# Saad Ahmad Khan > Principal ML Platform Engineer | Technical Leader in Data Infrastructure & Distributed Systems | Driving Cross-Functional ML Initiatives at Scale Location: Fremont, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/saadahmadkhan Principal Machine Learning Platform Engineer specializing in cross-organizational technical leadership and large-scale ML infrastructure. I drive consensus across diverse teams, establish platform standards adopted organization-wide, and architect solutions that enable multiple engineering teams to move faster. What I Do: I lead complex multi-team initiatives that span infrastructure, ML engineering, and product teams. My focus is on solving problems that no single team can address alone -- from platform migrations affecting 40+ engineers to architectural decisions requiring alignment across 15+ stakeholders. I translate ambiguous requirements into concrete technical strategies and drive execution from design through production. Recent Impact: - Redesigned parallel streaming architecture processing 10M+ files with 95% SLA improvement and zero schema failures - Architected and led image curation pipeline processing millions of agricultural images with 40% cost reduction - Architected platform migration from Kubeflow to Databricks with Apache Airflow orchestration - Built distributed data ingestion systems supporting autonomous vehicle state analytics - Managed teams and mentored engineers in ML infrastructure, Spark optimization, and distributed systems Technical Leadership: I excel at facilitating difficult technical discussions, resolving conflicting priorities between teams, and establishing patterns that allow organizations to scale. I mentor engineers across teams, create documentation that becomes organizational knowledge, and champion collaboration models that reduce integration friction. Core Expertise: Cross-Org Technical Leadership | Platform Architecture | Streaming Data Pipelines | ML Infrastructure at Scale | Databricks & Apache Spark | Multi-Team Consensus Building | Strategic Planning | Engineering Mentorship Open to connecting with leaders in ML infrastructure, data engineering, and autonomous systems ## Work Experience ### Principal Software Engineer - ML Platform & Data Infrastructure @ Blue River Technology Jan 2022 – Present Leading technical initiatives for production ML data infrastructure supporting agricultural robotics and autonomous systems. Technical Leadership - Production ML Data Curation Platform: - Led end-to-end architecture and implementation of image curation pipeline processing millions of images, integrating online calibration (OCAL), stereo rectification, and distributed inference systems using Databricks and Apache Airflow - Drove cross-functional collaboration with CVML, Infrastructure, and Safety teams to align inference serving split architecture, resource governance, and complex multi-team technical dependencies - Achieved 40% cost reduction while increasing throughput by optimizing GPU-to-CPU rectification, implementing dynamic batch sizing, and establishing cost analytics framework - Established production reliability standards through RCA resolution, robust logging/monitoring infrastructure, and John Deere compliance data governance Strategic Platform Modernization & Infrastructure Leadership: - Led strategic platform migration from Kubeflow to Databricks with Airflow orchestration, designing modular architecture and coordinating multi-quarter roadmap - Architected multi-threaded data ingestion pipeline for HALO camera data and MCAP bag extraction, delivering scalable foundation for autonomy state transition analytics - Established hybrid cloud infrastructure collaborating with infrastructure team on distributed compute orchestration and cost optimization - nDrove security initiatives including automated vulnerability scanning, ECR lifecycle management, and IAM policy governance Technical Mentorship & Team Impact: - Provided technical guidance to CVML engineers on Databricks ML pipeline, sharing expertise in distributed systems and Spark optimization - Established code standards and development frameworks adopted across broader BRT organization - Championed knowledge sharing through technical presentations, design reviews, and cross-team collaboration ### Senior Software Engineer - ML Platform Lead @ hireEZ Jan 2018 – Jan 2022 | 2525 E Charleston Rd, Mountain View, CA 94043 Led ML platform engineering and infrastructure initiatives for enterprise talent intelligence platform. ML Platform Engineering Leadership: - Led team of 6 engineers managing ML recommendation platform, feature engineering pipelines, candidate ranking systems, and profile deduplication engine - Architected distributed data ingestion platform with Kafka pub/sub model, Apache Airflow orchestration, and AWS ECS-deployed queue workers - Drove 5x ElasticSearch performance improvement through optimal sharding strategy and index optimization - Led SOC2 compliance initiative including documentation, security policy implementation, and KPI management Infrastructure & Platform Development: - Built RESTful Python microservices supporting ML recommendation engine for candidate sourcing - Migrated and optimized Cassandra database data access layers ensuring high availability - Implemented comprehensive SIEM using Lacework, CloudWatch, AWS Systems Manager, GuardDuty, and Inspector - Configured service discovery using CloudMap (internal) and Route53 (external) - Established CI/CD automation with monitoring, disaster recovery, and serverless observability ### Member Of Technical Staff (Cloud infrastructure and backend services) @ Composure.ai Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | 4410 El Camino Real #204, Los Altos, CA 94022 Backend engineering and ML innovation for multi-cloud optimization platform. - Architected RESTful Java API data access layer for Multi-Cloud Optimizer supporting Neo4j graph database with Cypher query integration - Designed multi-threaded data pipeline handling high-volume data from distributed message bus systems - Developed Kafka event-based listener and filter using JavaCC and lambda expressions - Proposed and implemented Mosaix Chatbot Agent using NLTK, scikit-learn, and TensorFlow - Architected semantic search API for DevOps search system leveraging CoreNLP and NLTK ### Research Assistant (HRI-ML Systems) @ University of Central Florida Jan 2009 – Jan 2015 | Orlando, Florida Area Research in autonomous robotics, human-robot interaction, and machine learning systems. - Modeled social calculus for autonomous robots using genetic algorithms and game-theoretic optimization - Implemented NEAT neural network for adaptive robot learning during crowd navigation - Applied SVMs and Random Forest ensemble learning for human behavior prediction - Published 35+ peer-reviewed conference papers and 4 journal articles ### Lecturer @ UET Lahore Jan 2007 – Jan 2009 ### Software Engineer @ KICS Jan 2007 – Jan 2009 ## Education ### Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Central Florida ### Master's Degree in Computer Engineering - Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning (ISML) University of Central Florida ### Master's Degree in Eletrical Engineering University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore ### Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drskhan --- Source: https://flows.cv/saadahmadkhan JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/saadahmadkhan/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12