0→1 engineer · AI × Robotics

Building the intelligence behind real-world robots.

I'm Saket Karve — a Senior Software Engineer working at the intersection of AI Robotics Foundation Models. I've helped ship two robots from zero to one: currently building at Dyna Robotics, previously 5+ years on Amazon Astro.

6+Years in industry
4Publications
8k+Devices deployed
Saket Karve
01

About

Bridging advanced research and production-grade engineering.

I build the systems that turn machine-learning research into robots that work in the real world. My focus is large-scale ML infrastructure and training optimization — the pipelines, data loaders, and schedulers that let foundation models like VLMs and VAMs train efficiently on massive multi-modal datasets and run reliably on-device.

Today I'm a Member of Technical Staff at Dyna Robotics, where I build the ML infrastructure and training-optimization stack that powers our foundation models — multi-modal Airflow pipelines processing thousands of video-hours per hour, cross-cluster distributed data loaders and intelligent workload schedulers that keep GPU utilization high across the training fleet, plus the on-robot inference path for low-latency trajectory execution.

Before Dyna, I spent five years at Amazon Astro in Lab126. A big part of that work was on the Floor Plan Algorithms team — building the computer-vision and geometry pipelines that generate floor plans from raw SLAM data, deployed to 8,000+ devices in production. I also architected a spatial query engine and DSL for programmatic floor-plan access, and later worked on robot memory, summarization, and LLM-driven action planning for next-generation Astro.

I have an MSE in Computer & Information Science from Penn and a B.Tech in IT from VJTI Mumbai. My published research spans word-embedding debiasing, semantic relatedness, computer vision, and reprogrammable signal-processing hardware.

02

Experience

Six years shipping ML and robotics — click any role to expand.

    • Hybrid Data Ingestion & Scale. Architected a multi-modal pipeline on Airflow supporting low-latency stream processing for real-time in-house data alongside a high-throughput MapReduce framework — scaling data processing to 3,000 video-hours per hour for VLM/VAM foundation model training.
    • Distributed Data Loading & Training Optimization. Engineered a cross-cluster data loader and caching system to minimize GPU data-access latency during large-scale training jobs, with an intelligent scheduler that routes workloads based on cluster utilization, dataset location, and GPU availability.
    • High-Performance Inference Infrastructure. Developed specialized on-robot inference servers using TensorRT for memory-efficient, low-latency trajectory execution, alongside a parallel raw-PyTorch path to bypass conversion-related performance drops.
    • Tele-operation & Collection Stack. Re-engineered the robot data-collection interface and optimized episode file compression — significantly faster uploads and higher-fidelity datasets.
    • Airflow
    • PyTorch
    • TensorRT
    • CUDA
    • VLM / VAM
    • Distributed Systems
    • Floor Plan Generation. Core contributor on the Floor Plan Algorithms team — designed and shipped the geometry and computer-vision pipelines that turn raw SLAM data into clean, human-readable floor plans. Deployed to production, improving floor-plan quality for 8,000+ devices.
    • Spatial Query Engine. Architected a high-performance spatial query engine and a custom DSL that enables enterprise clients to programmatically retrieve spatial elements — zones, poses, walls, spaces — and overlay business logic to automate plan generation.
    • Find-Person Service. Implemented the algorithm that generates the optimal path for the robot to locate a person within the home's floor plan.
    • Robot Action Planning. Designed end-to-end algorithms for robot action planning and world modeling using Large Language Models — early-stage prototype team architecting LLM integration with the robot's brain.
    • Robot Memory & Summarization. Led a 5-person team to design and implement a framework generating textual summaries of up to 30 days of robot observations, creating condensed representations for robot action planning.
    • Summary Evaluation. Built the evaluation dataset and metrics pipeline (classical + LLM-based) to measure data loss, correctness, and other quality dimensions of the generated summaries.
    • Computer Vision
    • SLAM
    • Geometry
    • DSL Design
    • LLMs
    • Python
    • C++
    • AWS
    • Data Annotation Pipeline. Built a Flask-based web tool for CV data pipeline automation — deployed for engineers, scientists, and annotators building training datasets for Amazon Halo's health-tracking vision models.
    • Flask
    • Computer Vision
    • Python
    • Developed a crowdsourcing platform for the National Virtual Library of India (NVLI) using Flask, implementing REST APIs and integrating PyBossa to analyze user responses and personalize the platform with ML algorithms.
    • Flask
    • PyBossa
    • ML
03

