
David Smith
AI/ML Career Coach | Background in FAANG and NASA
Studied at University of Michigan - Dearborn
Works at Microsoft
Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.
David's Offerings
Custom hourly · $69/hr
Get help with Behavioral Interview Prep, Computer Vision, and .
David’s AI for Product Development Qualifications
Experience level: Associate
Hey! I’d like to imagine my background in AI and machine learning is robust enough to pass on help to others. I bring a wealth of experience from top-tier organizations like Microsoft and NASA. As a Data Scientist at Microsoft, I developed cutting-edge models and tools, enhancing AI capabilities and optimizing systems for high performance. My journey also includes impactful roles as an AI Consultant and Software Engineer, where I led projects that pushed the boundaries of AI applications. I have mentored interns and new engineers, helping them maximize their potential and impact. Whether you're looking to break into the AI/ML field or advance your career, I'm here to guide you with personalized strategies and insights.
David can help with:
Behavioral Interview Prep
Computer Vision
Cover Letters
Deep Learning
Freelancing
LinkedIn Review
Machine Learning
Natural Language Processing
Networking Strategy
Resume Review
Skill Building
Technical Interview Prep
Work Experience

Data Scientist II
Microsoft
February 2025 - Present

Data Scientist
Microsoft
May 2024 - February 2025
• Developed the model and corresponding C++ ML library aimed at optimizing memory management with nanosecond constraints. • Contributed to open-source projects, increasing AI tooling and library compatibility with Windows ARM64 based architectures. • Developed ML training, validation and deployment infrastructure with Databricks and MLFlow. • Developed periodic and seasonal based data drift detection tools for increased model reliability based on the KL Divergence derived Population Stability Index. • Developed custom performance metrics to better represent ordinal label classifiers. • Reduced engineer workload by automating hyperparameter training and label derivation through the integration of FLAML and the development of a Spark friendly Jenk's Optimization Algorithm. Distributed Systems, Research and +7 skills

Software Engineer
Microsoft
May 2022 - May 2024
• Costed, designed, proposed and led the implementation of solo and team projects to add new product features, increase maintainability or reliability to various Azure services. • Developed and contributed to open-sourced projects benefiting Azure and Azure customers. • Mentored and guided interns and new engineers to help them maximize team impact without sacrificing work-life balance. • Designed and implemented distributed system/micro-services (containerized apps orchestrated with Kubernetes) supporting 99.99% reliability, availability and P99 < 1s latency. • Fostered organization culture by planning and driving cross-team morale events for hundreds of employees. • Designed the integration between the Azure Bare-metal cloud service and VMWare, allowing specialized, high I/O servers, designed for Epic Systems workloads to be managed by VMWare and Azure. • Designed and developed a control plane for the GPU infrastructure used in training/running internal AI models. • Increased customer satisfaction and trust by providing live site problem investigation and mitigation. Docker, Distributed Systems and +3 skills

AI/ML Developer Intern
NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
January 2022 - May 2022
• Increased the generalization and data validation capabilities of a DVC based ETL pipeline. • Developed a species based named-entity recognition system with an extraction and tagging speed of 3.5 seconds per 1,000 abstracts. • Created and implemented a DynamoDB data model by initializing and updating tables via Lambda functions and defining the REST APIs through Velocity Template Language and Cloud Formation Research, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and +3 skills

AI/ML Developer Intern
Wind River
September 2021 - December 2021
• Explored and implemented topic modeling through various techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation, Gensim Author Topic Modeling, and Unsupervised Learning. • Prepared and presented research proposals for a DARPA SBIR funded project to a company-wide audience of diverse technical backgrounds. • Reduced the project's main data set of 600+ features to 52 features while maintaining the existing neural network model's accuracy (within ~1%). This data set scaling allowed a decrease in training time from a few days to a few hours as opposed to the 5% reduction in model accuracy if the 600 features are simply trimmed to 52 random features. Natural Language Processing (NLP), Docker and +7 skills

Software Engineer Intern
NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
June 2021 - September 2021
• Implemented an ETL pipeline with DVC which included API integration, data-caching, web-scraping, data processing (for NLP) and data validation through Great Expectations. • Researched, trained and tuned advanced NLP models. • Mentored the more “green” interns in AI and software development techniques, and best practices. • Assisted CEOs, and subject-matter experts in the understanding and implementation of different software technologies. • Increased team productivity by refactoring agile processes. Research, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and +2 skills

AI Consultant
freelance
February 2021 - November 2023
• Designed a latent diffusion tool based on the state-of-the-art Stable Diffusion work at the time that would operate in GPU and non-GPU environments and provide the same features as solutions produced by teams of researchers. • Implemented these PyTorch diffusion models end-to-end as a scalable docker-based system in a GCP environment through a Flask based API and a Celery based worker/node set up. • Developed the AI system so that different latent diffusion models/weights could be rolled in with minimal effort. • Characterized the energy efficiency of multi-node versus vertically scaled AI training methods. PyTorch, Docker and +2 skills

Software Engineer
Wynhouse
November 2020 - June 2021
• Helped guide the development and progression of multiple projects. • Developed full-stack solutions for mobile and web applications, while researching and disseminating the best tools and practices. • Architected scalable back-end services with cloud based platforms such as AWS, and Firebase. • Integrated applications with NoSQL databases such as DynamoDB and MongoDB. • Developed low maintenance cost, tier-based APIs utilizing serverless AWS services.
David was also given offers to work at

Collins Aerospace
Education

University of Michigan - Dearborn
Master of Science - MS, Computer Engineering
2020 - 2022
• Concentration in intelligent systems Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Engineering and +1 skill

University of Toledo
Bachelor of Science - BS, Mechanical Engineering
2015 - 2020
Activities and societies: TEDx Lead Organizer, Fencing Team Captain, Adopt-a-grandparent Volunteer • Focus in mechatronics. • Double minors in physics and mathematics. Research and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)