Robotics · Computer Vision · ML Infrastructure

Malachi Espinola

CTO in under two years at Gradient, an $8M AI robotics startup. Building systems in robotics, ML infrastructure, and applied AI.

Work

Selected work

CTO in under 2 years

Gradient

Robots, vision, data, and ML infrastructure for high-volume card handling.

  • Leading the pivot
  • Sorting robot
  • Building the Data Backbone
  • The LLM Identification Pipeline
  • +8 more

Two things people ask

What I’m looking for

Fast paced, open ended, ambiguous problem solving across data science, ML, and robotics. Ideally somewhere I can learn from strong people and new tech. I am constantly pushing myself to be better, and I need a place where that can materialize.

Why I left Gradient

I had saturated my technical depth there. The company was looking at pivoting to the streaming business alongside repacks, and most of the technical work was established. There was less room for my growth ahead, despite enormous growth up to that point.

The runway still looked bleak even with the pivot running profitably. We were still paying plenty of people tied to old business processes, and the CEO was reluctant to move as fast as I wanted. Change was required and it was not happening.

B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics · University of Washington · 2024 · 3.86 GPA