Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Elshaday Yirga

Software development team lead, exploring AI and machine learning.

career.fit() loss 1.000
status: still training
01 / About

Curious about how machines learn

I'm a software engineer with 6 years of experience building and shipping web and mobile products. I started as a front-end intern, grew into building cross-platform apps end to end, and today I lead a software development team of 15+ members delivering a SaaS platform.

Leading a team taught me how real systems get built, released and kept reliable. Alongside that, I've been exploring AI and machine learning: learning the math and modelling side properly, and building projects like Loom and Genie to understand how models work from the inside.

02 / Experience

Work log

  1. #01

    Swenetix Tech PLC

    formerly Addis Software · Addis Ababa · Dec 2020 – Present

    Software Development Team Lead Current

    • Lead a software development team of 15+ members building and maintaining a SaaS platform.
    • Plan and run agile delivery cycles, turning stakeholder requirements into prioritised features and releases.
    • Set engineering practices and code quality standards; mentor engineers through code reviews and pairing.

    Web & Native App Developer From Mar 2021

    • Built scalable web applications and cross-platform mobile apps with React, React Native and TypeScript.
    • Defined project structure and front-end architecture for new codebases; published iOS and Android apps.
    • Prototyped and designed user interfaces in Figma with a strong focus on user experience.

    Frontend Developer Intern Dec 2020 – Mar 2021

    • Worked on front-end tasks as part of a development team, contributing to web application features.
03 / Projects

Things I'm building

Loom

In progress

A codebase agent: ask questions about a repository, trace logic across files, and get answers grounded in real code locations. Built to learn AI/ML engineering across the whole stack (application, agent, a custom-trained specialist model and self-hosted serving), not just by calling an API. Runs fully locally.

  • AST-based, token-aware chunking of the Celery codebase (~43.5k lines) into ~3,150 chunks across 151 files
  • Local 768-dimension embeddings with sentence-transformers, stored for vector search
  • Next: similarity search, the retrieval agent, an evaluation harness, then embedding fine-tuning

Python · RAG · Embeddings · Vector search · LLM agents

View on GitHub

Genie

In progress

A family tree app that will use an LLM to suggest potential relatives you may be connected to. The backend models people and relationships as a graph, with user accounts, family groups and phone-based sign-in.

  • FastAPI service with PostgreSQL (SQLAlchemy + Alembic) for users and groups
  • Neo4j graph database for family relationships
  • OTP phone verification and token-based authentication

Python · FastAPI · PostgreSQL · Neo4j · LLMs

View on GitHub
04 / Skills

Toolkit

AI / ML
Python, embeddings & vector search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), LLM application development
Languages
JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, HTML, CSS
Frontend & mobile
React, Redux, React Native, Svelte, Tailwind CSS
Backend & data
FastAPI, Node.js, Express, PostgreSQL, Neo4j, MongoDB
Engineering
Git, CI/CD, Agile/Scrum, code review, release management
Leadership
Team leadership, mentoring, delivery planning, stakeholder management
05 / Now

What I'm working on

Leading

Agile delivery and engineering standards for a SaaS platform.

Learning

Machine learning fundamentals and the math behind them.

Completed

AI Engineering training, DataCamp.

06 / Contact

Say hello

Always happy to talk software, AI and ML. yirga.elshaday@gmail.com

Location
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia