Intro

I'm Richie Turiano, a production AI engineer based in Gainesville, Florida. I build and deploy machine learning, LLM, and data systems that hold up at enterprise scale: from NLP and threat-detection pipelines to MLOps infrastructure and full-stack cloud platforms.

Over 5+ years at Cisco's Talos Intelligence and beyond, I've focused on the engineering that turns AI research into reliable, customer-facing software: fine-tuning models, structuring sensitive training data, and shipping services that stay up. I hold a B.S. in Computer Science & Philosophy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Experience

Data Analytics Engineer

July 2025 - Dec 2025

Louisiana Pacific

Nashville, TN

Engineered Python, Snowflake, and dbt pipelines integrating Salesforce data into a medallion architecture, replacing manual quarterly reporting and saving 40+ hours per cycle through real-time analytics and Tableau dashboards.

Data Analytics Engineer

July 2025 - Dec 2025

Louisiana Pacific

Nashville, TN

Engineered Python, Snowflake, and dbt pipelines integrating Salesforce data into a medallion architecture, replacing manual quarterly reporting and saving 40+ hours per cycle through real-time analytics and Tableau dashboards.

Machine Learning Engineer — NLP & Data Systems

Jan 2022 – May 2025

Cisco Talos

Remote

Developed and fine-tuned NLP and LLM-based classification pipelines (PyTorch, Hugging Face, BERT, LLaMA) that reduced false positives by 20%, and operationalized ML deployment with Kubeflow, MLflow, and Databricks.

Machine Learning Engineer — NLP & Data Systems

Jan 2022 – May 2025

Cisco Talos

Remote

Developed and fine-tuned NLP and LLM-based classification pipelines (PyTorch, Hugging Face, BERT, LLaMA) that reduced false positives by 20%, and operationalized ML deployment with Kubeflow, MLflow, and Databricks.

Machine Learning Engineer — NLP & Data Systems

Jan 2022 – May 2025

Cisco Talos

Remote

Developed and fine-tuned NLP and LLM-based classification pipelines (PyTorch, Hugging Face, BERT, LLaMA) that reduced false positives by 20%, and operationalized ML deployment with Kubeflow, MLflow, and Databricks.

DevOps/Full Stack Software Engineer

Jul 2020 – Jan 2022

Cisco Systems · CX Platform

Remote

Built TypeScript/React dashboards and Python/SQL ETL services that lifted user engagement by 20%, integrating cloud-native infrastructure across Kubernetes, Terraform, and AWS for globally distributed teams.

DevOps/Full Stack Software Engineer

Jul 2020 – Jan 2022

Cisco Systems · CX Platform

Remote

Built TypeScript/React dashboards and Python/SQL ETL services that lifted user engagement by 20%, integrating cloud-native infrastructure across Kubernetes, Terraform, and AWS for globally distributed teams.

Data Engineering Intern

Jun 2019 – Sep 2019

BoostedAI

New York, NY

Built a data pipeline from scratch to ingest and process external FRED economic data using Python APIs and Pandas, delivering clean, analysis-ready datasets for downstream modeling and research workflows.

Data Engineering Intern

Jun 2019 – Sep 2019

BoostedAI

New York, NY

Built a data pipeline from scratch to ingest and process external FRED economic data using Python APIs and Pandas, delivering clean, analysis-ready datasets for downstream modeling and research workflows.

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Philosophy

Sep 2016 – May 2020

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Troy, NY

Coursework spanned machine learning fundamentals, linear algebra, bioinformatics, and big data systems — including building transformer architectures from scratch based on the "Attention Is All You Need" paper, applied to protein structure prediction in the style of AlphaFold. Complemented by advanced study in AI ethics, philosophy of mind, and the history of democratic thought.

Master of Science in Computer Science

Sep 2016 – May 2020

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Troy, NY

Coursework spanned machine learning fundamentals, linear algebra, bioinformatics, and big data systems — including building transformer architectures from scratch based on the "Attention Is All You Need" paper, applied to protein structure prediction in the style of AlphaFold. Complemented by advanced study in AI ethics, philosophy of mind, and the history of democratic thought.

License & Certification

Generative AI with Large Language Models

Issued 2025

Generative AI with Large Language Models

Issued 2025