Education

University of Pennsylvania

2018 — 2020

Master of Science & Engineering

Computer & Information Science

Philadelphia, PA

  • Deep Learning
  • NLU
  • Computer Vision
  • Distributed Systems

Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute

2014 — 2018

Bachelor of Technology

Information Technology

Mumbai, India

  • Algorithms
  • Signal Processing
  • Machine Learning
04

Publications

Peer-reviewed research from Penn and undergrad.

ACL 2019 · GeBNLP

Conceptor Debiasing of Word Representations Evaluated on WEAT

An effective technique using conceptors to debias pre-trained word embeddings against typical human stereotypes (gender, race). Debiased representations evaluated with WEAT and shown useful on downstream NLP tasks.

DAL 2018

Semantic Relatedness Measurement Using Modified Normalized Google Distance

A novel semantic-relatedness method modifying NGD to integrate WordNet's Brown Corpus information content with Wikipedia occurrence statistics — quantifies relatedness for non-dictionary terms (jargon, proper nouns) and outperforms PMI.

ICCICT 2018

Comparative study of feature extraction techniques for face Recognition

Compared PCA, ICA, and Factor Analysis with four classifiers on the ORL dataset. Factor Analysis achieved up to 100% accuracy with Neural Network, SVM, and Naive Bayes; combining PCA + ICA improved sensitivity to expressions and orientation.

ICNTE 2017

A DSP-based reprogrammable architecture for standalone signal processing applications

Standalone, reprogrammable hardware emulator on TMS320F28069 DSP that removes host-PC dependency. Custom diagramming interface generates a structured Netlist decoded on-board. Avg compute 80μs, DC — 1.25 kHz bandwidth.

05

Press & Public Mentions

Coverage of the products and companies I've helped build.

06

Theater & Community

Sets manager, lights/sounds designer, backstage crew, event volunteer — how I spend my weekends.

Naatak · America's largest Indian theater

I serve as Sets Manager at Naatak — leading set builds end-to-end: coordinating with directors and set designers, hiring contractors, building volunteer teams, planning execution, delivering sets for rehearsals and shows, theater setup and strike. I also design and operate lights & sounds across the season.

Naatak cast and crew — Dial M for Murder
Naatak cast & crew — Dial M for Murder

CalAA · Marathi theater group

Worked with CalAA on staged productions and touring plays — sets, lights, and backstage crew across five productions including two India-touring plays.

Sets · Backstage crew

Jar Tar Chi Goshta

India touring play — sets and backstage crew.

Lights

Patra Patri

India touring play — lights.

Lights design lead

He Gele

One-act play — lights design and lead.

Lights

Conscience

One-act play — lights.

Sets build

Don't Worry Be Happy

Sets building.

ParaShare Entertainments

Volunteer with ParaShare Entertainments on shows and concerts by popular touring artists from India.

Concerts

Ajoy Chakraborty 2026
Rahul Deshpande 2025
Anand Bhate 2025
Piyush Mishra 2024 · 2025
Zeeshan Ali 2024
Arya Ambekar 2024

Touring plays

Sets · Backstage crew

38 Krishna Villa

Sets · Backstage crew

Mi Nahuram Godsay Boltoy

07

Off the clock

What I get up to when I'm not shipping code.

Cricket at Lord's

Cricket

Made it to the home of cricket — Lord's, London.

Village near Amsterdam

Travel

Chasing quiet villages and long walks.

Handmade modak

Cooking

Handmade ukadiche modak for Ganeshotsav.

Piyush Mishra concert

Live music

Volunteering & attending Indian classical / Hindustani concerts.

Alaska

The outdoors

Alaska — glaciers, cold air, no reception.

08

Get in touch

For work, research collaborations, or just to say hi.