

RAGAlignmentLLM EvalHandshake AI

2026

Ready to Ship

M.S. complete May 2026. Full-time ML/AI engineer. Six production systems. Zero excuses.

Available NowFull-TimeML/AI
§ 04Kitchen Experience

Time in the Kitchen

Generative AI Analyst

Quality Tasting Specialist

Handshake AI

  • Evaluated 1,000+ LLM outputs using structured quality benchmarks
  • Identified hallucination patterns, reducing evaluation inconsistencies by 20%
  • Collaborated cross-functionally on prompt refinement workflows
  • Maintained high annotation agreement across large datasets
Sep 2025 – Apr 2026

Machine Learning Engineer

Custom AI Recipe Builder

Freelance

  • Designed and deployed deep learning models (LSTM, CNN) for 3+ client applications
  • Built end-to-end ML workflows, improving training efficiency by 30%
  • Containerized ML services with Docker + Flask REST APIs
  • Reduced training time by 25% and improved inference latency
Aug 2023 – Jun 2024

Content Lead

Community Workshop Chef

Google Developer Student Clubs

  • Led a team of 8+ members organizing workshops for 200+ participants
  • Published technical content, mentored contributors in Git/GitHub workflows
  • Coordinated cross-campus technical collaborations
Aug 2022 – Apr 2024
§ 05Live Kitchen

What's Cooking

Current Project

Preventive Care Recommendation Agent v2

Reading

Build a Large Language Model From Scratch

Current Paper

Attention Is All You Need (Re-reading for depth)

Location

Los Angeles, CA

Available

Full-time ML/AI · Immediate

GitHub

@mannemkarthik010

§ 05.5 — The Experiment Lab

Cook an AI Model

Choose your dataset, model architecture, and deployment. We'll cook it live.

Cook an AI Model

Pick your ingredients and we'll cook it live

01 — Dataset

02 — Model Architecture

03 — Deployment

§ 06The Archive

The Reading Room

Books that shaped the way I build systems, think deeply, and create intelligently.

Build a Large Language Model From Scratch

Sebastian Raschka

Reading Now

Currently on the stovetop

Build a Large Language Model From Scratch

Sebastian Raschka

Currently studying transformer internals, attention mechanisms, tokenization, and LLM architecture design from first principles.

Progress

~60%

Engineering Shelf
select a spine
Build a Large Language Model From Scratch
Hands-On Machine Learning
Designing Machine Learning Systems
AI Engineering
ReadingAI Engineering

Build a Large Language Model From Scratch

Sebastian Raschka

ConceptAttention mechanisms, tokenization, pretraining from scratch.

Key Lesson

Understanding transformers from first principles changed the way I think about every modern AI system I build.

Thinking Shelf

Mindset books outside engineering. Click any to read the lesson.

Focus on What Matters

Darius Foroux

Complete

Make Epic Money

Ankur Warikoo

Complete

Do Epic Shit

Ankur Warikoo

Complete

Rich Dad Poor Dad

Robert Kiyosaki

Complete

One Arranged Murder

Chetan Bhagat

Complete
Philosophy Shelf

Beyond code — discipline, purpose, and systems of thought.

Journey of Self Discovery

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Complete

The Higher Taste

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Complete

Sanatana Dharma

Annie Besant

Complete

Self Realization

Swami Vivekananda

Complete

“The best machine learning engineers are not just coders — they are storytellers, scientists, and chefs who know the real magic happens at the intersection of data and intuition.”

— Karthik Mannem
§ 07Reserve a Table

Let's Cook Together

Open to full-time ML/AI roles, collaborations, and great conversations.

Make a Reservation

Ask ChefGPT

Have questions? My AI assistant knows the full menu.

CG

ChefGPT

● Online

Welcome! I'm ChefGPT — Karthik's AI assistant. Ask me anything about his skills, projects, or experience.