Alina Burykina
ML Engineer

Hello, I'm

Alina Burykina

Machine Learning Engineer specializing in LLM pretraining, quantization, and NLP research.

About

Machine Learning Engineer at JetBrains, contributing to the pretraining of Mellum — a code language model. Working on LLM alignment, μ-parametrization, and data pipeline engineering.

Pursuing dual MSc degrees: Data Science at Constructor University (full JetBrains scholarship, thesis in collaboration with Oxford University on LLM quantization for analog-digital hardware) and Artificial Intelligence at ITMO University.

Research interests span LLMs, VLMs, diffusion models, and NLP — with publications at AI Journey and award-winning presentations at Lomonosov Conference. Winner of 15+ hackathons and national AI competitions.

Experience

Junior ML Engineer

JetBrains

May 2025 — Present
  • Contributing to the pretraining of Mellum, a code language model
  • Implemented μ-parametrization for hyperparameter transfer; managed pretraining data pipelines
  • Training completion models and aligning them using DPO and KTO

Middle ML Engineer

Mad Devs

Apr 2023 — May 2025
  • LLM optimization for edge/CPU: quantization, pruning, fine-tuning with ONNX
  • Built chatbot with GraphRAG for project management; fine-tuned embeddings for improved accuracy
  • Deployed web services with ChromaDB, pgvector, Celery, Redis, and Airflow

Research — NLP & Dialogue Systems

DeepPavlov

Sep 2024 — Present
  • Authored "JDCEMB: Joint Distillation and Contrastive Learning for Embeddings in Goal-Oriented Dialogue Systems," published in Doklady Mathematics
  • Presented research at AI Journey 2025; participated in DSTC12 competition

Research — Time Series Robustness

AIRI

Jan 2024 — Sep 2024
  • Adapted Worst Case Risk method for time series model robustness evaluation
  • Developed library with TCN-GAN, LSTM-GAN, and TCN-VAE implementations
  • Best Presentation Award at International Conference "Lomonosov" 2024

Education

MSc

Constructor University

Bremen, Germany

Data Science

Advanced Software Technology (with JetBrains)

Full scholarship · GPA: 1.11/1.0

Thesis: LLM quantization for analog-digital hardware (collab with Oxford)

2024 — 2026

MSc

ITMO University

Saint Petersburg, Russia

Artificial Intelligence

GPA: 4.9/5.0

Thesis: Joint Distillation and Contrastive Learning for Embeddings in Dialogue Systems

2024 — 2026

BSc

NUST MISIS

Moscow, Russia

Applied Mathematics

Engineering Cybernetics

GPA: 5.0/5.0

Thesis: Intelligent system for estimating robustness of time series forecasting models

2020 — 2024

Skills

Deep Learning & NLP

PyTorch LLM Pretraining Alignment (DPO/KTO) PEFT GraphRAG Quantization

Audio & Time Series

ASR TTS Neural Codecs Time Series Analysis

Programming

Python C++ CUDA

MLOps & Data

Docker Spark Airflow MLFlow ONNX PostgreSQL Redis

Mathematics

Bayesian Methods Optimization Importance Sampling

Languages

English (C1, IELTS) German (B1) Russian (native)

Achievements

Winner — "I am a Professional" in AI

All-Russian contest for Bachelors, 2024

Top-2 — ITMO Olympiad in AI

All-Russian Olympiad, 2024

AI Journey 2025 — Poster Presentation

JDCEMB: Joint Distillation and Contrastive Learning

Best Presentation — Lomonosov 2024

XXXI International Conference of Students and Young Scientists

Digital Breakthrough — Skoltech

International Hackathon, Top-3 out of 15 teams, 2023

15+ Hackathon Wins

Including INNOGLOBALHACK, TenderHack, IT Purple Hack, Biometrics, and more

Contact

Interested in collaboration, research opportunities, or just want to say hi? Feel free to reach out.