The latest articles on DEV Community by Vishal Parmar (@vishparmar). https://dev.to/vishparmar https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4005409%2F19f6908c-91ef-4a53-932b-145c6b98919e.png https://dev.to/vishparmar en Vishal Parmar Sat, 27 Jun 2026 13:40:28 +0000 https://dev.to/vishparmar/hi-im-vishal-software-engineer-turned-ai-data-engineer-building-toward-the-uk-5hng https://dev.to/vishparmar/hi-im-vishal-software-engineer-turned-ai-data-engineer-building-toward-the-uk-5hng <p>If you're seeing this profile for the first time, here's the short version of who I am and what I'm doing here.</p> <p>I'm a Software Engineer based in Ahmedabad, India, with an MSc in Computer Science (Distinction) from Birmingham City University, UK. My background is backend development — REST APIs, Laravel, Python — but over the last couple of years I've moved deliberately into AI and data engineering, and I'm now building toward something bigger: a PhD in speech and multimodal AI, and eventually, a return to the UK.</p> <h2> Why I'm writing this </h2> <p>I've learned almost everything I know from things other people wrote, built, and shared publicly for free. Tutorials, open source code, random blog posts at 2am that solved a problem I'd been stuck on for hours. None of that existed because someone was forced to write it. It existed because someone decided to give something back.</p> <p>I'd like to do the same. Writing here, sharing what I build, and being open about what I'm learning is my small way of putting something into the same pool I've taken so much from.</p> <h2> What I actually work on </h2> <ul> <li>Python backend development — APIs, automation, data processing</li> <li>Data engineering — pipelines, Airflow, dbt, SQL</li> <li>AI/LLM applications — LangChain, RAG systems, OpenAI integrations</li> <li>Speech and NLP — the research side, rooted in my MSc dissertation on voice-to-voice machine translation, which my supervisor flagged as having publication potential</li> </ul> <p>Alongside this, I'm preparing a PhD application to UK universities for speech and multimodal AI, and working toward the UK Global Talent Visa — so expect some posts about that journey too, not just code.</p> <h2> What I'm hoping to find here </h2> <p>Conversations, mostly. If you're working in data engineering, AI, or speech research — or you've gone through a PhD application or the UK Global Talent Visa yourself — I'd genuinely like to hear from you. And if something I write helps even one person the way a random blog post once helped me, that's the whole point.</p> <p>Thanks for reading this far. More coming soon.<br> — Vishal</p> <p>📧 <a href="mailto:iamparmarvk@gmail.com">iamparmarvk@gmail.com</a> · 🔗 <a href="//linkedin.com/in/iamparmarvk">linkedin.com/in/iamparmarvk</a> · 💻 <a href="//github.com/iamparmarvk">github.com/iamparmarvk</a> · <a href="https://vishparmar.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://vishparmar.com/</a></p> datascience ai career webdev