Hi, I'm Kartik 👋
SDE Intern @ Amazon · CS @ DTU | AI Safety & Interpretability · LLMs · RL | Codeforces Specialist · LeetCode Knight | CTF Player
KV
Bangalore, India•Open to research & internship roles
1,245
Problems solved
6+
Hackathon wins
About

A bit about me

I build intelligent systems that are fast, reliable, and harder to break than they look.

Right now I'm an SDE Intern at Amazon in Bangalore, working on a multilingual PDF understanding pipeline that processes a million credit notes a year. Before that I was the AI engineering intern at Visey, where I architected a memory-aware federated retrieval system from scratch, and a Deep Learning Research Intern at DTU's ML Research Lab under Prof. Anil Singh Parihar.

I'm a Computer Science undergrad at Delhi Technological University focused on AI research - AI safety, mechanistic interpretability, large language models, reinforcement learning, and representation learning. My goal is to help build reliable, aligned, and interpretable AI systems: understanding how foundation models reason, how their internal representations emerge, and how RL can improve capability without sacrificing safety or robustness.

My recent work centers on LLM safety and alignment - red-teaming, safety evaluation, RL-based safety optimization, prompt-rewriting systems, and multimodal safety benchmarking.

The thread across all of it is the same instinct: find the edge case, break the assumption, then build something that holds. Alongside the research I'm a competitive programmer (Codeforces Specialist, LeetCode Knight, 1,200+ problems solved) and an advisor at EHAX, DTU's cybersecurity society - where breaking things in CTFs is just safety research from the other side.

Stack

Technologies I work with

Programming Languages

C/C++
Python
TypeScript
JavaScript
Dart
SQL

Web & Mobile Development

React.js
Next.js
Node.js
Express.js
Flutter
TailwindCSS
FastAPI
WebSockets
AsyncIO

AI/ML & Data Science

PyTorch
TensorFlow
Keras
Scikit-Learn
OpenCV
Hugging Face
Transformers
GANs
LangChain
Pandas
Matplotlib
JAX

GenAI & Techniques

RAG
LLM Safety / Red Teaming
Agents
RL Environments (GRPO, LoRA)
Prompt Engineering
Chain-of-Thought
MCP
Evaluation Pipelines

Databases & Cloud

PostgreSQL
MongoDB
MySQL
Firebase
ChromaDB / VectorDB
AWS
Azure
Google Cloud Platform

Tools & Platforms

Git
GitHub
Docker
Linux
Postman
Vercel
Projects

Check out my latest work

Research benchmarks, RL environments, and applied ML systems - mostly built to find out where something breaks.

Featured

SafeGen Arena - RL Environment for Image-AI Safety

Built an OpenEnv-compliant RL gym that trains Qwen2.5-1.5B + LoRA as a prompt-rewriting safety layer for diffusion models, with a 3-way action space (allow / transform / reject). GRPO training improved reward from −0.05 → +0.33 over 1,300 steps with zero mode collapse. Designed a 4-term reward combining Llama Guard 3, a CLIP concept-arithmetic intent residual, a NudeNet/Q16 visual judge, and an over-refusal penalty. Top 100 of 5,000+ teams at the Meta × OpenEnv Hackathon 2026.

GRPO
LoRA
OpenEnv
CLIP
Llama Guard 3
Diffusion Models
RL
PyTorch
Featured

Apex Store Intelligence - Retail CCTV → Analytics API

Turns raw retail CCTV into a live, queryable store-analytics API, anchored to one metric: offline-store conversion rate. A YOLOv8n + ByteTrack pipeline detects and tracks people, per-role state machines derive entry/exit, zone dwell, and billing-queue events, and an HSV re-ID gallery deduplicates people across cameras and re-entries. Canonical events stream into a FastAPI + PostgreSQL service with idempotent ingestion, then out to a live dashboard covering funnels, heatmaps, and anomalies.

YOLOv8
ByteTrack
Re-ID
FastAPI
PostgreSQL
Computer Vision
Docker

Semantic Annotation QA - VLM Auditing Environment

An OpenEnv environment where a vision-language agent audits and repairs deliberately corrupted annotations on real COCO val2017 images. Sidesteps the usual failure mode of VLM bounding-box regression by rendering ID tags directly onto the image (a Set-of-Mark overlay), which turns the model into a pure semantic auditor instead of asking it to hallucinate coordinates. Three difficulty tiers (remove spurious, fix classes, find missing) with dense per-step rewards, anti-loop penalties, and deterministic 0–1 grading.

OpenEnv
VLM
Set-of-Mark
COCO
RL
Reward Design
Docker

LLM Safety - Red Teaming & Mitigation

Engineered a DistilBERT safety classifier (87% F1 across 3 classes) with batch inference and confidence scoring, plus an end-to-end red-teaming pipeline (500+ adversarial prompts, 3 harm categories, 3 mitigation agents) that reduced unsafe generations by 42%. Built an observability suite - confusion matrices, per-class metrics, and JSON/visual exports - for real-time monitoring and drift detection in production LLM safety workflows.

PyTorch
Hugging Face
DistilBERT
Red Teaming
CoT
Evaluation
Python
BidNet - Real-Time Bidding Model

BidNet - Real-Time Bidding Model

Built for Adobe DevCraft. Innovated a raw-to-dense feature pipeline that transforms raw bid data using contrastive embeddings and autoencoders, followed by ANN-based feature compression for efficient representation. Devised a low-latency RTB model predicting bid price and bidding decisions within 5ms per request, tuned via grid search and adaptive learning-rate scheduling. Achieved 82% classification accuracy, scaling to 100K+ bid requests per second in large-scale ad exchanges.

