Anshudeep Mathur

Hello, just call me Anshu.
I'm a `tinkerer` who loves to design + build complex systems that are simple to use. I work across design, data, and infrastructure — blending `prototyping`, `data visualization`, and `engineering`. Lately I've been interested in how `LLM-powered systems` can make sense of ambiguity.

I am presently based in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

I currently work at `Shopify` as a software developer. In the past, I've held positions relating to data analysis and data warehouse development at BlackBerry, and dabbled in web development on a contractual/ad-hoc basis.

Contact: [email protected] | anshuweb.com | LinkedIn | sprine @ GitHub

There are some of my toy projects I've built to try out ideas, upskill, experiment with technologies, and just have fun and marvel at the results.

2026

Ontario open data MCP winter Search and analyze Ontario's open data with natural language. MCP server. Queries Ontario, Toronto, and Ottawa data portals. Published on PyPI. claude mcp add ontario-data -- uvx ontario-data-mcp
Nanoleaf winter Make smart lights respond to music and create cool patterns. API experiments. Sync colors to audio. Ambient response. Pattern generation.
Chiaroscuro winter Bring paintings to life with animated leaves and flowing water. Three.js gallery. GLSL shaders. Physics-driven leaf sway. Curl noise for water flow.
Cricut pattern maker winter Create unique cutting patterns for craft machines. Generate SVG. Fractals, L-systems, chaos attractors. Export for laser cutters and Cricut.
Humans winter Keep your contacts organized by reading your old emails. SwiftData manager. LLM extracts fields from messages. Auto-enriches address book.
Galt business directory winter Find local businesses with smart search that understands what you mean. AI enrichment. Semantic search with embeddings. d3.js treemap for categories.

2025

Clime fall Remember when you last watered your plants. localStorage only. No accounts. Add plant, tap to water. Simple.
Paper tracker prototype summer See what you owe and what you own in one picture. d3.js visualization. Bills above ground. Assets below. Stacked bars.
Chai spring Track your mood and spot patterns over time. Menubar app. Core Data storage. SwiftUI charts. Emotional trends.
Organize-images-by-geo winter Sort vacation photos by country automatically. Reads GPS EXIF data. Reverse geocodes. Moves files into country folders.
Papers winter Organize research papers and chat with them. LLM extracts metadata. SQLite FTS5 for full-text search. Chat interface.

2024

Technical skills over time `★ = actively practiced. Bolded = I think I'm good at this.`

                                                                        fine-tuning language models, DSPy
                                                                    Blender
                                                                 three.js
                                                              ★ Remix + TS 
                                                          ★ Prototyping
                                                    GCP infrastructure
                                                ★ d3.js
                                          data analysis in Python
                                         ★ reshaping and transforming data
                                        event streaming using spark
                                      scala
                                  react
                                ruby on rails
                             spark
                    ★ elasticsearch
                sas text miner
              oracle text
            oracle pl/sql and etl
    ★ python
  ★ sql
★ web dev + css

------------▴--------------▴------------------▴------------------▴-------▴-------▴------- today
            2011           2015               2020               2023    2024    2025

Work experience

Staff Engineer @ The Catalogue Shopify March 2025 - Present

Driving the strategy for Shopify's opinionated product knowledge graph, turning fragmented merchant data into standardized, structured fields.
Designing and productionizing LLM-powered inference pipelines supporting millions of product-level inferences.
Building continuous evaluation frameworks and tools for assessing data quality and model drift.
Collaborating across product, infra, and data teams to unify schema definitions, embedding metadata, and knowledge alignment.

Staff Engineer @ People Analytics Shopify September 2015 - March 2025

Led the evolution of Shopify's Talent data platform, consolidating extraction, modeling, and observability within Shopify's broader data ecosystem.
Built survey, reporting, and planning tooling used to inform high-stakes org-level decisions (e.g., compensation frameworks, headcount modeling).
Worked on ambiguous, open-ended problems requiring a balance of technical depth and organizational systems thinking.
Mentored engineers and analysts; collaborated closely with leadership on how data informs culture and operations.
Technologies: Python scripting, Pandas, LLM, DuckDB, BigQuery, SQLite, GitHub Actions, GCP, d3.js, Remix, TypeScript, CUE lang, Ruby.
Soft skills: Stakeholder and expectation management, planning, company building, first-principles thinking, building Talent systems.

Additional roles at Shopify

Senior Data Engineer, People Analytics. April 2019 - September 2022.
Senior Data Engineer, Data Apps. August 2017 - April 2019.
Data Engineer, Shopify Plus. September 2015 - August 2017.

