Developer based in Porto, Portugal.

Main areas of focus: web, machine learning, and 3D games & simulations.

• 10+ years of experience building products on the web;
• Expert on state of the art machine learning & research lab member at the Machine Learning Collective under Rosanne Liu (Google DeepMind);
• Extensive experience with the Unity engine, including as an asset store publisher.

Experience

• Freelancing since high school (2013)
• Software Engineering degree (2015-2018)
• Joined Toptal in 2017
• Joined MLC research lab in 2020

Some companies I have worked with:

• Apprentice
• Angle Health
• Transloadit
• Kitty’s Co.
• Youblicity
• Kogneta

My full work history is available on LinkedIn.

Some languages I tend to work with frequently are JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, C#, and Bash. I have also worked with most popular machine learning libraries, including TensorFlow, PyTorch, and JAX.

I am comfortable working with most tech stacks, and happy to pick up any I haven’t worked with before. I believe the tools are a means to an end, and at the end of the day it’s all about creating value for the end user.

Side projects

Working on my own projects is a large part of what I spend my time on. Below are some of the things I’ve done.

Machine learning

• Derived backpropagation from scratch to develop an intuitive understanding of the algorithm powering modern ML models
• Applied neural cellular automata models to the abstraction and reasoning corpus as part of my research at MLC
• Experimented with neural network weight compression using low-rank matrix approximation
• Applied LLMs to NPCs in virtual worlds, triggering actions based on model output

Game development

• Published a mesh optimization tool in the Unity asset store (my first profitable side project)
• Researched frame rate independence
• Implemented Fowler–Noll–Vo 1a hash in C# as part of my procedural generation efforts
• Working on an infinite terrain generator based on a graph editor (inspired by shader graph). Currently looking into using the browser as a UI due to insufficient support for graph-based UIs in the Unity editor.

Web

• Built flappy goat, a web-based clone of the hit mobile game, in pure JavaScript
• Published Twitter Infinite Scroll Disabler, a browser extension that replaced Twitter’s infinite scroll with a “show more” button
• Built a modular web questionnaire scaffolding and published should you have some coffee
• Built Watch Together, a browser extension for synchronizing video players across multiple users on a popular web streaming service
• Set up a VPS in a repeatable way, with zero manual steps
• Wrote a checklist for using SQLite on personal web projects in the safest & cleanest possible way

Links

• Personal website (you are here)
• X
• GitHub
• Toptal
• LinkedIn

How to reach out

DM on X or email@marcospereira.me.