Amir Kamel Rahimi

Hello, I'm

Amir Kamel Rahimi

PhD — AI Engineer · LLM, RAG & Agentic Systems

Turning ambiguous problems into grounded, measurable AI systems — and running them in production.

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Background

Software engineer by training, ML researcher by PhD, shipping production LLM systems since 2023.

10+
Years in Software
50%+
AI Search Cost Cut
PhD
Applied Machine Learning

AI engineer with 10+ years in software engineering and a PhD in applied machine learning, building and operating production LLM, RAG and agentic systems since 2023. Doctoral research covered the full model-development cycle on clinical data — training, evaluation and explainability — and that rigour still shapes how every system gets measured.

Currently leading AI engineering at Littles Lawyers, owning the retrieval and context layer behind every LLM feature — hybrid search, semantic reranking, evaluation and cost optimisation — and building agentic workflows for legal document analysis. Previously shipped QChat, a secure GenAI assistant serving Queensland Government teams.

Most at home taking ambiguous problems from first definition through to production and operation, guiding developers along the way and steering technical direction with executive stakeholders.

Career Timeline

From software engineering foundations to AI solution leadership.

May 2025 — Present

AI Solution Lead

Littles Lawyers

Legal AI Agentic Search Assistant

  • Architected and delivered a production RAG AI Assistant using Azure Functions and Azure AI Search. Implemented hybrid BM25 keyword and vector search, followed by Azure semantic reranking, with file-level filtering, relevance thresholds and duplicate removal to provide high-quality context for grounded LLM responses

Legal Document Processing & Summarisation Pipeline

  • Built and deployed a recurring production pipeline using Azure Document Intelligence and Azure Cosmos DB to process legal case files, extract text through OCR, synchronise document content and metadata, and generate summaries for Slack canvases

AI Search Cost Optimisation

  • Cut document data-extraction costs in Azure AI Search by at least 50% by re-designing the data-extraction workflow while maintaining retrieval quality. Evaluating local open-weight LLMs (gpt-oss, Qwen via Ollama) as a lower-cost alternative to cloud inference for very large documents

AI Evaluation & Content Safety

  • Implemented RAG evaluation metrics, including faithfulness and answer relevancy, and content safety evaluations including unfairness in Azure AI Foundry

Data Integration & Automation

  • Designed and deployed scalable, reusable data-ingestion and ETL workflows using Azure Document Intelligence and Azure Cosmos DB to extract, enrich and synchronise document content and metadata across internal systems

LLM Document Classification

  • Designed and deployed AI classification model to automatically categorise legal documents to enhance case-routing capability

LLM Knowledge Graph Analytics

  • Modelled clients’ financial data in a Cosmos DB knowledge graph, linking employment and payslip events to strengthen case analysis and evidentiary review

Executive Partnership

  • Engage continuously with the CEO, CTO and partners to translate business needs into robust, enterprise-ready architectures that align AI delivery with strategic priorities

Technical Leadership

  • Lead and mentor junior developers, conduct architecture, design and code reviews, and oversee deployment readiness, solution quality and alignment with engineering standards
Azure AI Search Azure Functions Hybrid Search RAG Cosmos DB Document Intelligence Azure AI Foundry Knowledge Graphs

Jan 2025 — May 2025

Senior AI / Data Scientist

University of Queensland — QLD Health (Co-joint position)

Project "Smart Hub"

  • Data Integration: Led the mapping of Queensland clinical data into the OMOP common data model using SQL, supporting scalable analytics and AI use cases. Supported the implementation of the native Gen AI model with GPT-2, trained by the OMOP standard data
  • AI Solution Development: Contributed to the development of a domain-specific generative AI solution using PyTorch and standardised healthcare data
  • Data Governance: Worked with clinical, technical and governance stakeholders to define data requirements and support secure, compliant access to sensitive healthcare data
  • Stakeholder Collaboration: Translated complex clinical and technical requirements into practical data and AI delivery outcomes
OMOP PyTorch GPT-2 SQL

Nov 2023 — Dec 2024

Senior AI / Data Scientist / Advanced Analytics

Queensland Government — Customer and Digital Group

Project "QChat"

  • Enterprise GenAI Delivery: Designed and delivered QChat, a secure enterprise GenAI assistant using Azure OpenAI, Node.js, TypeScript and Next.js
  • AI Governance & Safety: Implemented guardrails, monitoring and usage telemetry to support responsible AI adoption and production reliability across government teams

Project "Insight Engine"

  • Gathered business requirements to develop a Gen AI solution aimed at guiding future strategic planning in QLD
  • Designed and deployed a scalable RAG solution using Azure Functions, Azure AI Search and Azure Cosmos DB, ensuring scalable and efficient performance in line with future-focused strategic foresight
  • Created knowledge graphs in NetworkX and applied clustering techniques (community detection) to create future strategic scenarios for QLD, contributing to both high-level foresight and actionable strategic directions
Azure OpenAI Next.js TypeScript NetworkX Azure Functions Azure AI Search Cosmos DB

Nov 2023 — Mar 2024

ML Scientist / Data Scientist

University of Queensland — Centre for Health Services Research

Project "Infection Prediction"