Data Analyst + Data Architect BlackBerry January 2011 - September 2015

Support, design and develop data pipelines for business critical applications and dashboards that impact decisions made within all departments of the Quality organisation.
Perform ad-hoc data analysis and investigations, as well as debugging Oracle PL/SQL and SQL performance issues.
Responsible for developing and implementing a longer-term plan for migrating ETL processing from the current dimensionally-modelled Oracle database into a non-relational storage structure.
Provided Python, Elasticsearch and Git tutorials for members of the Analytics team. This allowed many SAS and SQL-intensive processes to be migrated to Python while retaining (or improving) the execution time and supportability.
Performed various experiments in order to research and evaluate solutions for building a data mining platform from scratch - the tests covered everything from designing easy user interfaces to the technical considerations. The findings had a direct impact on the design and implementation details of a cross-functional Six Sigma project, leading to significant cost savings and efficiencies.

Additional roles at BlackBerry

Analyst, Voice of the Customer. August 2014 - August 2014.
Quality Manager, Enterprise. May 2014 - August 2014.
Database Application Analyst. September 2012 - May 2014.
Database Systems Developer. January 2011 - September 2012.

Past Web design and development projects

Pamela Gough Election 2010 & 2014 Websites. This was the official website of Pamela Gough's election campaign for Public School Trustee in the Toronto municipal elections.
Fancy Free Island. Fancy Free Island Cottage is an historic Victorian lake house on a private island in spectacular Big Rideau Lake, available for rentals from June to October. It is on the Rideau Canal system, a UNESCO World Heritage Site waterway that runs from Ottawa to Kingston, Ontario. Check out the website for details, including the island's fascinating history dating back to the 1870s. Summer 2009 (live till April 1st, 2019).
Redesigned The Riverwood Conservancy Web site, Volunteer. Worked with staff at the Riverwood Conservancy to completely re-architect their previously static Web site and convert it to use a content management system. Trained and instructed staff in a 6-hour session, as well as providing brief documentation and support, on how to use the CMS tool and integrate their own content correctly. The Riverwood Conservancy's Web site has been featured on TYPOlight's showcase and has received praise from its Board of Directors. Winter 2007 – Summer 2009 (live till April 2014).
Wireless Networking & Mobile Computing Research Lab. University of Guelph. Fall 2008.
The Illuminated Plant Cell. Built this free online resource for biology students and researchers providing them state-of-the art information on advances in modern plant sciences. Article contributors include leading International scientists. Winter 2007/2008.
The Plaxton Lab Website. Queen's University. Winter 2008.
Biomedical Photonics Lab Site, University of Manitoba. Summer 2007.
Paleoclimate and Geobiology Research Group, University of Toronto. April 2007.
Website and Layout Design of the Jarvis Jargon. Jarvis Collegiate Institute, Toronto. School–year 2004–2006.
Designing, creating and maintaining the ITC Alumni Webpage, Volunteer. Forged a web-forum for alumni of the International Training Course, Biological Research Center, Szeged Hungary. Worked with a team of four former ITC fellows to bring the original idea to life. A Symposium resulted from this site, which was held 19th - 21st October 2006 in Szeged, Hungary and involved more than 300 scientists from around the globe. The page is now officially sponsored and supported by BRC, Szeged, Hungary. January 2004 – Summer 2007.
The Gradinaru Lab Website. University of Toronto. November 2006.
MEDCRT Website and Layout Design. University of Toronto. Summer 2006.
Nano-Microscopy Biological and Medical Physics Lab. University of Toronto. Summer 2005.
Laboratory of Plant Development & Interactions. University of Guelph. July 2004. https://mathurlab.github.io/
Joint Project for Siemens JoinMultimedia Europe-wide contest, Munich, Germany. A meticulous compilation on "Natural Resources" for the Siemens JoinMultimedia 2003 Europe-wide Competition in collaboration with three other batch mates. Project entered under the name of FET PAAC (Fossile Energie Träger, Peter, Alex, Anshu, Christian). Resulted in 1st place in the competition shared with teammates. Earned a position in Siemens JoinMultimedia "Hall of Fame" 2003. Summer 2003.
PubMed Extractor. A site developed to keep track of publications by parsing RSS feeds based on predefined search queries.
iPad and iPhone web applications developed using Sencha Touch. HCI project to develop an iPhone application for the Guelph-Humber student website.
Naive Bayes RSS classification system written in Python. Developed during DCCT*4160 - Distributed Information System Architectures course.
Ad-Hoc Search Engine written in Python. Group project for the DCCT*4090 - Information Storage and Retrieval Systems course.
Chat system created using jQuery.
PL/SQL procedure to obtain book information from Amazon using the ISBN number.

Education

BAComp - Applied Computing Focus on Wireless Technologies University of Guelph-Humber 2006 - 2010