Shanai Nair
About
Hi, i'm Shanai! In 2024 I graduated with a BSc in Computer Science from Durham University, where I ranked second in my cohort. I have a strong passion for deep learning and artificial intelligence. After graduating, I undertook a self-directed learning period during which I performed research as part of my former supervisor's lab. I also built a website, ballo.cards, which was my first experience at building a product that a non-negligible number of people use. Currently I work full-time as an SDE at Amazon. Starting in May, I'll be joining Palantir for an internship. Following that, I'll be enrolling in the MPhil in Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence program at Cambridge University. Please scroll for details of my education, experience, and some featured work from my time at university.
Education
University of Cambridge - MPhil in Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence (Upcoming: October 2025)
Durham University - BSc in Computer Science (2021 to 2024)
Ranked 2nd in cohort overall, and:
- 1st in Deep Learning
- 3rd in Reinforcement Learning
- 4th for dissertation (Hierarchical Transformers)
- Received an award for outstanding achievement
Haberdashers' Boys' School (2008 to 2020)
A Levels in Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry
Extended research project prize winner
Experience
Palantir - Forward Deployed Software Engineering Intern (Upcoming: May 2025)
Amazon - Prime Video - Software Development Engineer (February 2025 to present)
Working on highly scaled distributed systems as part of the PV routing team.
Self-Directed Learning Period (2024 to January 2025)
Worked on three projects relevant to my interests and career aspirations:
- Research Project: My university supervisor and I have been working on a research paper which we intend to submit for publication, it is within the field of LLM reasoning.
- RL Finetuning: I trained a 124M parameter autoregressive transformer from scratch across multiple GPUs using DDP. I then finetuned its mathematical reasoning capabilities using process supervision and verifier methods. I undertook this project before the latest generation of reasoning models were released, therefore I derived the training methodology myself, using hints from relevant papers.
- Ballo: Ballo (ballo.cards) is a full stack web app that I designed and implemented through to production. This project refined many of my technical skills like NextJS and AWS, as well as developing my ability to iterate a product based on user feedback.
Amazon - Alexa AI - Software Development Engineering Intern (2023)
Interned within the Natural Language Understanding group and received a return offer.
Featured Work
This section contains some of my work from the recent past. Code is available upon request and is not public by default due to university restrictions.
Dissertation - (2023 to 2024)
Description: My final-year university project was a self-proposed research project which involved designing a novel transformer-based architecture that aimed to learn semantically meaningful hierarchical representations from its training data. I learned more from working with my supervisor on this project than anything else at university.
Mark: 85% (4th in cohort)
Feedback: Extraordinary work for an L3 project.
Link to paperDeep Learning Coursework - (2023 to 2024)
Description: The deep learning coursework involved implementing discriminative and generative models for CIFAR100 given parameter and training time constraints.
Mark: 98% (1st in cohort)
Feedback: Overall, this is a perfect submission. The report and solution are perfect, with a perfectly performing classifier and perfect realism and perfect diversity for your generative model.
Link to paperReinforcement Learning Coursework - (2024)
Description: The reinforcement learning coursework involved implementing a reinforcement learning agent to tackle the easy and hardcore BipedalWalker-v3 environments in OpenAI Gym.
Mark: 95% (3rd in cohort)
Link to paperFootprint - (2022)
Footprint was a journaling app that allowed users to upload text, audio, and video entries — before Apple offered the same within their own native app. I developed it as an independent side project during my first year of university. It has now been taken off the App Store since I do not have time to maintain it.