𝐖𝐀𝐐𝐀𝐑 𝐀𝐋𝐈

Chief Data Engineer @ Optimus Automate · Data Science @ University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.

AI & ML Engineer · Focused on Applied Research

I build AI and Machine Learning systems for production. My focus is the full pipeline from raw data and model training to deploying live, intelligent APIs.

I’m the Chief Data Engineer at Optimus Automate and a Data Science student at PU, Lahore. I support data engineering, database planning, and AI automation projects while working with the team to build scalable data solutions.

As a 3x Kaggle Expert, I experiment with complex datasets to sharpen my skills and master handling real world data effectively.

Location Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan Email dsali20838@gmail.com

At a glance

GitHub →

35⁺

GitHub Repos

3^×

Kaggle Expert

2⁺

Years Industry

15⁺

Projects Built

Highlights

01 / 03

Research Interests

01

Machine Learning Building predictive models and solving real-world problems using data.

02

Artificial Intelligence Developing intelligent systems that can learn, reason, and automate tasks.

03

Deep Learning Working with neural networks for advanced learning and pattern recognition.

04

Natural Language Processing Understanding and processing human language using AI techniques.

05

Computer Vision Teaching machines to understand and analyze images and videos.

06

Data Science Extracting insights from data through analysis, visualization, and modeling.

Recent Activity

Show More →

Aug 2026

New!BlogAI What I Learned Today From Working on an AI Project on Medium (@waqi786) — A personal learning journey covering supervised and unsupervised learning, pretrained audio representations, clustering, visualization, frame-level analysis, token sequences, experimentation, and practical lessons learned along the way.

Jul 2026

New!Project Smart Medicine Recognition Application — TensorFlow/Keras and Flask-based for instant pill image identification, medicine/NDC class prediction, SQLite medicine details, interaction lookup, reports, notebooks, and complete GitHub code.

Jun 2026

New!Blog Published "Why Good Data Matters More Than a Powerful AI Model" on Medium (@waqi786).

Jun 2026

New!Project Fashnix — Android AI fashion assistant built on MobileNetV2 with TFLite offline deployment (Kotlin + Firebase), developed for Deep Learning course.

Jun 2026

Blog Published "Why Data Science Is the Hottest Job in Tech" on Medium (@waqi786).

Jun 2026

Blog Published "How to Build a Data Science Portfolio That Gets You Hired" on Medium (@waqi786).

May 2026

Project Resora — AI-powered research assistant with FAISS-based semantic search over 50,000+ papers, PRISMA screening workflows, and FastAPI backend.

May 2026

Blog Published "How Much Do Data Scientists Earn Around the World?" on Medium (@waqi786).

Mar 2026

Milestone Crossed 35+ public GitHub repositories — spanning ML, CV, NLP, full-stack AI, and data analysis.

Mar 2026

Paper Published research paper on Diabetes Prediction using Machine Learning on Zenodo — code available on GitHub (@waqi786).

Feb 2026

Role Appointed Chief Data Engineer at Optimus Automate — leading AI/ML strategy and production system delivery.

Feb 2026

Blog Published "What Is Data Science? A Beginner's Guide" (Feb 15) on Medium (@waqi786).

Feb 2026

Blog Published "How to Become a Data Scientist in 2026" (Feb 17) on Medium — pinned post on profile.

Jul 2025

Project McDonald's ML Forecasting — EDA and predictive modelling on McDonald's financial data (2021–2024) with Linear Regression & Random Forest. Published on GitHub + Kaggle.

Oct 2024

Project Youth Smoking & Drug Analysis (ML Insights) — EDA + ML classification on substance-use risk factors among youth. Dataset on Kaggle, code on GitHub.

Sep 2024

Kaggle Published Remote Work & Mental Health dataset (Sep 22) — EDA on stress, burnout & work-life balance with Plotly visualisations. Open-source on GitHub.

