Staff ML/AI Engineer @ DataArt

Ruben Esteche

I design and ship production AI systems — from RAG platforms and conversational agents to the cloud infrastructure that keeps them alive. Physicist by training, engineer by craft.

$ ▊

Explore my work Download resume

ruben@production: ~/ai-systems

$ whoami
staff-ml-engineer · physicist · builder

$ cat expertise.yaml
nlp_llms:  [RAG, agents, transformers, fine-tuning]
mlops:     [docker, k8s, ci/cd, IaC, vertex-ai]
cloud:     [aws, gcp, azure]
backend:   [python, fastapi, vector-dbs, graph-dbs]

$ uptime --experience
7+ years in data science & ML — all systems live

$ ./deploy --env prod
✓ pipeline green · shipping intelligence

From wave functions
to production AI

Hello! I'm Ruben — a Staff ML/AI Engineer at DataArt, where I steer architectural strategy and cross-team execution for AI systems serving major financial institutions.

My path started in theoretical quantum physics — researching arrival-time and tunneling-time distributions at the Federal University of Pernambuco. The same instinct that drew me to modeling nature's uncertainty now drives me to build systems that reason over language: RAG platforms, conversational agents, and metadata-extraction pipelines running in production for companies like Bosch, NTT Data and Dell.

I care about the full lifecycle — not just the model, but the ingestion layers, vector & graph databases, CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure that make AI reliable at scale. When I'm not shipping, I write about ML and physics on my blog.

0+years in data & ML

0companies, startup → enterprise

0languages spoken

Experience

Seven years shipping data and AI products — from junior data scientist to staff-level architecture ownership.

Jun 2025 — Present Promoted

DataArt

Remote · AI/ML for corporate financial institutions

Jul 2026 — Present ↑ Staff

Staff ML/AI Engineer

Overseeing architectural strategy, technical standards and cross-team execution for AI/ML systems serving major corporate financial institutions.

AI Architecture
Technical Leadership
FinTech

Jun 2025 — Jul 2026

Senior ML/AI Engineer

Built an AI agent that turns institutional databases into conversational applications — chain-of-thought structured responses, source tracking and interactive financial plotting. Designed metadata-extraction pipelines and hierarchical chunking systems natively integrated with AWS Lambda ingestion, over vector and graph databases.

RAG
Agents
AWS · IaC
Vector & Graph DBs

Jul 2024 — Jun 2025

Senior ML/MLOps Engineer · Bosch AI Hub

Architected production conversational AI, enterprise chatbots and RAG platforms with LLMs and deep NLP. Engineered scalable Azure environments with CI/CD, Docker and Kubernetes — cutting development lifecycle time by ~50%. Collaborated on computer-vision product design.

LLMs
Azure
Kubernetes
Computer Vision

Jan 2023 — Jul 2024 Promoted

NTT Data

São Paulo, Brazil · Enterprise NLP & MLOps

Mar 2024 — Jul 2024 ↑ Lead

Lead Data Scientist & MLOps Engineer

Led the project's AI division — backlog grooming, agile sprints, team performance and resolution of complex algorithmic bottlenecks. Acted as principal stakeholder ensuring uptime and continuous support for live production AI.

Team Leadership
AIaaS
Production Ownership

Jan 2023 — Feb 2024

Data Scientist & MLOps Engineer

Shipped an enterprise NLP chatbot system reaching 92% classification precision, deployed DataOps pipelines for automated model deliveries, governed end-to-end MLOps architecture compliance, and built generative AI-as-a-Service on structured microservices.

NLP
DataOps
Microservices

Jun 2022 — Jan 2023

ML Researcher & Backend Developer · Dell Lead

Web scraping, text classification and custom ML for a global-scale web accessibility initiative. Integrated NLP modules into high-throughput RESTful microservices; improved training/inference speed by 10% and compute-efficiency by 15%+.

Text Classification
REST APIs
Model Optimization

Jan 2019 — Dec 2021

Data Scientist · Sugestão Consultoria

From junior to technical lead of data-intelligence initiatives: predictive architectures with a 90% accuracy floor driving ~10% bottom-line expansion for clients, behavioral demand-forecast models at 95% accuracy, and automated ingestion pipelines.

