SK/DONTHI
HAM --:--:--

CURRENTLY · BUILDING AGENTS FOR SHIPS AT SEA

DISCOVER. DESIGN. BUILD. SHIP.

Applied AI engineer with ten years of fullstack behind me, building multi-agent systems that run aboard cruise ships, where the cloud is 300 ms away on a good day.

ROLEAPPLIED AI ENGINEER
FOCUSAI · FULLSTACK · AGENTS
PORTHAMBURG · 53.55°N
STATUSOPEN TO CONVERSATIONS

SCROLL TO EXPLORE ↓

MY COMPASS

I don't fall in love with ideas.
I fall in love with solving the customer's problem.

LOG 01 · WHO'S ABOARD

CUSTOMER-FIRST ENGINEER
WHO LEARNED TO SHIP.

A decade in product engineering taught me that great software starts with the people using it, not the framework you pick. I bring that same discipline to AI: understand the operator, the domain, and the workflow first; choose the model and the stack second.

At Xcontrol I sit aboard vessels with customers before I write a line of code. I run discovery sessions with cruise line operators and ship IT crews, capture what actually breaks in daily operations, and translate that into product specs the team can build against, then into AI features that fit the workflow rather than the demo reel.

I hold a high bar for what production means: observable, resilient, explainable, and fast enough that no one reaches for the spreadsheet instead. I'm newer to applied AI than I am to product engineering, and I treat that as an advantage. I ship AI the way I've shipped products for ten years: small, useful, and accountable to the customer.

ENGLISH · PROFESSIONALTELUGU · NATIVE HINDI · NATIVEGERMAN · WORKING
LOG 02 · OPERATING PRINCIPLES

STANDING ORDERS.

P-01

Be obsessed with your customer

I run discovery sessions with operators before writing a line of code. Real problems, not assumed ones, drive every architecture decision.

P-02

Raise the bar

Flakiness is a blocker, not an edge case. I hold production to a standard where observable, resilient, and fast are non-negotiable minimums.

P-03

Better together

The best outcomes come from engineering, operations, and customers in the same conversation. I work to close that gap, not widen it.

P-04

Act as an owner

I take end-to-end responsibility: from requirements through deployment, onboarding ship IT teams, and staying available when things break at sea.

P-05

Find joy in what you do

Whether debugging an agent loop or explaining RAG to a crew member who's never heard of an LLM, I find the work genuinely worth doing.

P-06

Your principle

What value matters most to your team? Click to add it. I'm here to adapt, grow, and build around what makes your organisation excellent.

LOG 03 · VOYAGE LOG

HYDERABAD → HAMBURG,
ONE WAYPOINT AT A TIME.

WP-05 · HAMBURG · 53.55°N 9.99°E UNDERWAY MAR 2025 - PRESENT

Applied AI Engineer · Xcontrol GmbH

  • Run discovery sessions directly with cruise line operators before writing a line of code, translating real operational pain into precise AI product specs that the team actually builds against.
  • Built multi-agent orchestration pipelines using LangGraph + MCP, holding a production bar where flakiness is a blocker: agents self-select tools, delegate subtasks, and recover from failures without human intervention.
  • Took end-to-end ownership of AI deployments aboard vessels: infrastructure setup, onboarding ship IT staff, authoring runbooks for self-sufficient operation, and staying available when things break mid-ocean.
  • Designed agent memory via Redis Streams and per-tenant vector persistence so agents continuously improve from each customer interaction without retraining cycles.
  • Collaborated across Xcontrol engineering, cruise line operations, and third-party vessel IT to align on requirements and rollout plans, bridging deep technical work with real-world operator needs.
  • Implemented offline-first architecture with sync queues and local inference fallback, ensuring zero data loss and continued operation through multi-hour satellite outages.
  • Took the initiative to migrate xtv-platform's guest-facing TV apps from DOM rendering to Lightning Blits (WebGL): built the proving prototype and the shared widget kit, taking cabin-TV UIs from janky scrolling to a steady 60 fps on real panels.
  • Secured end-to-end pipelines via JWT/OIDC passthrough from Spring Boot identity services into distributed AI inference nodes.
LANGGRAPHMCPRAGQDRANTREDIS KUBERNETESJWTMARITIME SAAS
WP-04 · HAMBURG · 53.55°N 9.99°E AUG 2021 - SEP 2025

Project Lead Developer · Xcontrol GmbH

  • Owned end-to-end delivery of SaaS features for maritime clients, from customer requirements sessions through design, build, and production rollout across Angular frontend and Spring Boot backend.
  • Raised the bar on UI quality by building reusable, accessible component libraries that cut delivery time for new client dashboards by standardising patterns across the engineering team.
  • Partnered with product, operations, and client stakeholders to shape roadmap priorities, ensuring engineering effort tracked directly to customer impact rather than internal assumptions.
ANGULARSPRING BOOTPOSTGRESQLREST APISDOCKER
WP-03 · HYDERABAD · 17.39°N 78.49°E DEC 2020 - JUN 2021