Sep 2024

Kaggle Published Global Black Money Transactions dataset (Sep 16) — financial crime EDA with XGBoost anomaly detection on GitHub.

Sep 2024

Kaggle Published USA Rainfall Prediction model (Sep 12) — SHAP-value interpretability on weather features. Code on GitHub.

Sep 2024

Kaggle Published Country Comparison Dataset (Sep 10) — global EDA across GDP, healthcare, and education metrics. On GitHub + Kaggle.

Sep 2024

Project Eco Fashion Insights 2024 (Sep 6) — in-depth analysis of sustainable fashion trends. Dataset on Kaggle (waqi786/sustainable-fashion-eco-friendly-trends).

Sep 2024

Kaggle Published Climate Change & Agriculture dataset (Sep 6) and AI Art Trends Analysis (Sep 3) — EDA + ML notebooks on GitHub and Kaggle.

2024

Project Mental Health & Tech Usage Insights — comprehensive analysis of technology usage patterns vs mental health indicators. Dataset + code on Kaggle and GitHub.

2024

Achievement Attained 3× Kaggle Expert status across Notebooks, Datasets, and Discussions tiers.

2024

Project Student Management System — Python + Tkinter desktop app with SQLite for student record management and CSV import/export. On GitHub.

Selected Projects

All projects →

2026

Fashnix - What-to-Wear AI

Waqar Ali

Android wardrobe intelligence app for AI styling and outfit planning.

GitHub

2026

Resora

Waqar Ali

AI-powered research operating system for literature discovery and analysis.

GitHub

2026

Diabetes Prediction BRFSS

Waqar Ali

Healthcare machine learning project for diabetes risk prediction.

GitHub

2026

Gym Tracker API

Waqar Ali

FastAPI backend for workouts, exercises, and training sessions.

GitHub

Biography

Waqar Ali is a Data Scientist and AI/ML Engineer based in Lahore, Pakistan. He studies Data Science at the University of the Punjab, works as Chief Data Engineer at Optimus Automate, and is a 3x Kaggle Expert.

His work focuses on practical machine learning, data analysis, and software systems that can be used beyond the classroom. He has built projects such as Fashnix, Resora, Gym Tracker API, Smart Medicine Recognition Application, and several healthcare and business prediction models.

On GitHub, he shares projects in Android AI, FastAPI backends, medicine recognition, diabetes prediction, purchase prediction, customer churn, forecasting, and public-health analytics. His goal is to build clean, useful, and understandable solutions from real data.

On Kaggle, he works on notebooks in computer vision, recommender systems, climate and agriculture, real estate pricing, healthcare analysis, EV sales, retail insights, and ad-click prediction. He enjoys learning through projects and improving each project with clear analysis and simple presentation.

Skills

Technical stack built across academic study, open-source projects, and production client work.

Machine Learning & Predictive Modelling

Scikit-learnClassificationRegression ClusteringFeature EngineeringModel Evaluation Cross-ValidationSHAP ExplainabilityHyperparameter Tuning Bootstrap Confidence IntervalsDomain AdaptationStatistical Testing

Deep Learning & Computer Vision

PyTorchTensorFlowKeras CNNsANNRNN / LSTM Transfer LearningMulti-Task LearningTensorFlow Lite Mobile AI InferenceImage ClassificationAttention Mechanisms MobileNetV2

NLP & Language Modelling

TransformersWord2VecBag-of-Words Text ClassificationSentence-TransformersHuBERT / Wav2Vec2 Self-Supervised Audio Modelling

Generative AI

LLMs (GPT, Claude, LLaMA)RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)LangChain Prompt EngineeringFine-Tuning (LoRA / PEFT)AI Agents Semantic SearchEmbeddingsVector Databases (FAISS)

Data Analysis & Kaggle Work

PandasNumPyExploratory Data Analysis Data CleaningData VisualizationMatplotlib SeabornPlotlyKaggle Notebooks (3x Expert)

