Distributed Data
Infrastructure & Scale
About
I am a Staff Software Engineer on the Kitt Team within the Big Data & AI pillar of the Software organization at Rivian-VW Technologies, Palo Alto, CA. Additionally, I am an Affiliated Courtesy Faculty member in the Department of Scientific Computing at Florida State University, starting October 2018. I lead Dr. Anke Meyer-Baese's Research Group. I am also an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, starting August 2021. Last, I am the Founder of SlickML, an open-source software foundation building practical machine learning tools in Python.
Staff Software Engineer
I build production AI and ML platforms — from data infrastructure and model systems to the observability frameworks that keep them reliable at scale. With 10+ years across industry and research, I work at the intersection of software engineering, machine learning, and distributed data systems.
Currently leading the ConvoHealth™ platform — the observability framework for Rivian Voice Assistant. Founder of SlickML, PhD in computational science, and affiliated faculty at Florida State University. I care about systems that ship, teams that move fast, and work that holds up in production.
- Website: www.amirhessam.com
- Phone: +1 (330) 606-7855
- City: Houston, TX, USA
- Degree: PhD
- Email: atahmassebi@fsu.edu
- Freelance: Available
Facts
4
Book Chapters
0
Research Papers
0
Citations
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H-Index
Focus Areas
Where I spend most of my time building, researching, and leading ...
Check out my AI portfolio (GitHub, docs) — Production systems I shipped — rebuilt lean, still the real stack.
AI/ML Systems Ops
Production Intelligence
Observability & Platform
Reliability & Engineering
Open Source & Research
Libraries & Science
Unified Practice
● LIVE BUILDING_
Distributed Data
AI/ML Systems Ops
Observability & Platform
Open Source & Research
Résumé
To download the PDF versions, please check out my One-Page Résumé and Full CV.
Education
PhD -- Computational Science
Florida State University, Florida, USA
August 2015 - August 2018
GPA: 3.969/4.0
Advisor: Prof. Anke Meyer-Baese
Dissertation: Pattern Recognition in Medical Imaging: Supervised Learning of MRI and fMRI Data
MSc -- Computational Science
Florida State University, Florida, USA
August 2015 - December 2017
GPA: 4.0/4.0
Advisor: Prof. Anke Meyer-Baese
MSc -- Physics
University of Akron, Ohio, USA
August 2013 - August 2015
GPA: 3.982/4.0
Advisor: Prof. Alper Buldum
Dissertation: Fluid Flow Through Carbon Nanotubes And Graphene Based Nanostructures
BSc -- Physics
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
September 2006 - July 2010
GPA: 3.1/4.0
Advisor: Prof. Hamidreza Moshfegh
Academic Affiliation
Affiliated Courtesy Faculty -- Department of Scientific Computing
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA (Remote)
October 2018 - Present
- Technical Lead of Machine Learning in Dr. Anke Meyer-Baese's Research Group in the Department of Scientific Computing at Florida State University.
Adjunct Professor -- School of Information
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA (Remote)
August 2022 - Present
- Taught Data Mining and Analytics (LIS 5765) every semester from Fall 2022 through Summer 2025; Fall 2023 cross-listed as LIS 5765 / LIS 4761.
Professional Experience
Staff Software Engineer -- Rivian & Volkswagen Technologies
Palo Alto, CA, USA (Remote)
November 2024 - Present
- Led the rollout of ConvoHealth, the observability stack for Rivian Voice Assistant, scoring all in-cabin LLM calls via LLM-as-a-judge; scaled the assistant from 3.5K to 85K, then 150K vehicles.
- Drove Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs) adoption across Rivian and RV-Tech with 10+ cookiecutter templates and platform best practices spanning MLflow, Model Serving, and the broader Databricks stack.
- Designed data-ai-hub, a Python/Terraform monorepo for libraries, apps, and services on the Databricks platform (200+ MAU), with leaf-based CI/CD across GitLab workflows and in-house toolchains for linting, formatting, type checking, and unit/integration tests.
- Built shared Python libraries (logging, Databricks, MLflow, PySpark) that standardized engineering practices across 10K+ users.
Staff Data Scientist, Algorithms -- Rivian Automotive
Palo Alto, CA, USA (Remote)
September 2021 - November 2024
- Stood up AI/ML platform architecture (ZenML, Kubeflow, MLflow) across Enterprise Technology (ET) and Digital Manufacturing Engineering (DME), including factory data systems and an automated shop decision-making platform.
- Productionized Process-Health — anomaly detection and SPC for non-stationary processes in battery and drive-unit shops — with Slack, PagerDuty, and email alerts to surface impacted parts and vehicles during containments.
- Authored a ZenML/Snowpark UDF ETL path for factory test-station results whose nested formats could not be transformed via dbt ELT.
- Delivered LineConfig for the Enduro drive-unit shop ramp.
- Deployed Battery Submodule Thermography, an on-edge Physical AI model to flag anomalous laser welds on the submodule line.
- Maintained the Factory-Data GitLab Cloud repository (apps, templates, services); published 10+ internal Python libraries and DME-wide coding standards with automated lint, test, docs, and CI templates for lint/test/build/publish/deploy.
Senior Data Scientist -- ExxonMobil Corporation
Houston, TX, USA
January 2020 - September 2021
- Owned the PE attrition model for EMCC, forecasting customer churn with statistical significance to inform contract negotiations during COVID-era demand shocks.
- Introduced Dynamic Revenue Management (DRM), an interpretable rules-based pricing model for HDPE and LLDPE (CANUSA) that segmented customers and recommended monthly prices to maximize variable margin — $90M revenue impact.
- Constructed a transaction-specific pricing model for PP across the Americas, using clustering and machine learning to recommend margin-maximizing prices.
- Supervised junior data scientists on the HDPE/LLDPE and PP pricing systems, contributing $41M in additional revenue in H1 2021.
Data Scientist -- Oracle (formerly Cerner Corporation)
Kansas City, MO, USA
October 2018 - December 2019
- Shipped a BPCI-A model for NaviHealth covering 32 CMS-defined episodes, with prospective reimbursement to improve cost transparency and reduce waste.
- Created 30-day pediatric all-cause readmission models for 10 U.S. health systems (CHOC, Intermountain, Memorial Hermann, and others) on Spark/AWS.
- Implemented a 90-day pediatric asthma readmission model for CHOC.
Data Scientist -- Mynomx Inc. (Acquired by 1Health.io)
Palo Alto, CA, USA
June 2017 - August 2018
- Applied statistical methods and ML algorithms to Stanford and UK Biobank data for risk assessment and population health applications.
- Engineered datasets and pipelines for operational analysis, then scaled models on Spark/MLlib for large healthcare databases.
2-Cents
Thoughts and lessons from building products, teams, and systems.
I worked with Amirhessam at Rivian and Volkswagen Group of Technology for nearly two years on the Data-AI-Hub project. His contributions across our core data platform and Databricks ecosystem were truly game-changing — most notably architecting our unified monorepo that brought Terraform, Python, PySpark, CI/CD, and documentation under one roof. He pairs deep technical reasoning with the soft skills to navigate organizational hurdles, and his grit showed when he wrote a Golang SDK from scratch and pulled a 30-hour sprint to hit a launch deadline. He consistently delivers at Senior Staff level and beyond.
Vadivel Selvaraj
Sr. Staff Software Engineer
I managed Amir and he became one of the people I could count on most to take work over the finish line. When he picks up a project he runs with it — he reaches out to whoever he needs to, keeps stakeholders in the loop, and documents his work so thoroughly that anyone can pick it up after him. He holds a high bar for correct implementation and strong software practices, and he is not shy about speaking up when something matters. Above all else, he genuinely cares about his work.
Mike Chaykowsky
Sr. Manager, Machine Learning
I've had the pleasure of working with Amir over the last year. He is very technical, bringing expertise across architecture and system design, Go, Python, Databricks, AWS, CI/CD, MLflow for GenAI applications, OTEL, tracing, and evals. He is a great colleague, and I hope to have the opportunity to work with him again.