Lead Software Engineer · Aureus Tech Systems (Swiss Re)

  • Developed ERP system for Swiss Re incorporating KPIs and analytics on policies, claims, and renewals.
  • Built APIs in Spring Boot and highly interactive frontend in Angular + Highcharts.js.
  • Participated in business discussions, product roadmap, UX/UI reviews, and system design meetings.
SPRING BOOTANGULARHIGHCHARTS.JSAZURE DEVOPS
WP-02 · HYDERABAD · 17.39°N 78.49°E MAY 2016 - DEC 2020

Software Engineer · ValueLabs

  • MEAN stack product development in Service Oriented Architecture using Agile methodology.
  • Developed SSO framework with JWT, core shared Angular modules, and REST APIs in Node.js.
  • Wrote API documentation in Confluence; led scrum ceremonies and agile process management.
ANGULARNODE.JSMONGODBJWTSSO
WP-01 · HYDERABAD · 17.39°N 78.49°E · DEPARTURE JUN 2015 - APR 2016

Trainee Software Engineer · ValueLabs

  • Started my professional career as a fresher and learned software fundamentals and SDLC the right way: pairing with seniors, writing real production code, and shipping behind feature flags.
  • Built foundational backend skills in Java, Spring, and MySQL alongside frontend work in JavaScript and jQuery, picking up the habits of code review, testing, and clean delivery early.
  • Established the customer-first instinct that still drives me: ask why before how, and treat every requirement as a hypothesis to validate, not a spec to blindly implement.
JAVASPRINGMYSQLJAVASCRIPTJQUERYSDLC
LOG 04 · INSTRUMENTS & CARGO

WHAT I BUILD WITH.

AGT AGENTIC AI

LangGraphMCPRAGReActPlan-and-Execute LangChainLLM RoutingAgentic OrchestrationTool Calling

ML AI / ML

TensorFlowDeep LearningOpenCVMediaPipeQdrant Vector SearchEmbedding ModelsKnowledge Graphs

BE BACKEND

Spring BootNode.jsJavaPythonPostgreSQL RedisRedis StreamsMySQLREST APIs

FE FRONTEND

AngularTypeScriptJavaScriptRxJS Highcharts.jsHTML/CSS

OPS DEVOPS & INFRA

DockerKubernetesDocker ComposeK8s Operators AzureCI/CD

SEC ARCHITECTURE & SECURITY

MicroservicesSOAJWTOIDCSSO Multi-tenantSystem DesignOffline-First

DOM DOMAIN

Maritime SaaSCruise TechRequirements Engineering Customer DiscoveryTechnical OnboardingStakeholder Management Product Roadmap
LOG 05 · DISPATCHES

NOTES FROM THE ENGINE ROOM.

MARITIME AI5 MIN

AI Systems That Run at Sea

Deploying LLM pipelines aboard cruise ships taught me things no cloud architecture blog ever will. Connectivity is a lie. Latency is religion. And your IT team is probably also the chef's assistant.

READ →
TV PLATFORM6 MIN

Sixty Frames on a Cabin TV

Nobody put the Lightning Blits migration on the roadmap, so I built the prototype that did. The widget kit, the strangler rollout, and the on-device numbers that ended the framework debate.

READ →
DEVELOPER TOOLS8 MIN

Teaching an AI Agent to Hold the Remote

Building tv-mcp, an open-source MCP server that lets AI agents build, deploy, and debug web apps on Samsung and LG TVs — and the three bugs a real hospitality panel found in one afternoon.

READ →
SYSTEM DESIGN7 MIN

A Baby Monitor for Cruise Cabins

Streaming live baby-monitor video to parents across a ship's WLAN, with no internet. WebRTC, an edge SFU, audio cry-detection, and the offline constraint that reshapes everything.

READ →
PRODUCT ENGINEERING4 MIN

Why AI Engineers Must Talk to Customers

The requirements you think you have are rarely the ones you need. A framework for running discovery sessions that actually change what you build.

READ →
CAREER6 MIN

From Full-Stack to Agentic AI: My Journey

10 years of Angular, Spring Boot, and Node.js gave me a foundation. LangGraph, MCP, and a cruise ship gave me a mission. Here's how the transition happened.

READ →
RECOMMENDATIONS3 MIN

What Colleagues Say

Testimonials from Shivkumar Iyer and Vasu Thammaiah (Xcontrol) and Kishore Geekuru (ValueLabs) on technical depth, architecture, delivery, and growth.

READ →
LOG 06 · CERTIFICATIONS
AI IN HEALTHCAREUDACITY · OCT 2022
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCETECHLABS HAMBURG · SEP 2022
ENTREPRENEURSHIP: BRIDGE YOUR IDEASTARTUP BRIDGE · AUG 2022
AI & MACHINE LEARNINGIIIT HYDERABAD · SEP 2019
LOG 07 · OPEN A CHANNEL

GOT A HARD PROBLEM
WORTH SHIPPING?

Open to conversations about agentic AI, maritime tech, SaaS product engineering, or just interesting problems. I reply within 48 hours.

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