# Shivam Sharma

> AI engineering for production systems. I work with founders and engineering teams shipping LLM-powered products: evaluations, retrieval, agent workflows, and the application-layer engineering that makes a system survive production.

Shivam Sharma is an independent AI engineer focused on the production reliability of LLM applications. The site is the public surface for his work — focus areas, services, writing, and contact. He works with founders and engineering teams shipping LLM-powered products.

## About

- [About](https://shivam.dev/about/) — services, principles, engagement model
- [Now](https://shivam.dev/now/) — current focus, writing pipeline, availability
- [RSS feed](https://shivam.dev/rss.xml)

## Focus areas

- Evaluation systems for LLM applications (custom eval harnesses, error analysis, LLM-as-judge calibration)
- Retrieval-augmented generation (hybrid search, rerankers, query routing, synthetic eval data)
- Agent workflows (state machines, context engineering for long-running tasks)
- Production engineering (prompt caching, model routing, structured outputs, observability)

## Writing

- [Build the eval harness first](https://shivam.dev/posts/build-the-eval-harness-first/) — 2026-04-30. An evaluation harness is not exotic infrastructure for mature LLM applications. It is the first thing to build, before retrieval, before agent loops, before any optimisation. The minimum viable version fits in an afternoon.
- [RAG beyond embedding: the techniques that move quality numbers](https://shivam.dev/posts/rag-beyond-embedding/) — 2026-04-23. Vector search alone is not enough for production RAG. The techniques that consistently improve retrieval quality — hybrid search, rerankers, query routing, synthetic eval data — and when each one is worth the engineering cost.
- [Reliability is the pitch](https://shivam.dev/posts/reliability-is-the-pitch/) — 2026-04-16. The dominant pain in production LLM applications is reliability — systems that produce trustworthy answers consistently. Cost optimisation is a downstream consequence of doing reliability well, not a competing pitch.

## Contact

- Email: work.shivamsharma@zohomail.in