John Machado

  • Senior AI Engineer
  • Former Professional Soccer Player
  • Third-Degree Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

I'm a multidisciplinary engineer working across AI, cloud, and full-stack development.

See my work Get in touch
John Machado with the Dallas skyline behind him

About

I'm a senior AI engineer on the Enterprise AI team at Toyota North America. My foundation is software engineering, and my work spans neural network training, AI agent development, cloud computing, systems architecture, full-stack development, and API design.

I learn by building from first principles. I like knowing how things work at their foundation, so I've coded and trained large language models end to end, including a 124-million-parameter GPT-2 I trained from scratch on 10 billion tokens. I've also built neural networks in pure Python and NumPy, a ReAct agent from scratch that plays Microsoft's TextWorld (a reinforcement learning environment), and much more.

I'm also a big fan of mechanistic interpretability (essentially, neural network surgery), and I study it closely. The answers to how these models compute are already inside them; we just can't see them clearly yet. Some of my favorite work is running experiments: digging into a model's internals, and studying its behavior the way you'd study an organism, watching what it does in different scenarios and why.

I played soccer professionally in both Brazil and the United States. In Brazil I played for Sociedade Esportiva Brazlândia in the Campeonato Brasiliense, and in the U.S. I played for the Dallas Sidekicks in the Major Arena Soccer League.

I'm also a third-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, promoted by my father, Master John Machado, one of the five world-renowned Machado brothers. Jiu-Jitsu is still a big part of my life today, and together with soccer, it gave me the precision, focus, resilience, and creativity I bring to every team I work on.

Work

  1. 2025 – Present Promoted · Nov 2025

    Artificial Intelligence Senior Engineer

    Toyota North America · Plano, Texas

    Nov 2025 – Present · Artificial Intelligence Senior Engineer

    • Building enterprise-scale AI applications, multi-agent systems, and intelligent automation solutions on Toyota North America's Enterprise AI team.

    Jan 2025 – Nov 2025 · Generative Artificial Intelligence Engineer

    • One of the lead developers of ToyotaGPT, Toyota's internal ChatGPT, used by tens of thousands of employees. Led the project from development to launch.
    • Built ToyotaGPT's bot platform with my team: an organized system for launching RAG-powered chatbots that cut the time to ship a new agent from six months with six engineers to four days with one. It now powers more than 50 AI agents in production (featured by LangChain).
    • Helped productionize GearPal, an AI assistant used daily by 1,300+ maintenance technicians across Toyota's U.S. plants and a finalist for the 2026 Manufacturing Leadership Awards.

  2. 2022 – 2024 Promoted · Jun 2023

    Senior Software Engineer & Cloud Architect

    Theta Diagnostics · Dallas, Texas

    Jun 2023 – Aug 2024 · Senior Software Engineer & Cloud Architect

    • Handled onsite and offsite testing for the company's first clinical trial at UTSW (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) in Dallas, where Theta's prototype device was used to validate breath biomarkers in lung cancer patients.
    • Processed and analyzed sensor data from the prototype device during the trial.
    • Contributed machine learning visuals and supported model training and analysis.
    • Built the cloud infrastructure for secure, real-time data transfer between the edge device and backend during clinical trials.
    • This work was acknowledged in “Electrochemical breath profiling for early thoracic malignancy screening,” Sensing and Bio-Sensing Research (2025).
    • Built an autonomous system on GCP that ran for nearly 1.5 years with little to no human intervention, executing thousands of jobs without failure.
    • Led a team to build an application that analyzes tabular or image data and automatically generates machine learning models, keeping the project on schedule.
    • Used OpenAI's Assistants API to build multiple AI agents that collaboratively managed application logic, automating decision-making with code paths triggered by the AI's responses.
    • Applied prompt engineering to get reliable responses from each OpenAI Assistant, and built in-code safety checks that validated LLM responses and alerted users when a re-prompt was needed.
    • Implemented RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) with OpenAI's Vector Store.
    • Containerized and served image classification models with Flask, and deployed ML models on AWS SageMaker.
    • Ran adversarial tests to evaluate how models behave when given harmful input.
    • Secured internal and external APIs with GCP API Gateway and documented them to the OpenAPI standard.
    • Developed full-stack applications by integrating Flask backend APIs with React frontends.
    • Configured load balancers with NEGs (Network Endpoint Groups) to route users to their app instances, with GCP's IAP (Identity-Aware Proxy) handling authentication.

