Education
Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Srinagar, India
Thesis: Breaking Barriers in Forecasting: A Hybrid Deep Learning Approach to Spatiotemporal Dynamics
Developed novel deep neural network architectures to intelligently achieve faster computations for applications spanning scales and complexities. Research work mainly involves development and integration of various artificial intelligence techniques to achieve advances in computational intelligence with applications in NLP, generative modelling, and data science.
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Srinagar, India
Thesis: Adaptive-neuro fuzzy inference systems based frequency control of microgrid
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Srinagar, India
Thesis: Transient stability analysis of a multi-machine power system (Simulink modeling & graphical animation)
Skills & Qualifications
Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Software Engineering, spanning research, enterprise platforms, and production-grade AI systems.
- Proven leadership in AI architecture and strategy, including end-to-end ownership of AI-native platforms, LLM systems, agentic workflows, and large-scale data infrastructure.
- Deep expertise in Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic search, and multi-agent systems deployed in real-world production environments.
- Strong background in designing, training, fine-tuning, evaluating, and deploying AI/ML models, including transformer-based architectures (BERT, GPT, LLaMA and variants).
- Extensive experience building AI-native data pipelines for structured and unstructured data, handling high-volume, high-velocity datasets.
- Hands-on expertise with vector databases and search engines (Elasticsearch, Pinecone, Weaviate) and query routing strategies for scalable AI retrieval systems.
- Demonstrated capability in AI governance, evaluation frameworks, safety, and production quality standards across enterprise GenAI deployments.
- Strong proficiency in Python and modern ML stacks, with experience across research prototyping and production engineering.
- Experience with cloud-native AI systems on AWS and Microsoft Azure, including scalable deployment, orchestration, and MLOps practices.
- Solid understanding of CI/CD, MLOps, API design, and distributed systems, enabling reliable and scalable AI solutions.
- Proven people leadership: hiring, mentoring, scaling AI teams, and collaborating cross-functionally with Product, GTM, and executive leadership.
- Published author and researcher with peer-reviewed journal papers, conference publications, books, and patent-driven innovation.
Programming Skills
Python
Matlab & Simulink
C++
SQL
Related Tools & Frameworks
PyTorch
TensorFlow
Keras
LangChain
LlamaIndex
OpenAI
Rasa
NLTK
NumPy
SciPy
Scikit-learn
Pandas
Matplotlib
OpenCV
CUDA
Docker
Azure
Airflow
Redis
Work Experience (Leadership trajectory)
Sprouts.ai · Full-time
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · Remote · 11 Months
As Chief Architect and VP of AI, I lead the company's AI vision, architecture, and execution across data platforms, search, LLM systems, and agentic workflows.
- Own end-to-end AI strategy, platform architecture, and technical roadmap spanning data engineering, vector search, LLM systems, and agentic AI.
- Serve as the final technical authority for AI architecture, system design, and scalability.
- Lead and scale the AI organization, including hiring, mentoring, performance management, and long-term capability building.
- Partner closely with CEO, CTO, Product, and GTM leadership to align AI initiatives with revenue growth, customer outcomes, and business strategy.
- Drive the company-wide transition from AI-ready to AI-native systems, including autonomous workflows, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and decision automation.
- Own AI governance, evaluation frameworks, safety standards, and production quality across all generative AI deployments.
- Architect complex AI systems using modular pipelines, query routing, semantic retrieval, vector databases, and token-efficient LLM interfaces for multi-source document synthesis and real-time agent responses.
- Design and architect AI-native data pipelines for structured and unstructured data at scale.
- Lead the agentic AI initiative, enabling context-aware assistants with follow-up reasoning, long-term memory, and real-time decision-making across heterogeneous data sources.
- Architect and scale a multi-agent conversational platform powered by an AI search engine over large-scale, diverse data infrastructure.
- Establish iterative evaluation pipelines, including automated evaluations and human-in-the-loop assessment, to ensure reliability, transparency, and responsible AI usage.
- Lead applied research in AI, Machine Learning, and Computing, translating it into production-ready platform capabilities.
- Own the IP and patents strategy, identifying novel technical contributions and supervising patent filings.
