Sami El Akkad — Applied AI Engineer & Product

Q · 信誉从何而来?

Tsinghua + Baidu.

Where I studied, and where I worked on a frontier LLM.

institution · 学校

Tsinghua SIGS

清华大学深圳国际研究生院

🥇

AIID Yearly Competition Winner

SSO · NetDragon partner track · 2025

🎓

CSC Scholar · GPA 3.9/4.0

中国政府奖学金 — full scholarship

#1 in the world for AI

Tsinghua · US News 2024–25 · AI subject (also #1 in Asia overall)

MSc Artificial Intelligence · AI+X Innovation Design track · Shenzhen · 2025–Present

ernie mentor program · 项目

Baidu ERNIE

百度文心导师 · Wenxin Mentor

🥉

3rd Prize · ERNIE Hackathon 2025

RedFox · Hardware Track · top 3 of 23 finalists · 170+ subs · ~5,900 devs

💼

Paid contract role

Data construction · eval rubric · prompts

📜

Two official Baidu certificates

ERNIE Mentor Program · 2025

ERNIE / 文心一言 · Shenzhen · Oct–Dec 2025

网龙

third signal · 雇主管道

NetDragon Websoft (网龙网络) — Fuzhou employer pipeline

Fortune-China AI + Education leader · AIID partner. SSO was built for their stack. AIID Visiting Study (Fuzhou, Dec 2025) opens the introduction.

🥇

scholarship · 奖学金

NPU President's Full Prize

100% tuition + ¥15,000 stipend

⚡

selective track · 精英计划

AI+X Elite Program

Tsinghua SIGS

🎓

language · 中文

HSK 4 · 90/100

NPU transcript verified

📐

methodology · 方法论

5-Dim Eval Rubric

DOPEDCLUB → Baidu → jak.ma

Q · 谁报道过我?

Who has officially featured me?

Tsinghua SIGS itself — part of the official #MyChinaStory + #TsinghuaRen series. Published on @tsinghua.sigsadm · Feb 2026. official

View on Instagram →

"Through his studies and work on AI projects, including his involvement in the Baidu ERNIE ecosystem, he gained firsthand insight into what he describes as 'a fast-paced tech ecosystem focused on execution, rapid iteration, and real-world impact.'"

— Tsinghua SIGS (@tsinghua.sigsadm) · #MyChinaStory · Feb 2026

Tsinghua SIGS Story — defining moment: AIID first prize, Baidu ERNIE National Competition, Tencent, NetDragon

defining moment · AIID 1st · Baidu ERNIE · Tencent · NetDragon ↗

Tsinghua SIGS Story — what working with Baidu taught me about innovation

what Baidu taught me about innovation ↗

My Tsinghua SIGS Story — Sami El Akkad, AI + Innovation Design, CSC Scholar

My Tsinghua SIGS Story · cover ↗

Tsinghua SIGS Story — on Shenzhen and tech integrated into daily life

on Shenzhen · tech in daily life ↗

Tsinghua SIGS Story — on Tsinghua's international community

on the international community ↗

Tsinghua SIGS Story — advice: engage globally to accelerate growth

advice · go global to grow ↗

Tsinghua SIGS Story — how internships and hands-on experience won the CSC scholarship

how I earned the CSC scholarship ↗

more than a degree · closing ↗

also covered by · 也被报道

@Tsinghua_Uni · verified main account.

Not just SIGS — the central Tsinghua University verified Twitter picked up the story.

Tsinghua University verified tweet about Sami — OpenFIESTA + Shenzhen tech ecosystem

at Tsinghua OpenFIESTA · "fast-paced ecosystem · execution · iteration · measurable impact" ↗

Tsinghua University verified tweet about Sami — Three Cultures One Mission, Chinese New Year integration

Three Cultures, One Mission · Chinese New Year · cultural integration ↗

Q · 我究竟做过什么?

Selected work.

github.com/Samielakkad →

live in production built & shipped solo

jak.ma · Moroccan home-services marketplace

Zero-commission, anti-shnaq, Darija-first chat marketplace for skilled-trade workers (plumbers, electricians, tilers). 1,862 workers · 15 cities · 3,400 daily queries · 1,100 DAU (self-reported, early 2026 — live at jak.ma). Two-pass architecture: Pass 1 classifies intent + city, Pass 2 generates a constrained response that must clear a six-check verifier before reaching the user. p50 ≈ 1.2s · ≈$0.0008 per query · <1% verifier rejection. The price-band check is built from a 200-worker field survey — there's no published price reference for Moroccan trades, and an LLM-as-judge would just rubber-stamp the model's biased prior. More skilled-trade workers listed than the French-first incumbent, sabab.ma.

JS · Node · Mongo grok-3-mini verifier-gated

01 · Live products & apps

🥇 AIID Winner

▶

Sovereign School OS

EdTech · TypeScript · ✓ CI

AI-native K-12 platform — auth · real-time chat · AI tutoring on Wenxin (ERNIE) · parent dashboard. 50+ React/TS components.