    Sep 2022 – Jun 2023 · Software Engineer

    • Architected the company's cloud system from scratch using GCP (Google Cloud Platform) and Firebase.
    • Adopted GCP's Batch in October 2022, two months after its public release, likely making Theta one of the first companies in the world to use it for machine learning workloads. It was the most efficient, cost-effective way to run long-running machine learning algorithms on VMs (Virtual Machines) at the time.
    • Built an internal Python tool to check which GCP regions had available resources, so VMs could launch without failure.
    • Containerized the company's software with Docker.
    • Implemented CI/CD pipelines for the company's software with Cloud Build.
    • Wrote Terraform scripts to automate cloud infrastructure management in GCP.
    • Developed a secure full-stack application for an early client, using Streamlit for the frontend and GCP and Firebase products for the backend.
    • Managed DNS (Domain Name System).
    • On GCP, used VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), Cloud NAT (Network Address Translation), Cloud Router, and static IPs to prevent external APIs from blacklisting certain Cloud Functions.
    • Analyzed human breath data in Python for scientists at the UTD (University of Texas at Dallas) Department of Bioengineering.
    • Helped set up the software for the GC/MS (Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry) instrument at UTD.
    • Participated in several UTD laboratory tests by providing my own breath samples.
    • Configured Windows Task Scheduler on Windows-based PCs to run Python scripts that back up data to GCP.
    • Contributed C++ firmware code to Theta's prototype hardware device.
    • Helped write Swift code for an internal mobile app.
    • Created data visualization dashboards with Looker Studio.

  3. 2021 – 2022

    Senior Associate, Global Managed Services (Developer)

    Appnovation · Vancouver, British Columbia

    Jun 2021 – Sep 2022 · Senior Associate, Global Managed Services (Developer)

    • Built an automated data platform integrating data sources critical to company operations. The platform was vital to client renewals and saved project managers several hours each month by centralizing information such as client website performance.
    • Monitored client website performance and collected data through API calls to StatusCake, Google Analytics, Core Web Vitals, Zabbix, Jenkins, and Jira (using Jira Query Language), giving the platform comprehensive coverage.
    • Developed custom webhooks on Jenkins CI/CD pipelines using Groovy and Bash to send software build information to a GCP Cloud Function.
    • Served as Backend Tech Lead for a microservices-based learning delivery platform, overseeing system design, structure, and ongoing maintenance.
    • Maintained and optimized Flask APIs, using SQLAlchemy and PostgreSQL for data management.
    • Worked with Algolia and Contentful for content search and management.
    • Collaborated with front-end engineers on seamless React-backend integrations.
    • Wrote Python scripts with Pandas for data manipulation.
    • Built GCP solutions using Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Memorystore, Cloud Scheduler, Cloud Build, API Gateway, Cloud CDN, and Firebase (Realtime Database, Authentication, Firestore).
    • Created data visualization dashboards in Looker Studio.
    • Optimized SQL queries for complex data retrieval and transformation.
    • Delivered SEO services for clients, including Google Analytics 4 migrations, technical audits with Screaming Frog SEO Spider, keyword research with Semrush, and full SEO audits alongside senior SEO specialists.
    • Created website tags and collected marketing data with Google Tag Manager.

  4. 2020 – 2021

    Software Development Senior Analyst

    NTT DATA Services · Plano, Texas

    Oct 2020 – Jun 2021 · Software Development Senior Analyst

    • Served as a software engineer for a leading health insurance provider, contributing to critical software development projects.
    • Conducted in-depth application discovery on a decades-old COBOL application running on IBM mainframes.
    • Mapped the entire system's architecture through extensive collaboration with the original engineers, paving the way for modernization.
    • Created detailed system diagrams and a comprehensive document that unified information from multiple sources in one place.
    • Helped lay the groundwork for a Python-based API that the COBOL code would call to tokenize PII (personally identifiable information).

  5. 2020

    Data Analyst

    U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs · Dallas, Texas

    Aug 2020 – Oct 2020 · Data Analyst

    • Managed sensitive medical research data in Microsoft SQL Server related to the wellness of U.S. veterans.
    • Collaborated with physicians and researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas to evaluate a novel drug's potential in cancer treatment, providing data analysis to support their research.
    • Optimized SQL queries, narrowing data sets from millions of records to thousands and pinpointing the exact data required.
    • Cut SQL query processing time by 50%, enabling faster, more efficient analysis.

