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Vikram Anand

Principal ML Engineer / Head of AI

Bengaluru, India • +91 90080 47193 • vikram.anand@proton.me • linkedin.com/in/vikram-anand-ai • github.com/vikramanand

Portfolio: www.eliorexa.com/portfolio/ai-ml-engineer-senior

Professional Summary

AI leader and ML architect with 12 years building machine learning platforms and production systems at scale. Sets ML strategy across LLM, NLP and recommendation systems, leads teams of 10–20 engineers and scientists, and ties model investments to revenue and efficiency. Drove research-to-production programs, built the MLOps platform behind dozens of models, established model governance and responsible-AI practices, and mentors engineers into staff and lead roles.

Skills

Leadership: AI strategy & roadmap, Team building (10–20), Hiring & mentoring, Stakeholder & C-suite alignment, Model governance & responsible AI

ML architecture: LLM & RAG systems, Recommender systems, Distributed training, Feature & vector platforms, Real-time inference at scale

Stack: Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, Ray, Spark, scikit-learn

Platform & MLOps: AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Kubeflow, MLflow, Terraform, Observability (Datadog, OpenTelemetry)

Core Competencies

AI leadership · ML architecture · Python · PyTorch · TensorFlow · LLMs · NLP · MLOps · model deployment · AWS · GCP · model governance · scale

Work Experience

Principal ML Engineer & Head of AI PlatformLumora AI

Mar 2019Present

Bengaluru

  • Lead a 17-person AI org (engineers + scientists) owning the ML platform behind 40+ production models serving 1.5B inferences/day.
  • Set the LLM strategy and built a RAG-based copilot that drove ₹38 crore in new ARR and cut customer support cost 28% across the product suite.
  • Architected a unified MLOps platform (Kubeflow, MLflow, feature store) that cut median model-to-production time from 6 weeks to 5 days for every team.
  • Reduced GPU training and inference spend ~₹6 crore/year via distributed training on Ray, quantization and right-sized autoscaling on Kubernetes.
  • Established model governance — bias audits, eval gates and an LLM red-teaming program — adopted as company-wide policy ahead of enterprise compliance reviews.
  • Hired 12 engineers and scientists and grew 5 into staff/lead roles; instituted the research-to-production review used across the AI org.

ML Lead / Senior Data ScientistCobalt Retail Group

Jun 2015Feb 2019

Gurugram

  • Led a team of 7 building demand-forecasting and pricing models (PyTorch, scikit-learn) across 1,200 stores, lifting forecast accuracy 19% and freeing ₹14 crore in working capital.
  • Stood up the first production ML pipeline and CI/CD for models, taking the team from quarterly notebooks to weekly automated retraining.

Data Scientist / ML EngineerEarlier roles — TCS Research, Mu Sigma

20132015

India

  • Built NLP and classical ML models across banking and analytics products; promoted twice for delivery and technical depth.

Education

M.S. Machine Learning

2013

Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru

Specialization in statistical learning and optimization

B.Tech Computer Science

2011

National Institute of Technology (NIT) Trichy, Tiruchirappalli

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Machine Learning – SpecialtyAmazon Web Services (2021)
  • Google Cloud Professional ML EngineerGoogle Cloud (2020)

Selected Achievements

  • Drove ₹38 crore in new ARR with an LLM-powered product copilot built research-to-production in under two quarters.
  • Cut ML infrastructure spend ~₹6 crore/year via distributed training, quantization and autoscaling.
  • Speaker, PyData Bangalore 2024 — "Governing LLMs in production: evals, red-teaming and guardrails."
  • Advises 2 AI startups on ML architecture; mentor at a women-in-ML fellowship.