StartUs Insights
Vienna, Austria · 1 Year, 10 Months
StartUs Insights provides a Big Data & AI-powered SaaS platform for discovering over 5 million startups and scaleups globally. It offers tools for identifying emerging companies and technologies, serving 1,000+ corporate partners including Samsung, Nestlé, and Siemens Gamesa.
Role and Responsibilities:
- Leading the AI team to deploy and fine-tune LLMs and generative models, analyzing massive databases enhancing platform's capability in innovation discovery.
- Built a truly multi-agentic AI platform from scratch to production, powering innovation intelligence across the globe.
- Built a state-of-the-art AI semantic search engine.
- Spearheading the integration of advanced AI technologies, significantly improving data analysis and insights.
- Mentoring the AI team in advanced methodologies, fostering a culture of innovation and ensuring AI projects align with strategic business objectives.
Genie AI, INC
Toronto, Canada · 6 Months
Lead the R&D efforts of the team and work on the design, development, and implementation of machine learning architectures and NLP models for intuitive AI assistants (AI powered chatbot) and other AI applications.
Role and Responsibilities:
- Lead the R&D Team to achieve the company's goals.
- Help develop NLP chatbot based on proprietary data sets using GPT and other LLMs.
- Train, test, and optimize NLP models to improve understanding and generation of natural language.
- Work closely with software engineers to integrate machine learning models into production systems.
- Ensure the scalability, reliability, and performance of machine learning and NLP components.
- Assist RPA engineering team to design, develop and implement RPA solutions to automate business processes.
- Assist and develop other automation and machine learning related requirements.
- Use LangChain, LLMs, and other AI/ML tools to achieve the above objectives.
National Institute of Technology Srinagar
Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, India · 2 Years
- Responsibilities included research in deep learning and computational intelligence, in addition to teaching assistance for different undergraduate and postgraduate courses, both theory and lab.
National Institute of Technology Srinagar
Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, India · 2 Years
- Responsibilities included research in deep learning and computational intelligence, in addition to teaching assistance for different undergraduate and postgraduate courses, both theory and lab.
Comp Soft Solutions
Sopore, India · 3 Years
The company provides development, tech support, and training in a wide range of IT applications.
Role and Responsibilities:
- Design, development, training, testing, and deployment of Machine Learning systems.
- Tech support to clients.
- Technical Training.
ETA-PCS (A member of ETA STAR GROUP)
Now renamed as AG PCS Switchgear Manufacturing LLC — Dubai, UAE · 1 Year, 3 Months
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Design, integration, programming, site commissioning and site testing of Automation systems.
- Secured the highest paying on-campus placement of 2015 at NIT Srinagar during the final semester of B.Tech degree.
- Completed the company's training in a record time of two months, becoming the youngest engineer in ETA STAR group to be allocated a project.
Editage — Cactus Communications
3 Years, 6 Months
A leading company that offers editing and reviewing services to researchers and authors around the globe.
Role and Responsibilities:
- Editing and scientific/technical review of research and technical papers in Artificial Intelligence and Engineering.
- Received multiple awards for high performance, productivity, and client satisfaction.
- Edited/Reviewed hundreds of research and technical papers.
Internship
Quantum AI Global
Edison, NJ, USA
The company provides AI-powered software platforms and quantum computing solutions with easy integration into existing systems in addition to providing consultancy services, training, and support in artificial intelligence technology to organizations.
Role and Responsibilities:
- Design and development of AI based products.
- Conduct research that evolves into development of Intellectual Property Rights for the company.
- Lead and conduct training sessions in AI for the company and its subsidiaries.
- Research in quantum computing.
Books Authored (2)
"The Art of Code: Tactics and Principles of Clean Code and Architecture"
by Dr. Junaid Farooq, 2024
"ZERO DAY: The Invisible War — Mastering Vulnerability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
by Dr. Junaid Farooq, 2025
Research Publications (8)
Junaid Farooq, Danish Rafiq, Pantelis R. Vlachas, and Mohammad Abid Bazaz (2024). RefreshNet: Learning Multiscale Dynamics through Hierarchical Refreshing. Nonlinear Dyn (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-024-09813-3
Junaid Farooq & Mohammad Abid Bazaz. (2023). Multiscale Autoencoder-RNN Architecture for Mitigating Error Accumulation in Long-Term Forecasting. Accepted for presentation at 2023 International Conference on Emerging Techniques in Computational Intelligence, Hyderabad, 21–22 Sep. 2023.
