My Transition Into Machine Learning

A Re-Introduction

Most people who know me professionally know me as a mobile engineer. Specifically, an Android engineer with over a decade of experience. Most who know me also know that I am disabled. I have been a quadriplegic wheelchair user since the age of six, when I was kidnapped and shot in Haiti, where I was born. I write all my code without the use of my hands, aided by assistive technology. This has made disability a guiding force in my software engineering career.

In this blog post, I am going to open up about how and why I pursued a career in software engineering, how I ended up specialized in mobile engineering, health issues past and present, and my career plans going forward.

How It Began

I can remember hanging out with my brothers and our friends growing up, and watching them as they played video games that I couldn't play. It was in those times that my earliest career aspirations came to me. To develop video games that were accessible to people like me. As I researched what I would need to learn, and as I grew older and developed more interests, that dream evolved as well. At the core of every iteration, however, was to develop technological solutions that treated disabled people as first-class citizens, instead of a nice afterthought.

This is what led me to study computer science at Florida State University. My junior year, I was convinced by one of my favorite professors to take his course on mobile development. This is where I learned about a new open-source mobile OS and SDK developed by Google. I upgraded my current phone at the time and began learning how to build apps. The first app I ever made was jokingly named "StayWoke." This was of course to address an accessibility concern I had. The accessibility options were extremely limited in the early days of Android, and screen timeouts were exhausting due to my physical disabilities. StayWoke simply kept the screen awake at all times using a background service. It was a very simple solution, as I said, but a deeply rewarding experience. It was that simple project that got me an internship and then a research assistant position my senior year.

I was working professionally as an Android engineer soon after graduation. Having a diverse skillset that can fit a variety of engineering roles was the plan I had initially, but most companies want an expert who can hit the ground running on a specific business problem. So I zeroed in on Android as my area of expertise, and I was successful doing that for a long time. The new plan for me was to continue to move up the career ladder and earn more bandwidth to focus on accessibility in the projects I work on. Unfortunately, however, as I implemented the plan, life came with some heavy setbacks.

Recent Adversity

The past few years have been the most trying time in my life. In July of 2022, I contracted COVID-19. Due to my existing health issues, it would linger for a couple months, and eventually led to a couple of weeks in the hospital with pneumonia. And the very next week after returning to work, I was laid off due to company restructuring.

In September of 2024, I was hospitalized again with another severe case of pneumonia. Because my lungs had become so weak, I had to get a tracheostomy — a life-changing procedure. After the surgery, I was unable to speak for roughly a week, and even now speaking takes much more effort if I don't use a special device. I would also spend the rest of the year in the hospital. In 2025, I would continue to be hospitalized regularly. So much so that the hospital staff would joke that I was just visiting because I missed them.

Through sheer determination and resilience, I have made a lot of progress since that time. So much so that I have been coding again, and catching up on where the industry is. And I'm finally at a place where I feel I can get back to my career. Which brings me to what my plans are going forward.

The Future

I'm proud of the career I've had so far. I've worked on amazing teams with talented people, who I've learned so much from about software engineering. The skills I've acquired from that experience will surely be priceless for the remainder of my career. But I had a lot of time to think while in the hospital, and I now want to move away from Android and toward machine learning.

Machine learning has been a passion of mine going back nearly a decade. I've written about it previously, and worked on projects on and off in my spare time. Every time I was working on machine learning, however, more career opportunities in Android development would present themselves. And in the past I always felt that the financially responsible thing to do was to take those opportunities. These days, however, I feel the pull to devote more time to things I am passionate about. I see the potential for good that I always dreamed about in the advancements we're seeing come to fruition today. Like the work done at Stanford University on EEG-signal-operated robots, using a deep learning model to process the signals and map them to actions. I am excited about what machine learning can mean for the next generation of assistive technology devices, and I plan to be involved.

All of this to say I am tentatively open to new remote work opportunities, specifically as a machine learning engineer. I am looking to work with teams who share a similar passion about about how artificial intelligence can improve lives. As I look for the right fit, I will be posting content about my learning journey, and the projects I am building like phitodeep to reinforce that knowledge. Most importantly, I will also be getting back to the dream, building things like PowerMouse to empower people like myself. I hope you continue to take an interest!