Welcome ๐Ÿ—ฟ

My general vibe:

  • โ€ขAI power user. Zellij, Pi, Helix, Zed, and too many agent windows open at once.
  • โ€ขInto AI infra, full-stack stuff, and making systems robust enough to just work.
  • โ€ขQuite studious and active.
Portrait of Julian Canales

Lately

Julian walking

Work

Building agent systems, microservices, and full-stack product work at Avathon. Mostly AI infrastructure, retrieval pipelines, and platform engineering.

UT Austin OMSAI

B.S. in CS & Math from UT Austin, now doing the online MS in AI part-time while working full-time. Currently taking Online Learning & Optimization and Deep Learning.

Gym, tennis & cycling

Usually try to be active 6ร— a week between lifting, tennis lessons, and cycling. Sometimes I go 6/6, other times I'm at 1/6. I play it by ear.

TV & reading

Recently finished Snowfall and Succession โ€” currently watching Shrinking. Book-wise, just read Stoner and How Machines Learn. Always something in rotation.

Work experience

Avathon logo

Data Scientist

Avathon ยท Oct 2025 โ€“ Present

โŒ„

Working across AI infrastructure, internal tools, full-stack systems, and platform decisions โ€” a lot more engineering-heavy than a pure data science role.

  • Built AI-oriented microservices and agent workflows for internal infrastructure, focusing on making systems useful, reliable, and easier to extend.
  • Created agent experiences over Avathon's proprietary computational knowledge graph, including retrieval patterns, embeddings-based workflows, and querying interfaces that made the graph significantly more usable.
  • Worked full-stack on a transport management system, especially around resource-selection configuration flows and the operational logic behind them.
  • Pitched using DBOS for workflow durability and orchestration, and helped move that idea into practice.
  • Currently working on more AI infrastructure, including Langfuse integration, while continuing to pick up stronger instincts around microservices, frontend architecture, and day-to-day DevOps realities.
IBM logo

Data Science Intern

IBM ยท May 2023 โ€“ Aug 2023

โŒ„
  • Built and deployed a Flask proof of concept integrating Watson Assistant with Db2, helping close a client deal.
  • Created a 1.5k-line Dash app using watsonx, Discovery, and a custom evaluation API for LLM comparisons.
  • Owned backend API integration for a React and Flask onboarding MVP on IBM Cloud and OpenShift.
UT Austin Computer Science logo

Undergraduate Researcher โ€” Earthquake Modeling

UT Austin ยท Jan 2024 โ€“ May 2024

โŒ„
  • Re-engineered a legacy Mathematica SDOF solver into a multithreaded Python pipeline.
  • Processed 29k+ NGA West2 records and ran 64-vCPU GCP sweeps, cutting runtime from roughly 3 years to about 2 weeks.
  • Produced interactive Plotly dashboards and a seminar deck for faculty presentation.

Selected projects

A few things I've built. Click any card for the full story.

More on GitHub
Adaptive DQN agent navigating a roundabout
RLRobustnessModel Eval

Adaptive DQN Planner

Extend a research paper's results using statistical and ML methods learned from an advanced machine learning course.

Open
Fantasy football RL draft board visualization
PythonPyTorchGymnasium

Fantasy Draft RL Agent

Spent a summer trying to teach an RL agent to draft better than me. It didn't.

Open
CUDA K-Means GPU clustering visualization
CUDAC++GPU

CUDA K-Means

Wanted to actually understand GPU programming instead of just nodding along when people say 'parallelize it.'

Open
Crabs AI assistant architecture diagram
OpenClawLightRAGSelf-Hosted

Crabs ๐Ÿฆ€ AI Assistant

Wanted an AI assistant that actually knows what I'm working on โ€” not another ChatGPT wrapper.

Open
Black-Scholes derivation paper screenshot
ProbabilityMeasure TheoryStats

Black-Scholes Derivation Paper

Wanted to actually derive Black-Scholes from scratch instead of just accepting the formula.

Open
GPU fine-grained synchronization benchmark animation
CUDAEM (GMM)Distributed Systems

GPU Fine-Grained Sync for EM (GMM)

Tried to recreate a research paper's fine-grained GPU sync ideas and see if they actually hold up.

Open

Skills

How I'd rate my skills... honestly.

AI Systems & Agent Engineering

  • LLM workflows and agent tooling4/5
  • AI eval / tracing / observability2/5
  • Embeddings and retrieval systems3/5
  • Prompting and tool orchestration5/5
  • Python services for AI products4/5

Full-Stack & Platform Engineering

  • TypeScript / modern web UI2/5
  • React / component-based frontend3/5
  • APIs and microservices4/5
  • System integration and workflow design4/5
  • DevOps / deployment debugging3/5

ML / Systems Foundations

  • PyTorch / deep learning2/5
  • RL and sequential decision making4/5
  • CUDA & parallel programming3/5
  • Probability & mathematical foundations4/5
  • Optimization mindset5/5

Let's connect

If you want to talk, feel free.

AI infra, product engineering, projects, books, blog stuff, whatever.

View resume