Vaibhav Lalwani / SYSTEMS·26 Résumé

Available for selected roles / Liverpool, UK / MSc Data Science & AI

AI systems that hold up in the real world.

I design and ship production LLM applications, retrieval pipelines and agent products, end to end — from evaluation and backend architecture to interfaces people can trust.

VL / AI SYSTEMS2026.08
Vaibhav Lalwani
Vaibhav Lalwani AI Systems Engineer
Shipping now 20+ builds
20+
Products & experiments shipped
Winner
HydraDB Connectors & Build Blitz · 2026
Finalist
Wikithon · 2026
1
Archived research preprint
01 / Selected work

Proof, not prototypes.

Three systems that show how I think: grounded answers, safer agent memory, and knowledge interfaces that make complex data usable.

02 / SAFETY
HydraSentry: a memory-integrity firewall catching a poisoned memory before an agent acts on it Winner · Build Blitz
Agent memory integrity · 2026

HydraSentry

A memory-integrity layer that checks retrieved context before an agent acts. It surfaces suspicious provenance, blocks unsafe execution and produces a signed integrity certificate for review.

OutcomeHydraDB Build Blitz winner, built as a solo end-to-end system.
  • HydraDB
  • Agent security
  • Groq
  • FastAPI
  • Vercel
03 / KNOWLEDGE
Qyntra: a personal knowledge workspace with a 3D galaxy view of connected files Finalist · Wikithon
Personal knowledge system · 2026

Qyntra

A personal knowledge system that turns uploaded material into grounded answers and a navigable 3D relationship map. It makes the source landscape visible instead of hiding retrieval behind a chat box.

OutcomeWikithon 2026 finalist, designed and built solo.
  • RAG
  • Next.js
  • 3D
  • Vercel
Selected for depth. The archive contains 15 documented builds. Explore the full archive
02 / About

Where models meet systems.

I am an AI systems engineer and MSc Advanced Data Science & AI student at the University of Liverpool.

I work across the full product path: retrieval and evaluation, model orchestration, APIs, data, deployment and the interface that exposes the evidence. The goal is not an impressive prompt. It is a system that behaves clearly when the input is messy, a dependency fails or a user asks “why?”

I am currently open to UK part-time AI/software roles and internships, plus graduate opportunities from 2027.

  1. 01
    Ground the answer

    Trace outputs to sources, evaluations or observable system state.

  2. 02
    Design the failure path

    Make fallbacks, limits and uncertainty visible before they become incidents.

  3. 03
    Ship the whole experience

    Architecture and interface are one product, not two separate demos.

03 / Experience

Where I've shipped.

Apr – May 2026 Remote

AI Engineer, Full-Stack · Meta Solution Technologies

  • Built full-stack features on Next.js 15, React 19, TypeScript and Tailwind over a Python LLM back end.
  • Shipped structured-output LLM pipelines with OpenAI, backed by Postgres and pgvector for retrieval.
  • Wired Supabase auth (OAuth, magic-link, PKCE) and a BullMQ + Redis job queue for background work.
  • Delivered a 10-language i18n layer and used AI-assisted coding tools daily for refactors and review.
Jan – Apr 2026 Part-time · Remote

Software Engineer · Recruit Pilot

  • Part-time engineering under Chris Hines: features, fixes, and product work on a live codebase.
  • Worked across the stack against real deadlines and real users.
May 2024 – Jan 2026 Self-employed

AI Engineer, Freelance · Self-Employed

  • Shipped 20+ applications and 5 autonomous agents end to end, from prototype to deploy.
  • Integrated OpenAI, Claude and other model APIs into production products on tight timelines.
  • Owned the whole stack: data, model plumbing, back end, front end, and ship.
Mar – May 2025 Internship

Front-End Intern · Unified Mentor

  • Built responsive, accessible interfaces and shipped production front-end work.
04 / Recognition

Wins & security work.

Hack HydraDB · two authorised security rounds

Two separate authorised engagements against HydraDB. One placed top 3 in a competitive hack; the second was a structured owned-tenant assessment. Reported through coordinated disclosure; sensitive specifics withheld.

Round 01 · Hackathon Top 3 of 20+

Hack HydraDB

Found an authentication / credential-handling weakness reachable without proper authorisation. Placed in the top 3 of a field of 20-plus.

Technical specifics, payloads, and affected endpoints withheld under responsible disclosure.

Round 02 · Bug bash 6 defects

Hack HydraDB · July

Authorised read-only assessment of an owned tenant. Filed 6 reproducible defects across reliability, input validation, and API-contract correctness. Tenant isolation held throughout, with no data exposure; the core security proved sound.

Defect detail shared privately with the maintainers.

★ Winner · 2026

HydraDB × Connectors Hackathon

Won with QueueProof, an evidence-backed cross-source retrieval workspace where every claim opens back to its source record.

See the build →
★ Winner · 2026

HydraDB Build Blitz

Won the Build Blitz with HydraSentry, a graph-native context-integrity harness on HydraDB.

See the build →
Finalist · 2026

Wikithon '26

Reached the finals with Qyntra, a self-organising wiki, built solo in roughly a day.

See the build →
Entry · 2026

Agents Under Pressure '26

Entered DelOS, a delegation operating layer for coordinating multiple agents under load.

See the build →
05 / Research

Written down.

Position paper · corrected v2

NEXUS

The corrected version 2 presents the architecture and analytical latency model without claiming prototype or gameplay-corpus results. It also repairs the citation error documented after v1.

Corrected v2 · Original v1 DOI archived

06 / Stack

What I build with.

AI & LLM

  • OpenAI API
  • Claude API
  • Groq
  • RAG / retrieval
  • Agents & tools
  • QLoRA fine-tuning
  • Structured outputs

Frontend

  • React 19
  • Next.js 15
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind
  • Vite
  • HTML / CSS

Backend

  • Python
  • FastAPI
  • Node.js
  • BullMQ + Redis
  • REST APIs

Data

  • Postgres
  • pgvector
  • Supabase
  • HydraDB
  • MongoDB
  • Vector search

Ship

  • Vercel
  • Cloud Run
  • Docker
  • Git / GitHub
  • OAuth / PKCE
  • i18n
07 / Education

Credentials.

Jan 2026 – Jan 2027

MSc Advanced Data Science & AI

University of Liverpool, UK

2022 – 2025

BCA · Computer Applications

Christ University, Bengaluru

Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals

VYN3SU1H9I3Z · Nov 2025

Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals

H4BG7UI694TN · Nov 2025

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

2W2FIN6EVBSL · Nov 2025

Microsoft Azure AI Engineer

OO1BFMY72ZDB · Nov 2025

Google · Foundations

ZDO3B89P0WKZ · Nov 2025

08 / Contact

Have a hard AI problem? Let's talk.

Open to UK part-time AI/software roles and internships, plus graduate opportunities from 2027. Fastest reply is email or LinkedIn.