// silkscreen

Dani Daoud

I build systems from first principles — from copper traces and custom silicon up to transformers and RAG pipelines.

AI Engineer @ ORF  ·  Software Engineering @ TU Wien  ·  Vienna, Austria

U1

About

Software and AI engineer with a strong foundation in machine learning, RAG systems and embedded / hardware development. Currently studying Software Engineering at TU Wien while building AI tooling at ORF, Austria's national public broadcaster. Comfortable across the entire stack — neural networks and transformer models on one end, microcontrollers, RF engineering and a taped-out chip on the other. If I use something, I usually end up rebuilding it from scratch to understand it: CPUs, emulators, GPTs, mesh protocols.

ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM RATINGS
Stack depth silicon → cloud
Lowest level shipped SKY130 ASIC tape-out
Highest level shipped RAG agents in production
Routing decision ~15 µs (custom mesh protocol)
Operating location Vienna, AT
U2

Experience

  1. AI Engineer — ORF

    Sep 2024 – present

    AI solutions for internal processes at Austria's national broadcaster: a multi-module RAG agent over company knowledge (SharePoint, wikis, enterprise architecture), transformer-based e-mail classification & routing (KIKO), and AI-assisted video editing wired into Adobe Premiere (FlowCut). Deployed on AWS EKS with GitOps (ArgoCD, Crossplane, Helm).

    RAGQdrantFastMCPAzure OpenAIKubernetes
  2. Network / IT Support — newmotion IT Services

    Feb – Jun 2024

    Analysis and resolution of network issues in enterprise environments.

  3. Software Developer — Untis GmbH

    Jul – Aug 2021

    Features for automated timetable generation in school software; internal company website. C++ and Angular in a modern development team.

  4. Mechatronics Internship — SFS Group Austria

    Feb 2015

    First contact with automation technology, machinery and programming.

U3

Projects

Selected modules. Each one exists because I wanted to know how the thing underneath works.

M1RF / EMBEDDED

Meshara / Synapse

Dual-band mesh network on ESP32-S3: LoRa 433/868 MHz as control plane, Wi-Fi HaLow (802.11ah) as data plane. Custom geographic routing protocol with ~15 µs decisions, GPS positioning, OTA updates, link-budget math and own antenna designs. Python simulation scaling to 50,000 nodes; Node.js/MongoDB backend with a Vue dashboard.

ESP32-S3SX1278802.11ahFreeRTOSRF design
M2ROBOTICS / VR

Humanoid Teleoperated Robot

Humanoid with Adeept 5-DOF arms and tendon-driven InMoov hands, teleoperated live through a Meta Quest 3. Stereo global-shutter cameras on a Raspberry Pi 4 stream into the headset; a MoE-inspired action-tokenization architecture enables behavioral cloning from the recorded teleop data.

Quest 3Godot/OpenXRRaspberry PiImitation learning
M3SILICON

Custom CPU & ASIC Tape-out

8-bit RISC CPU designed from scratch in Logisim/Digital with microcode ROM and Von Neumann architecture — then taken all the way to real silicon via TinyTapeout on the SKY130 process using OpenLane and Verilog.

VerilogSKY130OpenLaneCPU design
M4AI @ ORF

Hugo — Company Knowledge Agent

RAG agent with scatter-gather retrieval across 17 services and modular knowledge sources (SharePoint, BookStack, wiki, enterprise architecture), backed by Qdrant with hybrid search. Fills out internal forms and automates service processes, not just Q&A.

RAGQdrantSharePointFastMCP
M5AI @ ORF

FlowCut — AI Video Editing

Analyzes raw footage and assists editors via prompts or auto-generates promos and trailers. Hooked into Adobe Premiere Pro through a plugin driven by a Python server that writes cuts directly into the timeline.

Video AIPremiere pluginPython
M6FPGA / RF

SDR & FPGA Signal Chain

QPSK and OFDM modulators written in Verilog on a Spartan-7, plus work with AD9361-class SDR transceivers, PCB Yagi/LPDA antenna design at 868 MHz / 2.4 GHz, VNA measurements and a custom signal generator.

VerilogSpartan-7SDRAntenna design
M7FROM SCRATCH

Low-Level Builds in C

NES emulator with Raylib, a CHIP-8 emulator, a mini GPT and a neural network — all written from scratch in C. The recurring theme: reimplement it until the magic is gone.

CEmulationTransformersRaylib
View on GitHub →
M8GRAPHICS

Procedural City Generator

Full pipeline in Python: terrain and heightmaps, tensor-field street networks, BSP building interiors with furniture and door connectivity. Rendered in a Three.js first-person viewer and validated with headless Node.js gameplay tests.

PythonThree.jsProcedural gen
M9BIOMEDICAL

Sign-to-Speech

Led a four-person diploma team building armbands that read arm cross-section impedance plus IMU data and translate signs to speech in real time through a neural network — PyTorch and MATLAB models, custom GUI for recording, training and inference, output on a smartphone.

PyTorchEmbeddedTeam lead
M10VR / EMBEDDED

VR-Controlled RC Vehicle

Self-built RC car driven in real time from a Meta Quest 3. ESP32 with ESP-IDF handles control and sensors; onboard camera streams low-latency video into the headset via WebXR with bidirectional comms.

ESP-IDFWebXRQuest 3
M11NEUROTECH

DIY EEG Brain-Computer Interface

Noninvasive BCI built around an ADS1299 analog front-end and an ESP32-S3, with BrainFlow for acquisition and processing. Ongoing exploration of the physical limits of noninvasive neural sensing.

ADS1299ESP32-S3BrainFlow
M12SECURITY

CTF & Hackathons

4th place in a TU Wien cybersecurity CTF; solved challenges in blind SQLi, CSP nonce prediction, DNS spoofing and AES-ECB/CTR attacks. Built two AI agents in 24h at START Hack Vienna: an SSH service-desk autopilot and a voice cancellation-refill agent.

Web securityCryptoAI agents
U4

Skills

Languages

C / C++PythonC#JavaJavaScriptVerilogMATLABLuaSQL

AI / ML

PyTorchTensorFlowRAG systemsTransformersNLPAzure OpenAIVector DBs (Qdrant, pgvector)

Embedded / RF

ESP-IDF / FreeRTOSPCB designLoRa / 802.11ahSDRFPGAAntenna designASIC flow (OpenLane)

Infra / Web

Kubernetes / EKSArgoCD / GitOpsDockerNode.jsAngularVue.NETMongoDB
U5

Education

TU Wien — Software Engineering

2022 – present

AI, algorithms & data structures, visual computing. 4th place in a cybersecurity CTF.

TU Wien — Electrical Engineering

2021 – 2022

Circuit design, digital technology, natural sciences.

TGM — Biomedical & Health Engineering

2016 – 2021

Graduated with merit. Diploma project: Sign-to-Speech (team lead, µC programming, ML).

J1

Contact

Want to build something that goes deeper than the framework layer?