React/TS Auth + realtime ERNIE tutor

▶ Watch demo Code ↗

🎨 Best Design EdTech

Sinothrive AI

2025 · Tsinghua · 6-member team

AI assistant matching international students to universities in China. Won Best Design Award, Dec 2025.

Product UX design matching

🥉 Baidu · 3rd Prize

Baidu 百度

RedFox · ERNIE Hackathon

AI hardware · 2025 · Jetson AGX Xavier

AI hardware companion on Wenxin (ERNIE). Top 3 / 23 finalists · 170+ subs · ~5,900 devs. SFT won 87.5% / 72.5% (Interactivity / Safety), blind A/B.

Edge AI Jetson SFT + eval

⚖️

legal-tech

✓ CI

mirath-morocco

Legal-tech · TypeScript · ✓ CI

Moudawana inheritance + land-registry solver — Moroccan family law, productized.

TypeScript Moudawana solver

02 · Models, vision & from-scratch ML

✓ CI

YOLOv8 from scratch

Computer vision · @ Neusoft 东软 · 2024

Autonomous-driving road-object detector built from zero in PyTorch — CSPDarknet · PANet · DFL head. Tests + Dockerfile + CI.

PyTorch from scratch mAP eval

ADCMOplus Theorem 1 regret stays under the bound

✓ CI

NWPU 西北工大

ADCMOplus

Optimization · @ NWPU 西北工大 · 2025

Online-learning evolutionary algorithm for dynamic constrained optimization. Runnable Theorem-1 regret demo. Rank 1.25 vs 5 SOTA.

MATLAB evolutionary thesis

🗣️

NLP model

darija-classifier

NLP · Python · Hugging Face

Production Moroccan-Arabic intent + city classifier powering jak.ma's Pass-1.

Python intent + city Hugging Face

🤗

live demo

🤗 live

Darija Chat — HF Space

Live demo · Hugging Face Spaces

Interactive Darija chat demo — production retrieval architecture, browser-runnable. Public, deployed, reproducible.

HF Space retrieval Darija

03 · Evaluation & PM methodology

methodology

pm-frameworks-darija

Methodology · Markdown · 5 files

Pricing · eval · calibration · verifier · multimodal. Rater calibration to Krippendorff α ≥ 0.7. The layer behind every project here.

pricing eval rubric calibration

Evaluation

jak-ma-eval-suite

Evaluation · Python

5-dim evaluation rubric for two-pass grounded retrieval — the verifier that gates jak.ma in production.

Python 5-dim verifier

📏

Baidu 百度

ernie-evaluation-notes

Evaluation · Baidu provenance

5-dim eval (factuality · reasoning · fluency · calibration · safety) · adversarial pairs · cross-language calibration. Feeds release-gating.

factuality safety cross-lang

jak.ma production metrics — 1,862 workers, 3,400 daily queries, p50 1.2s, $0.0008/query, <1% verifier rejection

Case study

jak-ma-case-study

Case study · ~6,500 words

Production case study — 5 decisions · 5 things that broke · the numbers a year in.

5 decisions metrics retrieval

04 · Research, docs & resources

🧬

thesis · NPU

thesis-adcmoplus

Research · MATLAB · write-up

74-page NPU undergrad thesis · Friedman rank 1.25. Full write-up on this page →

MATLAB 74 pages rank 1.25

Docs · award

aiid-team-docs

Docs site · TypeScript · ✓ CI

Interactive docs site — Best Documentation Award, Tsinghua AIID Hackathon 2025.

TypeScript docs site Best Docs

🗂️

resources

darija-nlp-resources

Resources · Markdown

Curated Moroccan-Arabic NLP resources — datasets, papers, tooling.

Markdown datasets Arabic NLP

3lach bghiti daba

علاش بغيتي دبا

v0.1.0

darija-tools

NLP utility · Python · zero dependencies

Normalize Arabic-script noise and transliterate common Arabizi with explicit rules and a reviewable lexicon.

Python zero deps MIT

Q · 我在哪里工作过?

Where have I worked?

Four AI roles in 18 months. The thread: one 5-dim evaluation methodology, invented at DOPEDCLUB, formalised at Baidu ERNIE.

Oct 2025 – Dec 2025 · Shenzhen

paid contract

Baidu — ERNIE Mentor

百度 · 文心导师 · Wenxin Mentor

Paid expert on Baidu's flagship LLM (文心一言 / ERNIE)
Stress-tested prompts · multi-dim scoring rubric · production-readiness signals
Drove release decisions on candidate checkpoints
Built RedFox AI hardware companion on Wenxin + Jetson AGX Xavier
🥉 3rd Prize · top 3 / 23 finalists · 170+ subs · ~5,900 devs · Hardware Track recap feature
Two official Baidu certificates

May 2025 – Jul 2025 · Hebei

industrial ML

Hebei Chinaust Plastics — IT Engineer (AI & Robotics)

ML predictive maintenance across 3 production lines
+12% accuracy · −18% downtime
Data pipeline on 120K+ sensor records
Digital twins cut product test cycles 2 weeks → 4 days
Authored Morocco-expansion feasibility study (~30% logistics savings)

