Henok Wondimu

Machine Learning & Software Engineer

New York, USA

ML and software engineer working across deep learning, backend systems, and infrastructure. Strong on algorithms and systems design (Guardian, top 1% on LeetCode).

Experience

ML Research Assistant

Aug 2024 – Present

Fordham University

Research on deep learning and agentic AI systems applied to cybersecurity and automation.

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  • First author on a paper presenting a hybrid ML-systems approach for explainable DDoS detection with sub-10ms latency.
  • Built data pipelines and training workflows in PyTorch for deep learning and cybersecurity research on 20M+ sample datasets.

Software Engineer II

Oct 2023 - Aug 2024

Zobel Technologies

Backend and data engineering for Waga Express (logistics) and an airtime distribution platform for EthioTelecom resellers, serving 100K+ end users.

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  • Created streaming data pipelines (Kafka + PostgreSQL) to capture delivery, payment, and agent activity logs used for internal analytics.
  • Designed microservices and APIs for delivery tracking and agent management.
  • Cut API response times by 65% using async task queues (Celery), Redis caching, and query optimization.

Software Engineer

Jun 2022 - Dec 2023

Africa to Silicon Valley (A2SV)

Worked on SkillBridge, an AI-powered learning platform, and led A2SV's expansion to Ghana with Google Ghana and the University of Ghana.

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  • Collaborated on system design for SkillBridge, defining data models, API contracts, and service interactions across backend, mobile, and ML components.
  • Developed a high-performance quiz module with optimized list rendering and lazy-loading architecture, reducing UI latency by 80% (100ms → 20ms).
  • Introduced clean architecture (Repository pattern, Dependency Injection) and pushed test coverage to 85%.
  • Led A2SV's expansion into Ghana with Google Ghana and the University of Ghana, training 30+ students (25% landed internships at top tech companies)

Software Engineer (Freelance)

Nov 2021 - Jul 2024

Upwork

Built backend and mobile solutions for international clients across fintech, logistics, and community platforms.

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  • Built the backend for FajrLions (Node.js, TypeScript, NoSQL, GCP), a community app with geofenced campaigns and timezone-aware push notifications.
  • Created SiteAudit, an offline-first construction inspection app used by 50+ field teams to sync 10K+ monthly audits.
  • Developed a finance app that automates intrinsic-value calculations, replacing manual workflows.

AI Deep Dive

Open-source AI/ML learning platform with interactive courses, coding challenges, and automated code evaluation. The flagship course covers building GPT from scratch, from tokenization to the full Transformer architecture.

PyTorch Transformers FastAPI Redis Streams +7
GitHub | Live Site

Transformer From Scratch: English-German Translator

From-scratch PyTorch implementation of the original Transformer (Vaswani et al., 2017). 65M-parameter model trained on WMT14 English-German with multi-GPU DDP, achieving 25.53 BLEU.

PyTorch Transformers Distributed Training NLP +3
GitHub | Demo

MYA: My Assistant

Personal AI assistant that unifies email, calendar, tasks, and local files behind a single search interface. Uses hybrid RAG retrieval (BM25 + semantic embeddings + RRF) and LLM-powered email intelligence.

RAG LLMs ChromaDB Python +7
GitHub

Scriptify: Handwriting Synthesis from Text

Handwriting synthesis system using an attention-based LSTM (5M params). Generates realistic handwriting from text input with real-time rendering through a FastAPI backend and React frontend.

PyTorch Deep Learning LSTM TorchScript +3
GitHub | Demo
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3479 contributions in the last year
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