Databases

SQLMySQLPostgreSQL Database Design & NormalizationER ModellingSQLite Firebase (Firestore / Realtime DB)Query OptimizationTransactions & Indexing

Data Warehousing

Data Warehouse ArchitectureETL / ELT ConceptsStar & Snowflake Schema OLAP vs OLTPDimensional ModellingData Integration

Data Engineering & Model Serving

PythonFastAPIFlask REST APIsModel Inference APIsDocker MLflow (Experiment Tracking)API Health Checks

Mobile App Development

KotlinAndroid SDKFirebase Auth / Firestore TFLite Model IntegrationMulti-Task CNN Deployment

Frontend & Web Development

HTMLCSSJavaScript ReactResponsive UI Design

Programming Languages

PythonJavaC C++KotlinJavaScript

Research & Academic Workflow

Academic Paper WritingLiterature ReviewResearch Methodology Design Dataset CurationReproducible Research Practices

Tools & Reproducible Workflows

Jupyter NotebookGoogle ColabGit / GitHub VS CodePostmanProject Documentation AI-Assisted Dev (Codex, Copilot, DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) AnacondaExcelWordPowerPointLinux

Experience

Professional roles, academic training, and freelance engagements.

Chief Data Engineer

2026 — Present

Optimus Automate

As Chief Data Engineer at Optimus Automate, I work with the team to plan and improve the company's data systems for AI automation. I take part in technical discussions, attend planning meetings, research suitable technologies, and help prepare data architecture for future projects. My work includes supporting data engineering decisions, researching databases and modern data tools, assisting with database design and data pipeline planning, suggesting practical technical improvements, and working with the team to support automation projects.

Freelance Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer

2025 — Present

Independent

Delivered end-to-end ML systems, data analysis pipelines, and full-stack AI applications. Projects range from multi-agent enterprise platforms to real-time computer vision systems and intelligent restaurant management tools — from specification to deployment.

Material & Admin Assistant

Jan 2025 — Aug 2025

Stiffner Engineering & Construction Pvt. Ltd. (Lahore & Islamabad)

Managed gate passes, material records, and site documentation for ongoing construction projects. Handled staff attendance, salary processing, penalty notices, payment tracking, and administrative reports using MS Excel and Word.

Machine Learning Specialist (Intern)

Jul 2024 — Sep 2024

Green Vision (Remote)

Worked on machine learning model development and experimentation using Python during a 3-month remote internship. Applied core ML workflows including data preprocessing, model training, and evaluation as part of the team's applied ML tasks.

Data Science Student

2023 — Present

University of the Punjab, Lahore

Bachelor's programme in Data Science. Coursework covers deep learning, NLP, computer vision, statistical modelling, and database systems. Applied work includes Fashnix, Resora, Smart Medicine Recognition Application, and multiple machine learning notebooks.

Kaggle Contributor — 3× Expert

2024 — Present

Kaggle

Attained Expert rank across three tiers — Notebooks, Datasets, and Discussions. Focus on clean EDA, solid feature engineering, rigorous cross-validation, and reproducible notebooks. Contributions span health analytics, climate science, finance, and NLP.

Projects

Selected builds — from production AI systems to open-source data science notebooks.

Research

Applied research in computer vision, NLP, and production ML systems.

CV / Resume

Full record of education, professional experience, projects, and technical skills.

My CV covers academic training at the University of the Punjab, my role as Chief Data Engineer at Optimus Automate, freelance AI/ML engineering engagements, Kaggle Expert status across three tiers, and a growing portfolio of production ML systems.

Click the button below to download my CV in PDF format.

Download PDF LinkedIn GitHub

Certifications

Verified credentials in data science, machine learning, and AI.