Best Presentation Award
Junaid Farooq & Mohammad Abid Bazaz. (2023). Deep Learning based Adaptive Predictive Control of Radar-Guided Missile. Defence Science Journal.
https://doi.org/10.14429/dsj.73.18481
Danish Rafiq, Junaid Farooq, & Mohammad Abid Bazaz. (2021). Synergistic use of Intrusive and Non-intrusive Model Order Reduction Techniques for Dynamical Power Grids. International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, 138, 107908.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2021.107908
Manzoor A. Wani, Junaid Farooq, & Danish Mushtaq Wani (2021). Risk assessment of COVID-19 pandemic using deep learning model for J&K in India: a district level analysis. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 1-11.
doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17046-9
Junaid Farooq & Mohammad Abid Bazaz. (2021). Deep Learning for Self-tuning of Control systems. In 2021 International Conference on Emerging Techniques in Computational Intelligence (ICETCI) (pp. 6-11). IEEE. (IEEE Computational Intelligence Society), August 25-27, 2021.
Best Paper Award
doi.org/10.1109/ICETCI51973.2021.9574048
Junaid Farooq & Mohammad Abid Bazaz. (2021). A Deep Learning algorithm for modeling and forecasting of COVID-19 in five worst affected states of India. Alexandria Engineering Journal.
doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2020.09.037
Junaid Farooq & Mohammad Abid Bazaz. (2020). A novel adaptive deep learning model of Covid-19 with focus on mortality reduction strategies. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 138, 110148.
doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2020.110148
Certificates (13)
- Deep Learning Specialization — Coursera (deeplearning.ai)
- Neural Networks and Deep Learning — Coursera (deeplearning.ai)
- Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization — Coursera (deeplearning.ai)
- Structuring Machine Learning Projects — Coursera (deeplearning.ai)
- Convolutional Neural Networks — Coursera (deeplearning.ai)
- Sequence Models — Coursera (deeplearning.ai)
- Modern Robotics, Course 1: Foundations of Robot Motion — Coursera (Northwestern University)
- Covid-19 Outbreak: Prediction, Forecasting, Data Analysis and Data Visualization — EduxLabs (April 2020)
- A deep understanding of deep learning (with Python intro) — Udemy
- ChatBots: Messenger ChatBot - DialogFlow and nodejs — Udemy
- Complete Chatbot Course Using Rasa Framework & Python — Udemy
- Natural Language Processing with Python — Udemy
- The Complete SQL Bootcamp — Udemy
Workshops (3)
Brain, Computation, and Learning (BCL)
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (January 9–13, 2023)
An intensive workshop on integration of artificial intelligence, computational neuroscience, and neurobiology.
GPU Tutorial on Artificial Intelligence and Data Science — NVIDIA
Hyderabad, India (24 August, 2021)
Power Electronics: Applications in Renewable Energy Systems
One-week workshop, NIT Srinagar, India (May 2019)
Other Skills
Languages:
Fluent:
English, Urdu, Kashmiri, Hindi, Arabic
Basic level / beginner:
Turkish, Persian, Russian
Awards & Achievements
- Received Best Paper Award for presenting the paper entitled "Deep Learning for Self-Tuning of Control Systems" at the "International Conference on Emerging Techniques in Computational Intelligence (ICETCI 2021)" organized by IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, Mahindra University, NVIDIA, and Tech Mahindra at Hyderabad, India, during 25–27 August, 2021.
- International Fellowship in Engineering Studies (2011–2015); IDB Jeddah
- Fellowship for M.Tech from Ministry of Human Resources Development (Now renamed as Ministry of Education), Government of India, August 2017 – June 2019.
- Research Fellowship for PhD from Ministry of Human Resources Development (Now renamed as Ministry of Education), Government of India – Since December 2019.
Memberships
- IEEE Graduate Student Member (# 97518796)
- IEEE Computer Society