  • Machine Learning Delivery: Led the design, validation and optimisation of an XGBoost model for predicting clinical infection risk using Python, Scikit-learn and MLflow
  • Model Engineering: Applied feature engineering, Bayesian hyperparameter optimisation and model evaluation to improve predictive performance and reliability
  • Cloud Deployment: Deployed the production machine-learning model using AWS SageMaker
XGBoost Scikit-Learn MLflow Python AWS SageMaker

Jul 2020 — Feb 2022

Senior Software Developer

University of Queensland — QLD Health (Co-joint position)

Project "QUIET" (Queensland Integrated Element Tracker)

  • Enterprise Software Engineering: Developed a .NET application supporting data governance, data modelling, metadata management and decision support across Queensland Health systems
  • Database Design: Designed and maintained Azure SQL database schemas for enterprise healthcare data-management requirements
  • Technical Design & Documentation: Produced technical specifications, architecture documentation, release notes and user guidance throughout the software-development lifecycle
  • Engineering Quality: Contributed to code reviews, version control and collaborative delivery using GitHub and established software-engineering practices
.NET Azure SQL GitHub Data Governance

Feb 2016 — Jun 2020

Junior and Mid Software Developer / Lead Data Migration

Magentus (formerly Genie Solutions)

Project "Genie Application"

  • Full-stack developer on the Genie application in an Agile development environment
  • Worked in agile development methodology for writing code, test units and code maintenance

Project "Legacy Data Migration to AWS"

  • Lead data migration engineer, responsible for migrating legacy clinical data to Amazon Cloud
  • Mentored junior developers, providing technical guidance and support on development best practices, code reviews, and quality assurance
Full-Stack Data Migration AWS Agile

Aug 2014 — Dec 2015

Junior Software Developer

Queensland University of Technology

  • Worked as a research assistant, focusing on the development and validation of a comparison application for DNA sequences in Java
  • Conducted extensive research on various algorithms and techniques for assessing DNA sequences to identify patterns and variations
  • Collaborated with the research team to design and implement the software tool, ensuring accuracy, scalability, and performance for analysing large datasets of DNA sequences
Java Bioinformatics Algorithms

Academic Background

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The University of Queensland

Nov 2019 — Aug 2024

Applied AI and Machine Learning in Healthcare. Thesis: “Artificial intelligence to improve clinical outcomes in hospitals”

Master’s Degree

Queensland University of Technology

Jul 2012 — Dec 2013

Software Architecture

Technical Expertise

The stack behind production LLM, retrieval and machine-learning systems.

✨

LLM & Agentic Systems

Azure OpenAI Agentic Workflows Tool Use Persistent Memory Ollama gpt-oss Qwen LlamaIndex Hugging Face Context Engineering Vision-LLM Extraction
🔎

Retrieval & Search

Azure AI Search Hybrid BM25 + Vector Semantic Reranking Skillsets Parent/Child Indexes Pinecone Vertex AI Search Knowledge Graphs NetworkX
🛡️

Evaluation & Safety

RAGAS Azure AI Foundry Evals Faithfulness Answer Relevancy Content Safety Guardrails Usage Telemetry
🧠

Machine Learning

PyTorch Scikit-Learn XGBoost Random Forest Neural Networks SHAP fast.ai MLflow Feature Engineering Bayesian Optimisation Class Imbalance
☁️

Cloud & DevOps

Azure Functions Document Intelligence Cosmos DB Azure ML Azure AI Foundry Google Vertex AI AWS GitHub Actions
💻

Languages & Data

Python SQL PostgreSQL Azure SQL FastAPI Flask TypeScript Node.js Next.js C# / .NET Java n8n Claude Code

Selected Publications

Peer-reviewed contributions in AI/ML and health informatics.

Implementing AI in Hospitals to Achieve a Learning Health System: Systematic Review of Current Enablers and Barriers

Kamel Rahimi A, Pienaar O, Ghadimi M, Canfell OJ, Pole JD, Shrapnel S, van der Vegt AH, Sullivan C

Journal of Medical Internet Research · 2024;26:e49655

DOI: 10.2196/49655

Machine Learning Clinical Prediction Models for Acute Kidney Injury: The Impact of Baseline Creatinine on Prediction Efficacy

Kamel Rahimi A, Ghadimi M, van der Vegt AH, et al.

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making · 23, 207 (2023)

DOI: 10.1186/s12911-023-02306-03

A Comparison Between a Random Forest Model and the Kidney Failure Risk Equation to Predict Progression to Kidney Failure

Wainstein M, Kamel Rahimi A, Hoy W, et al.

medRxiv · 2023

medRxiv Preprint

Machine Learning Models for Diabetes Management in Acute Care Using Electronic Medical Records: A Systematic Review

Kamel Rahimi A, Canfell OJ, Chan W, et al.

International Journal of Medical Informatics · 2022;162:104758

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104758

Toward a Learning Health Care System: A Systematic Review and Evidence-Based Conceptual Framework for Implementation of Clinical Analytics in a Digital Hospital

Lim HC, Austin JA, van der Vegt AH, Kamel Rahimi A, et al.

Applied Clinical Informatics · 2022;13(2):339–354

DOI: 10.1055/s-0042-1743243

Get in Touch

Interested in collaborating, have a question, or want to discuss AI opportunities? I'd love to hear from you.