About Me

I’m an ML Systems Engineer at Mozilla.ai, where I build ways to make AI/ML systems more resilient, scalable, and trustworthy. My background spans NLP research, GenAI systems architecture, and ML observability, with experience leading AI teams, consulting for enterprise clients, and contributing to open-source infrastructure.

Previously, I was Head of AI at Seek AI (acquired by IBM), where I led research on semantic parsing and built production-grade text-to-SQL systems. I earned my MS in Computational Linguistics at Montclair State University, where I worked on lexical semantic change detection, and my BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College’s Great Books Program.

I stay connected to research through occasional writing, collaboration, and workshops. My current interests include intent-agnostic, game-theoretic approaches to modeling strategic ambiguity in language; measuring emergent failure propagation in agentic systems; and systems-level approaches to alignment and interpretability.

Outside of work, I’m a core maintainer of Ptolemy, an open-source ML observability platform grounded in systems engineering principles. I also enjoy cooking, travel, and people with caustic senses of humor. I am obnoxiously proud of being verified at Bassiani, and my favorite subway line is the Q. My favorite authors are Evelyn Waugh, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Giuseppe di Lampedusa.

Contact me at raz [at] besaleli [dot] io if you are working on something weird, beautiful, or both.