Benjamin Chin
Sr. Delivery Solutions Architect
I worked with Amir on Rivian's AI platform team, and he's one of the most genuinely knowledgeable engineers I've come across. He has real depth across ML systems, data infrastructure, and running models reliably in production — and he thinks in whole systems rather than one-off solutions. What makes him stand out is that he's the person everyone turns to. Across teams, he unblocks people, sets the patterns others build on, and takes ownership of the foundational work that makes everyone else more effective. I'd jump at the chance to work with Amir again.
Nitin Wahie
Staff Software Engineer, GenAI
I had the opportunity to work with Amir and enjoyed collaborating with him. He is a strong engineer with solid technical skills and a practical approach to solving problems. One of his key contributions was designing and building a pipeline that enabled teams to create Data Asset Bundles (DABs) for their production data and ML pipelines on Databricks. His work streamlined deployment and made it easier for engineers to build and manage production workflows at scale. Beyond that, Amir is collaborative, thoughtful, and always willing to share his knowledge — I'd recommend him to any team.
Anusha Mohan
Sr. Staff Software Engineer, GenAI
I have had the privilege to work closely with Amir at Rivian. He is an outstanding Python developer and has vast knowledge in AI/ML. In my tenure with Amir, he has come up with coding standards for the team. He designed and implemented our AI/ML architecture powered by ZenML and Kubeflow. Amir is very driven and does not shy away from difficult problems. I have really enjoyed working with him. I cannot recommend him enough!
Royer Ruiz
Staff DevOps Engineer
Amir is a very talented data scientist with a strong technical background in deep learning, a relentless work ethic, and the ability to solve complex data science problems. Amir is also an excellent teammate who is always open to collaborating on different techniques for solving problems and also excels in providing mentorship to his peers. Overall, a very strong data scientist with in-depth experience in machine learning and software development.
Trace Smith
Solutions Architect
From advanced medical imaging, to the newest machine learning framework, Amir was always learning new things and experimenting. His strong math and physics background proved to be very useful for tackling complex computational problems. Over the years we worked together at FSU, we also became close friends.
Eitan Lees, PhD
Co-Author of Altair & Vega-Lite Libraries
I have known Amir since Fall 2015 as my PhD student and research assistant at the Department of Scientific Computing at Florida State University. Amir demonstrated the ability to work independently with great creativity and enthusiasm. His creativity allows him to always seek and develop new solutions to the problems. He was the best PhD student I ever had!
Anke Meyer-Baese, PhD
Professor
Amirhessam is a talented data scientist. I had the pleasure of working with him at Precision Wellness. He has a high caliber of data science literacy, making it easy to technically communicate on new ideas, code modifications, and in exploring the theoretical basis of the work. His ability to tackle the diverse problems assigned to him and to quickly get up to speed to produce effective solutions was impressive.
Arsia Takeh, PhD
Director of Data Science
Amir was really great to work with at Cerner. He is very knowledgeable of the data science life cycle. He taught me a lot about feature selection and mathematical modeling. Also, he was a great resource for Python and Pandas questions. Overall, he is dedicated to doing great work, and helping to create a great collaborative culture.
Will Zimmerman
Sr. Data Engineer
Amir came to the Department of Scientific Computing with a strong physics background, where he had already discovered a strong interest and ability in computing. However, his particular interest in data science has led him to take a substantial set of courses in data mining, data management, and machine learning, to be exposed to realistic problems in medical data and medical imaging.
John Burkardt, PhD
Computational Scientist
Amir and I were classmates in a Computational Science PhD program. Amir's talent and helpfulness were impressive. He demonstrated the ability and will to help others in arenas ranging from physics to applied machine learning. His time management skills must be superlative because he was able to exceed the requirements of our program in a relatively short time, despite frequently assisting others.
Brian Bartoldson, PhD
Machine Learning Scientist
I have known Amir since I served as a University Representative on his doctoral committee. He is extremely smart, quick to learn new concepts, and bold in trying new ideas. He is a good role model for any PhD student. I am confident he will be successful in all his endeavors. He is highly recommended on my list.
Simon Foo, PhD
Professor
Contact
Prefer email or a quick call — happy to connect.