I build software, research AI, and teach both.
Lead Software Engineer @GCash (backend for 94M+ users) ·
AI Research Scientist @Mapúa ·
MS in AI @UT Austin
I'm a builder who never really picked one lane — and stopped apologizing for it. Days I'm shipping backend microservices that keep money moving for 94M+ users at GCash. Other days I'm training vision models to spot wildfires from the air, or in class for my Master's in AI at UT Austin. And I genuinely love teaching the stuff once it clicks. Big fan of hackathons, automating anything I'm too lazy to do twice, and the occasional kalimba break. 🎶
My whole thing is passion & excellence — whether it's a production system or a research paper, I want it to actually work.
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Backend & platform engineering at scale — Java/Spring Boot, Python/FastAPI, Kafka, Redis, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD. Systems that don't fall over. |
Computer vision & ML — IEEE + ACM published. YOLOv12 wildfire detection at 93.1% mAP@50, real-time on the edge. |
Ex-university instructor, open-source contributor, and mentor. I break AI/ML down into plain English and share what I learn. |
Featured writings
- Can't Use Cloud AI on Patient Data? — ICU Mortality Predictor with Local LLMs — Running Gemma 4 & Qwen3 Coder on-device with MIMIC-III clinical data for my UT Austin AI in Healthcare course.
Local AI · Healthcare AI · Machine Learning - Running Local LLMs With LM Studio — Testing small models for real tasks (Filipino privacy-law assistant) and learning what local AI can actually deliver today.
Local AI · Machine Learning - I Bought a Raspberry Pi Because AWS Humbled Me — After one too many idle EC2 bills, I bought a Pi and let it do the quiet work on my desk.
Cloud & Infra · Hardware
- Hermes Agent — Contributing terminal customization and safeguards that prevent unresolved task failures from becoming reusable agent skills.
Python · TypeScript · React · Agentic AI - Zed — Contributing horizontal scrolling for wide Markdown tables to the high-performance code editor.
Rust · Markdown · UI - bettergovph/bettergov — Contributor to the Philippines' civic-tech platform (486★). Fixed map rendering, search pagination, and multilingual responsive nav.
React · TypeScript · Meilisearch · Cloudflare - Data Engineering Open Track — Contributor to Data Engineering Pilipinas' open-source learning track as part of its leadership team.
Data Engineering · Open Source · Community
I work on applied computer vision and ML. Full list on my ORCID profile.
- Classification of Philippine Soybean Variety Using Image Processing and Machine Learning — IEEE I2CACIS 2024
- Detection of Water Hyacinth on the Pasig River via YOLOv7 — ACM CIIS 2023
- 🏦 Backend for 94M+ users in FinTech at GCash
- 🔥 93.1% mAP@50 wildfire detection (YOLOv12, 33ms inference) — with ASU & Cintana Alliance
- 📄 2 peer-reviewed papers (IEEE I2CACIS, ACM CIIS) → ORCID
- ☁️ 5× AWS certified + Azure Developer Associate
- 🤖 Ranked #1 of 429 developers in AI-assisted dev adoption at GCash
- 🏆 NASA Space Apps global nominee · multiple hackathon wins · Magna Cum Laude
◆ Passion & Excellence — build things that work, research things that matter, teach so others can do both.
📫 jdmntec@gmail.com · 🌐 jcdiamante.com