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Hercules S.

@Herculesz

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5.0
15

7.1

7.1

100%

Principal AI Engineer & Full Stack Engineer

$80 USD / Hour

Flag of

United States (4:39 AM)

Joined on December 11, 2015

4 Recommendations

$80 USD / Hour

Principal / Head AI Engineer with 25+ years of experience architecting and scaling complex software systems, now specializing in Large Language Models (LLMs), agentic workflows, and AI-first product development. Proven expertise in integrating OpenAI APIs, building RAG pipelines, and deploying scalable, production-grade LLM features using LangChain, pgvector, Pinecone, and related technologies. Hands-on leader with a track record of transforming business workflows through intelligent systems—semantic search, AI copilots, and conversational agents—while maintaining rigorous engineering standards across DevOps, observability, and frontend/backend architecture. Deep experience in embedding optimization, prompt engineering, fine-tuning GPT models, and delivering generative AI(GenAI) products that drive measurable impact. Skilled in mentoring engineers, leading cross-functional AI initiatives, and aligning technical strategy with executive goals in fast-paced, innovation-driven environments. Passionate about building the next generation of human-centered AI systems.

Verifications

On time

100%

On budget

100%

Accept rate

58%

Repeat hire rate

8%

Portfolio

Portfolio

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5.0 · 15 Reviews
Reviews
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TikTok AI Livestream Setup $500 USD

Hercules is very professional, fast, and easy to work with. Great communication and excellent technical skills. I’m very satisfied with the project and I recommend him 100%. Looking forward to working together on long-term projects.

Artur-Mihail P.

@airobotcamstudio

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Calimanesti, Romania

3 days ago

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M

HubSpot CRM & Senior Communities Site $3,000 USD

Very professional and conscientious.

Matthew G.

@matthewg78

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Sicklerville, United States

18 days ago

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NYSE Day Trading Bot $3,500 USD

Hercules S. is genius when it comes about software engineering. He is also highly educated in well-known institution. Exceptional professional in his task. Would use anytime his service in the future. He just finished complicated hands free trading robot software. Thank you very much!

Sami H.

@Samih71

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Clinton Township, United States

23 days ago

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A

Transformer-Based Bug Localization $6,700 USD

Working with Hercules on this highly complex research-level bug localization project has been an outstanding experience. He delivered everything with precision and professionalism

Amany F.

@amanyf1

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Hail, Saudi Arabia

24 days ago

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Evaluation and planning by Hercules S. $100 USD

An experience and professional developer.

Fahad A.

@Raqieh

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Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

30 days ago

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Experience

Zest AI

Feb, 2021 - Present

4 years, 9 months

Lead AI & Full-Stack Engineer

Feb, 2022 - Present

3 years, 9 months

● Led end-to-end delivery of AI features powered by LLMs across multiple enterprise systems and userfacing platforms, increasing operational efficiency by 35%. ● Designed and built Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines using LangChain + pgvector for internal knowledge Q&A and semantic support agents, improving answer accuracy by 42%. ● Implemented OpenAI Function Calling agents to automate product recommendations, onboarding, and workflow decisions, reducing manual effort by 50%.

Flag of

Burbank, United States

Principal / Head AI Engineer

Feb, 2021 - Jan, 2022

11 months, 3 days

● Spearheaded the company’s first LLM initiative — from infrastructure design to capability prototyping — establishing a foundation for 100% of future AI-driven features.● Built early prompting pipelines for classification, summarization, and natural language autofill using GPT-3.5, reducing manual processing time by 40%. ● Structured metadata, embedding schemas, and ETL pipelines to support vector-based semantic search, enabling a future 35% improvement in knowledge retrieval accuracy.

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Burbank, United States

Feb, 2021 - Present

4 years, 9 months

Senior LLM & AI Engineer

Apr, 2020 - Jan, 2021

9 months, 1 day

Hunter Boots Ltd

Apr, 2020 - Jan, 2021

9 months, 1 day

● Architected and delivered cloud infrastructure and DevOps systems to scale LLM workloads, secure inference keys, and support high-availability AI pipelines, achieving >99.99% uptime. ● Provisioned AWS Lambda, EC2, RDS, and S3 environments, enabling future-ready LLM inference endpoints and elastic scaling under load. ● Built CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and AWS CodePipeline, reducing deployment time by 60% and improving rollback reliability by 100% for AI services.

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NY, United States

Apr, 2020 - Jan, 2021

9 months, 1 day

Senior Technical Consultant & Developer

Aug, 2017 - Apr, 2020

2 years, 7 months

J. McLaughlin

Aug, 2017 - Apr, 2020

2 years, 7 months

● Designed and deployed a raw material management system using Laravel, Django, SQL Server, and Vue.js, streamlining supply chain tracking and reducing manual entry errors by 60%. ● Engineered a company-wide intranet solution using CodeIgniter, Flask, and Bootstrap, eliminating workflow silos and cutting cross-departmental task delays by 45%.

Flag of

NY, United States

Aug, 2017 - Apr, 2020

2 years, 7 months

Education

University of East London

1999 - 2000

1 year

MSc in AI & Data Science

Flag of

United Kingdom

1999 - 2000

1 year

University of East London

1996 - 1999

3 years

BSc in Computer Science

Flag of

United Kingdom

1996 - 1999

3 years

Publications

ExpressionEngine

2014

TrustRadius

ExpressionEngine is dream of any developer This is the best CMS on a market for developers. Turn your eCommerce project to a winner with Brilliantretail module. Anything can be accomplished without breaking your neck! No project will be brilliant without ExpressionEngine. Devot-ee is the place for all plugins needed to accomplish any project your client desires. http://www.trustradius.com/reviews/expressionengine-2014-04-08-08-34-47

2014

AWS Certified Solutions Architect

2010

Associate

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certificate shows knowledge of cloud computing. It helps design secure and scalable solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This certification is useful for IT professionals who want to improve their cloud skills.

2010

Certifications

P

Preferred Freelancer Program SLA

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