  6. 2014 – 2021

    Technology & Operations Lead, Black Belt Instructor

    John Machado Jiu-Jitsu Academy · Allen, Texas

    Mar 2014 – Apr 2021 · Technology & Operations Lead, Black Belt Instructor

    • Taught kids and adult classes at every level, tailoring instruction from beginners to advanced students and fostering a positive learning environment.
    • Served as a key pillar in managing all communication, both onsite at the academy and online, for membership and academy matters, ensuring inquiries were handled smoothly and issues resolved promptly.
    • Achieved a high sign-up and renewal rate by converting leads into active members and keeping existing students engaged and supported.
    • Built a thorough follow-up process that stayed in touch with potential leads until they decided whether to join.
    • Managed student records, scheduling, and messaging in PerfectMind, streamlining operations and improving the student experience.
    • Handled merchandise sales, promoting and selling products to students and members.

Research

2025 · Sensing and Bio-Sensing Research

Electrochemical breath profiling for early thoracic malignancy screening

Paul, France, Bhatia, Abu-Hijleh, Daescu, Thapa, Gordon, Prasad · UT Dallas & UT Southwestern

Key contributorAcknowledged

This paper covers a major part of the work I was involved in at Theta Diagnostics from 2022 to 2024: a non-invasive, fast, and affordable breath-based screening device to detect lung cancer at its earliest stages.

My contributions
  • Helped run onsite and offsite testing during the first clinical trial at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
  • Processed and analyzed breath sensor data collected from lung cancer patients using the prototype device.
  • Contributed to machine learning visuals and supported model training and analysis.
  • Built the cloud infrastructure that enabled secure, real-time communication and data transfer between the edge device and backend systems during clinical trials.
Read the paper

Press

2025 – 2026 · Toyota North America

GearPal: AI-powered manufacturing intelligence at Toyota

GearPal is the AI assistant for maintenance technicians that I helped bring to life with my team at Enterprise AI. It cut equipment diagnosis from 5–6 hours to 2–3 minutes and is now used daily by 1,300+ technicians across many plants and production lines in the U.S. In 2026 it was named a finalist for the Manufacturing Leadership Awards in AI Vision and Strategy.

Award finalists Watch on Instagram

Education

  1. 2021 – 2023

    Codecademy

    Computer Science

  2. 2019 – 2020

    Coding Dojo

    Computer Software Engineering

  3. 2009 – 2010

    El Camino College

    General Studies

Athletics

John lining up with the Dallas Sidekicks before playing the Monterrey Flash in Monterrey, Mexico, January 2015 John marking former Mexico international Guillermo Franco during a Dallas Sidekicks game John with the Dallas Sidekicks team in the locker room before playing Saltillo Rancho Seco in Saltillo, Mexico John with Dallas Sidekicks teammates on the field before the match against Saltillo Rancho Seco in Saltillo, Mexico John with teammates in Sidekicks training shirts after a morning training session in Dallas

Dallas Sidekicks vs. Monterrey Flash · Monterrey, Mexico · January 2015

Soccer

Former Professional Soccer Player

  1. 2014 – 2015Dallas SidekicksMASL · Dallas, Texas
    • Played in the MASL (Major Arena Soccer League), the highest level of professional indoor soccer in North America.
    • Coached by Antonio Carlos Pecorari (“Tatu”), one of the most accomplished indoor soccer players of all time.
    • Represented the Dallas Sidekicks internationally, scoring a goal during games in Mexico.
    • Helped the Sidekicks to a 2nd-place finish in the MASL Southern Division.
    2014–15 season on Wikipedia
  2. 2013Sociedade Esportiva BrazlândiaCampeonato Brasiliense · Brasília, Brazil
    • Played for Sociedade Esportiva Brazlândia in the Campeonato Brasiliense, the first-division league of Brazil's Federal District.
John with his father, Master John Machado, and his brother, Jean, at the John Machado Jiu-Jitsu Academy John with his father, Master John Machado, his brother, Jean, and fellow black belts of the Machado Team John, in a blue gi, standing with his brother, Jean, in a black gi, both wearing black belts Young John going for an armbar on his father in a Japanese martial arts magazine, early 1990s

With my father (center) and my brother, Jean (right)

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Third-Degree Black Belt

  1. Black belt2013Promoted by my father, Master John Machado
  2. 1st degree2016
  3. 2nd degree2019
  4. 3rd degree2022Current

Get in touch

Say hello. Reach me on any of the platforms below, or send me a message.