Supervised Machine Learning: Regression and Classification
Core machine learning course covering regression, classification, model training, and evaluation.
DeepLearning.AI / Stanford / Coursera2026
Writing in the Sciences
Stanford Online / Coursera certificate focused on scientific writing, research communication, and clear academic presentation.
Stanford Online / Coursera2025
Data Analysis Using Python
IBM credential focused on Python-based data analysis, pandas, numerical work, and applied analytics.
IBM Skills Network2026
Data Analysis with Python
Cognitive Class / IBM course certificate for practical data analysis workflows in Python.
Cognitive Class / IBM2026
Python
Kaggle Learn certificate covering Python fundamentals for data science and notebook work.
Kaggle2024
Learn Pandas with ChatGPT
IBM Developer Skills Network course focused on pandas practice and AI-assisted data analysis learning.
Cognitive Class / IBM2026
Data Analysis Using Python Badge
IBM Skills Network badge for intermediate Python data analysis skills.
IBM Skills Network2026
Kaggle Badges Overview
Combined view of Kaggle achievements across code, datasets, competitions, and community activity.
Kaggle2024-2026
Python Coder
Kaggle badge showing active Python coding work in data science notebooks.
Kaggle2024
Dataset Creator
Kaggle badge for creating and publishing datasets for public data science use.
Kaggle2024
Dataset Documenter
Kaggle badge for documenting datasets clearly for other data science users.
Kaggle2024
Dataset Tagger
Kaggle badge for organizing datasets with useful topic and domain tags.
Kaggle2024
Code Submitter
Kaggle badge for submitting notebook code and contributing analysis work.
Kaggle2024
Code Uploader
Kaggle badge for uploading and maintaining notebook work.
Kaggle2024
Code Tagger
Kaggle badge for adding clear tags to notebooks and analysis work.
Kaggle2024
Code Forker
Kaggle badge for exploring and extending public notebooks.
Kaggle2024
Research Competitor
Kaggle badge reflecting participation in research-style competitions and analytical tasks.
Kaggle2024
Competitor
Kaggle badge for competition participation and applied model-building practice.
Kaggle2024
Playground Competitor
Kaggle badge for practical modelling work in playground competitions.
Kaggle2024
Getting Started Competitor
Kaggle badge for foundational competition participation.
Kaggle2024
Kaggle Community Member
Kaggle badge for community presence and platform participation.
Kaggle2024
Learner
Kaggle badge for completing learning activity and practice work.
Kaggle2024
1 Year on Kaggle
Kaggle milestone showing continued platform activity over time.
Kaggle2025
30 Day Login Streak
Kaggle consistency badge for regular learning and notebook activity.
Kaggle2024
7 Day Login Streak
Kaggle activity badge for consistent short-term platform engagement.
Kaggle2024
Bookmarker
Kaggle badge for curating and saving useful notebooks, datasets, and resources.
Kaggle2024
Stylish
Kaggle badge connected with profile presentation and community activity.
Kaggle2024

Achievements

Recognitions, milestones, and distinctions across research, industry, and open-source.

2024

3× Kaggle Expert

Expert rank across Notebooks, Datasets, and Discussions — top tier of the global Kaggle community.

2024

Chief Data Engineer

Appointed Chief Data Engineer at Optimus Automate while concurrently completing a Data Science degree.

2024

35+ Open-Source Repos

Active GitHub presence with 35+ public repositories spanning ML, CV, NLP, and full-stack AI.

2026

Resora Research System

Built an AI-powered research operating system for literature discovery, academic analysis, and structured reporting workflows.

2026

Smart Medicine Recognition

Developed a medicine image recognition project with model inference, Flask API access, and local medicine information lookup.

2026

Fashnix — What-to-Wear AI

Built an Android wardrobe intelligence app for AI styling, outfit planning, closet analytics, and personalized recommendations.

Contact

Open to collaborations, freelance projects, research discussions, and Kaggle teaming.

For research discussion, freelance AI/ML work, collaboration, portfolio review, or academic networking, use the channel that best matches your purpose.

LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/waqi786

GitHub github.com/waqi786

Kaggle kaggle.com/waqi786

WhatsApp +92 3063233473

Medium medium.com/@waqi786

Email dsali20838@gmail.com