AutoEncoders
Contrastive Learning
Representation Learning
Feature Engineering
NLP
Python
Market Regime Detection System

Market Regime Detection System

An ML system that identifies distinct market states from high-frequency financial data. Engineered 20+ custom features from order-book data and consolidated 3 clustering algorithms to an 87% silhouette score. Identified 4 distinct market regimes at 92% classification accuracy, reducing strategy drawdowns by 15% through adaptive position sizing. Analyzed 500,000+ data points across multiple timeframes for real-time regime classification within 50ms.

HDBSCAN
KMeans
GMM
UMAP
PCA
Volatility Estimators
Unsupervised ML
Backtesting

SAR → EO Image Translation (CycleGAN)

Translating 2-band SAR imagery into 13-band multispectral EO images using CycleGAN while preserving semantic and spectral consistency across domains. Focused on stabilizing adversarial training and faithful spectral reconstruction for remote-sensing data.

CycleGAN
GANs
PyTorch
Computer Vision
Remote Sensing
Image Translation
InquireAI - AI Search Assistant

InquireAI - AI Search Assistant

Built a real-time, cross-platform AI search assistant with Flutter and FastAPI. Created a custom ranking algorithm using sentence transformers achieving 85% accuracy in source ranking, with WebSocket streaming for live responses and a RAG pipeline combining the Gemini API with Tavily Search for accurate information synthesis.

Flutter
VectorDB
WebSocket
Sentence Transformers
FastAPI
Tavily API
Gemini API
Quantamind - Mental Wellness Companion

Quantamind - Mental Wellness Companion

Collaborated on a mental wellness companion application using the MERN stack, recognized as a top project by Google Developers Club Delhi. Designed responsive UI with React and TailwindCSS, integrated Firebase analytics and MongoDB for secure data management. Built stress analysis using sentiment analysis and mouse tracking at 92.71% accuracy.

TailwindCSS
React
JavaScript
Node.js
PostgreSQL
Firebase
MongoDB
Achievements

Proven excellence

12 results across hackathons, programming contests, CTFs, and research - newest first.

  • Rank 1808

    Goldman Sachs India Hackathon - Rank 1808

    Programming Competition

    Ranked 1808 in the CS track of the Goldman Sachs India Hackathon.

  • Top 100 / 5,000+ teams

    Meta × OpenEnv Hackathon - Top 100

    AI/ML Hackathon

    Placed in the Top 100 of 5,000+ teams at the Meta × OpenEnv Hackathon 2026 with SafeGen Arena - an OpenEnv-compliant RL gym that trains a prompt-rewriting safety layer for diffusion models via GRPO.

  • 3rd Place · ₹1 lakh

    Hack IIT Kanpur CTF - 3rd Place

    Cybersecurity / CTF

    Secured 3rd place at Hack IIT Kanpur, an offline CTF, winning a ₹1 lakh prize.

  • 1st @ h4ck0n

    EHAX - CTF Team Highlights

    Cybersecurity / CTF

    As part of EHAX, DTU's Ethical Hacking & Cybersecurity Society, co-organized a global CTF with 3,000+ participants and helped the team reach World Rank 33 on CTFtime. Team placements across national and international CTFs: 1st at h4ck0n-CTF, 2nd at Cryptonite CTF, 4th at 07 CTF, 8th at Apoorv CTF, 11th at AceCTF, 15th at BITS CTF 2025, 20th at Pragyan CTF, and 41st at Backdoor CTF.

  • Global Rank 1345 · Meta T-shirt

    Meta Hacker Cup 2025

    Competitive Programming · Issued by Meta

    Secured a global rank of 1345 in Round 2 of Meta Hacker Cup 2025 (1321 in Round 1), placing among the top 2000 participants worldwide and earning an official Meta T-shirt.

  • Under 500 / 20,000 teams

    Amazon ML Challenge 2025 - Under 500

    AI/ML Competition

    Ranked under 500 among 20,000 teams in the Amazon ML Challenge 2025.

  • 12th / 10,000 teams

    NCIIPC-AICTE Pentathon 2025 - Grand Finalist

    Cybersecurity Competition

    Grand Finalist - ranked 12th out of 10,000 teams in the NCIIPC-AICTE Pentathon 2025, a national cybersecurity competition. Built a comprehensive threat detection and automated incident response solution.

  • Specialist · Knight

    Competitive Programming - Specialist & Knight

    Competitive Programming

    Codeforces Specialist (1539), LeetCode Knight (2028), and CodeChef 3★ (peak 1636). Ranked 1677 in Codeforces Round 1034, 972 in LeetCode Weekly Contest 462, and 535 / 515 in CodeChef Starters 171 & 172 (among 25,000+). 1,200+ problems solved across platforms.

  • 2nd Place

    VisionXAI Hackathon - 2nd Position

    AI/ML Hackathon

    Secured 2nd position at the VisionXAI Hackathon, held during Invictus, DTU's annual techfest.

  • 1st Place (Individual)

    IICON-CTF'25 - Individual Winner

    Cybersecurity / CTF

    Individual winner (1st place) of IICON-CTF'25.

  • 723rd worldwide

    IEEE Xtreme 18.0 - 4th in University

    Programming Competition

    Ranked 4th in university and 723rd worldwide in IEEE Xtreme 18.0, a global competitive programming contest among 9,500+ teams.

  • Semifinalist

    Smart India Hackathon - Semifinalist

    Hackathon

    Cleared the internal college rounds of the Smart India Hackathon (SIH), advancing as a semifinalist.

Contact

Get in touch

Happy to talk about AI safety, retrieval systems, competitive programming, or CTFs. Email is the fastest way to reach me - I ignore all soliciting.