Predictive Modeling
BI
Consulting

Selected projects

Open-source work spanning generative AI, NLP tooling and computational physics.

◈ ★ 11

Stable Diffusion API

Full backend for generative image creation — a REST API wrapping Stable Diffusion for unique image synthesis, ready for production integration.

Python
GenAI
REST API

◇ ★ 2

Google Scholar Bot

Telegram bot that manages connections to Google Scholar and lets you interact with academic search results conversationally.

Python
Bots
Scholarly APIs

∿ ★ 3

Physical Simulations

A series of physics simulations in C and Python exploring numerical methods for differential equations — from wave packets to chaotic systems.

C · Python
Numerical Methods
Physics

⬡ ★ 0

BERT-nha

A study case of BERT and LLMs in general through Noronha — dissecting transformer internals with an MLOps-first workflow.

Transformers
MLOps
NLP

◎ ★ 1

LinkedIn Analysis

Data analysis of my own LinkedIn network — graph exploration and visualization of professional connection patterns.

Jupyter
Data Viz
Networks

✦ ★ 1

Manim Studies

Educational math animations built with Manim — turning abstract mathematics into beautiful, shareable visual explanations.

Manim
Education
Math Viz

Browse all repositories →

Stack & domains

The tools I reach for when taking AI from notebook to production.

🧠

AI · NLP · LLMs

Building systems that understand and generate language, grounded and observable.

RAG
LLM Agents
Transformers
Generative AI
Deep Learning
Computer Vision
CNNs
Statistical Modeling

⚙️

MLOps & Infra

Reliable pipelines from ingestion to inference — automated, versioned, reproducible.

Docker
Kubernetes
CI/CD
IaC
Azure DevOps
Vertex AI
DataOps
Vector & Graph DBs

☁️

Cloud Platforms

Multi-cloud production experience across the three major providers.

AWS Lambda
ECS
S3
API Gateway
GCP
Microsoft Azure

🛠️

Backend & Languages

Solid engineering foundations under every model I ship.

Python
FastAPI
Flask
Django
SQL
C / C++
Redis
MongoDB
ElasticSearch

Certifications

GCP
Professional Machine Learning EngineerGoogle Cloud · 2025
GCP
Build & Deploy ML Solutions on Vertex AIGoogle Cloud · 2025
GCP
Generative AI FundamentalsGoogle Cloud Skills Boost · 2023
ICTP
School of Research Data ScienceICTP-SAIFR · 2022
IBM
Databases & SQL for Data ScienceIBM · 2022
UFC
CNN Design with TensorFlowFederal University of Ceará · 2020

Research & writing

Before LLMs, I modeled time itself — quantum foundations research that still shapes how I think about uncertainty.

M.Sc. Research

A Space-Time Symmetric Extension of Quantum Mechanics

Developed a new space-conditional solution for particles under time-dependent initial conditions, benchmarked against absorptive-potential models and probability-current time distributions. Presented at national physics conferences and defended at UFPE.

Numerical models ↗ Defense recording ↗

Undergraduate Research

Fluid Interfaces: Curvature Relations & Euler Elastics

Revisited Euler's elastica to analytically describe curvature relations in two-fluid immiscible systems, complemented by numerical simulation of nonlinear ODEs and laboratory experiments.

Presentation ↗

Blog

REsteche's Lab Notebook

Educational posts where physics meets machine learning — deep-learning text projects, gaussian wave packets, Lorenz attractors, statistical mechanics and more, all as executable notebooks.

Read the blog ↗

Education

2023

M.Sc. Theoretical Quantum Physics

Federal University of Pernambuco

Minor in Computational Physics. Thesis on arrival & tunneling time distributions in a space-time symmetric formalism. CAPES graduate fellowship.

2022

Postgraduate Degree, Data Science

Descomplica University

Specialization covering statistical learning, ML engineering practice and applied data science.

2020

B.Sc. Physics