Sep 2024 – Feb 2025 · Casablanca (Hybrid)

applied AI-PM

DOPEDCLUB — Applied AI Product Manager

Creative studio using GenAI for client visual deliverables
Designed the 5-criteria evaluation framework — origin of the signature rubric
Same rubric was later reused at Baidu ERNIE and as the jak.ma verifier
12-item checklist/SOP across 20+ recurring client briefs
Longest-duration formal AI-PM role on the CV

Jun 2024 – Sep 2024 · Zhengzhou-Kaifeng

CV / autonomous-driving

Neusoft — AI Intern

Object detection for autonomous-driving R&D · ~98% precision
Segmentation pipelines: −45% preprocessing time · −30% training time
Healthcare + e-commerce segmentation deployments
Identity-verification eval supporting internal Alipay / WeChat Pay integration tests

Q · 我的研究是什么?

My undergrad thesis — ADCMOplus.

74 pages. Rank #1 of 6 algorithms tested. A novel evolutionary algorithm that classifies the type of environmental change (objective / constraint / combined) before adapting — built for problems where targets and constraints both move over time. Maps onto LLM serving, RLHF, agent orchestration.

1.25

Friedman rank · best of 5 SOTA

12 / 12

benchmarks won on diversity (Wilcoxon p<0.05)

10 / 12

benchmarks won on DeltaP

pages · MATLAB R2024B

May 2025

defended · NPU · Li Lin

Read the full thesis write-up (PM-framed)

Contributions · architecture · benchmark results · applications to LLM serving, RLHF, agent orchestration · ~6,000 words

Expand ↓

Underlying MATLAB code + the 74-page PDF stay private — email sam25@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn for access.

Q · 为什么这样建?

Why I build the way I do.

"Most AI products treat low-resource languages and emerging markets as English-first with a translation layer on top. I think that's the wrong abstraction, and the systems I build try to prove it."

My way of thinking about AI products came out of my undergrad thesis at NPU (ADCMOplus · with Prof. Lin Li) on constrained dynamic multi-objective optimization. AI products almost never come down to a single metric — you're trading latency, cost, accuracy, and fairness against each other, and the honest answer is a Pareto front, not a winner. The six-check verifier in jak.ma is the same reasoning applied at runtime.

Practically, this means I work in Arabic, Darija, French, English, and functional Mandarin — I can ship products into MENA, work inside a Chinese tech stack, and connect the two without the usual translation cost.

Q · 我是怎么走到这里的?

How did I get here?

NPU undergrad → Tsinghua master's. CSC government scholar. Five languages.

2025 — Present · Shenzhen

current

Tsinghua SIGS — MSc Artificial Intelligence (AI+X Innovation Design track)

清华大学深圳国际研究生院 · CSC Government Scholar

2021 — 2025 · Xi'an

Northwestern Polytechnical University — B.Eng. CS

西北工业大学 · Thesis defended May 2025 · 74-page ADCMOplus

NPU President's Scholarship — Full Prize: 100% tuition waiver + ¥15,000 stipend

languages

· Arabic · native

· Darija · native

· English · fluent

· French · fluent

· Mandarin 中文 · HSK 4 (90/100, NPU transcript)

Q · 我怎么做产品?

How do I think about AI products?

The honest answer is a Pareto front, not a winner. Classify the failure mode first, then pick the right tool.

The same idea runs from my thesis to production: a 5-dimension evaluation rubric feeding a verifier-gated pipeline. It started at DOPEDCLUB (Casablanca), was formalised evaluating ERNIE at Baidu (Shenzhen), and now gates jak.ma in production. The five files below are that framework.

pricing taxonomy

evaluation rubric

calibration protocol

verifier philosophy

multimodal decision

Q · 我在找什么?

What am I looking for?

Applied AI / ML engineering & product roles starting 2026 — open from a 3-month internship through a full-time start.

I care about the team and the problem more than the logo or the location. If you're building something hard in applied AI and think I'd fit, I want to hear from you — wherever you are.

Some ecosystems I already know how to operate in — examples, not a checklist:

Chinese tech going international (出海) — ByteDance / TikTok, Tencent, Alibaba, Xiaomi, SHEIN, Lenovo, Huawei & peers.
Global labs & firms with a China presence — e.g. Microsoft Research Asia, NVIDIA, Apple.
Southeast Asia & Singapore — Sea AI Labs, AI Singapore, GovTech, Grab, Lazada & others.
Gulf & MENA AI — G42, Inception, MBZUAI, TII Falcon, HUMAIN & the wider region.
…or anywhere else — remote, Europe, North America, back home in Morocco — a great team is a great team.

Drawn to (but not limited to): AI + Education · AI hardware · multi-agent retrieval · low-resource-market AI (Arabic / Darija / Mandarin / French) · evaluation & calibration · marketplace / matching. Based in Shenzhen · open to relocation and remote.

sam25@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn linkedin.com/in/samielakkad github.com/Samielakkad 🤗 jakma-darija-chat (live)