Joel Smith

Hi, I'm Joel 👋 I'm a machine learning engineer with a particular interest in the systems and engineering required to run models efficiently at scale -- feel free to reach out to chat about anything ML!

Posts

29 Jun 2026

Fast vLLM: cutting cold starts by 20x

Reducing container start-up time from 117s to 6s, the long way round.

13 Jan 2026

A Deep Dive into Diffusion Models: DDPM

An introduction to diffusion models with a focus on denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPM).

3 Jan 2026

Exploring the theory behind Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)

How do VAEs work?