About

Omkar Salpekar is a highly accomplished Software Engineer with a passion for bringing innovative Distributed Systems, Machine Learning, and Cloud Computing technology to market. With over 4 years of relevant experience, he has worked on infrastructure teams at Facebook and Tanium, and done research in Big Data and Distributed Computing at Berkeley's RISELab (previously AMPLab). Currently, he is working as a Software Engineer at Facebook AI, where he is building Distributed PyTorch to solve Facebook's Petabyte-scale Machine Learning problems. Omkar's expertise in Distributed Systems, Machine Learning, and Cloud Computing is reflected in his work at Facebook and Tanium, where he has contributed to developing cutting-edge technology solutions. At Berkeley's RISELab, he worked with Professors Ion Stoica and Anthony Joseph on Modin, a distributed DataFrame library built to accelerate Pandas (Python Data Science library). He achieved an 8x speedup over Pandas on a 4-core machine by optimizing library performance through designing DataFrame grid partitioning schemes and implementing efficient distributed statistical methods for data stored across a cluster of machines. In addition to his professional work, Omkar is also an active advisor and investor in early-stage startups through Rough Draft Ventures and Free Ventures. He has invested in West Coast startups out of a $2 million fund backed by VC firm General Catalyst and co-founded the fund's San Francisco team. He has also led deals in companies ranging from AR hardware to a compensation review service for underrepresented groups in tech. Omkar holds a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He also attended Moreau Catholic High School, where he completed his high school education. Omkar's technical expertise includes Software Engineering, AI, ML, Pytorch, Big Data, Research Scientist, and infra. With his extensive experience and expertise in the field of technology, Omkar is a valuable asset to any organization he works with.