# Shubham Goel

> Machine learning engineer with about eight years across computer vision, multimodal models, and recommender systems, previously a Senior MLE at Meta on Instagram Ads ranking, joining Pinterest Ads as a Senior MLE. Focused on multimodal LLMs, post-training, and evals. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

He builds small, focused models and the eval harnesses that check whether they actually work, and he tends to turn real-world annoyances into ML projects. First-author paper at RecSys 2026 (industry track) on using the text rendered inside video ads as a ranking signal.

Every blog post is also available as plain markdown: append `.md` to the post URL (for example https://shubham.gg/blog/curbcheck.md). The full text of all posts is at https://shubham.gg/llms-full.txt.

## Writing
- [I got two parking tickets, so I trained a VLM](https://shubham.gg/blog/curbcheck.md): A week in San Francisco, two parking tickets, and a small vision-language model I taught to read stacked parking signs and tell you if you can legally park.
- [Building AURA FC: turning soccer footage into live AI commentary](https://shubham.gg/blog/building-aura-fc.md): A build log for a pipeline that watches a soccer clip, works out what just happened, and commentates it back live, plus the three times my first guess was wrong.

## Projects
- curbcheck: Can a small VLM tell you if you can park in San Francisco? A parking-sign benchmark plus QLoRA-tuned 3B and 7B students that read the pole; a deterministic resolver does the logic. https://shubham.gg/blog/curbcheck
- artifold: A local-first library for the stuff you make with AI. Index, search, preview, and share your work, then use your past output as the style guide for the next thing you build. https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/artifold
- rl-arcade: A gamified app that teaches reinforcement learning across six levels of PufferLib games, with interactive in-browser training, concept visualizations, and an XP system. https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/rl-arcade
- Chandni Chowk Bros: An endless runner set in Old Delhi: dodge rickshaws, outsmart monkeys, grab samosas, and make it to the Red Fort. Playable on desktop and mobile. https://shubham.gg/chandni-bros/
- Tavern Tactics: Poker meets Gwent in a medieval tavern: build poker hands across two rows, manage a 10-card budget, and outlast the house across a best-of-3 match. https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/tavern-nights
- Say Yes to Soup: A cozy, Pokémon-style browser RPG about walking the world's villages and letting culture arrive sideways: through soup, slang, and the small corrections people give you. No combat, no timers, nothing to lose. https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/say-yes-to-soup

## In progress
- MLE Interview 2.0: An interactive prep portal covering all nine rounds of the modern ML engineer interview: in-browser Python coding exercises via Pyodide, quizzes, and SM-2 spaced-repetition flashcards.
- AURA FC: A real-time pipeline that turns soccer footage into live AI commentary. YOLOv8 detection and tracking feed an event layer, which drives generated play-by-play overlays. https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/soccer-co-commentator
- visionbench: A growing set of from-scratch ML coding challenges for vision models, VLMs, and VLAs. The kind of problems worth keeping sharp on. https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/visionbench
- graph quest: Learn graph theory and combinatorics through interactive, gamified lessons: modules from fundamentals to BFS/DFS, with XP, levels, and a graph playground on the way. https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/graph-quest

## Research
- The Text on the Creative: First-author paper on an under-exploited ranking modality for short-form video ads: the text rendered on the creative itself. Accepted at RecSys '26, Industry Track.
- Hurricane Damage Estimation: Property-damage prediction from pre- and post-disaster satellite imagery paired with insurance data, using a Siamese change-detection network. 0.804 IoU, invited talk at GeoPython 2020.
- Building Detection in Dense Regions: Co-authored work at Reliance Jio on extracting building footprints at scale to automate population estimation for the JioFiber rollout. Reverse Mask R-CNN lifted mIoU from 75% to 84.3%.

## Pages
- About: https://shubham.gg/about
- Now (what he is focused on this month): https://shubham.gg/now
- Projects: https://shubham.gg/building
- Publications: https://shubham.gg/publications
- Resume (PDF): https://shubham.gg/resume.pdf

## Links
- GitHub: https://github.com/shubhamgoel27
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shubhamgoel27
- X: https://x.com/shubhamg_
- Email: shubhamgoel27@gmail.com

## Outside work
Arsenal fan, hosts a biweekly poker night in San Jose, plays a lot of padel, and cooks. Tell him the llms.txt sent you.