“Let it rip.”

The Oliver Times.

THE WEATHER.

Fair over the East River; steady shipping.

More in Section C.

VOL. VIII...No. 2,821. NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2026. THREE SECTIONS—ONE CENT.

Hi, I’m Sebastian.

Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI, Ramp

NEW YORK, Sept. 23.—I’m a senior software engineer on the Applied AI team at Ramp. I work on the intelligence layer: the semantic layer, context graphs, contextual understanding and memory. I also built out a unified data layer for our agents to run on, and I helped launch Glass.

Before Ramp I was at Amazon on Bedrock, helping host and scale Anthropic’s models. Before that I did M&A at Deloitte.

I founded RoomMe while I was at UVA. It grew past 25,000 users. On the side I built Julie AI and Vahalla.

Pixel-art self-portrait of Sebastian Oliver in a hoodie and headphones
Sebastian Oliver.
Section A

Work.

2021 to Now
Where I’ve Worked, 2021 to Now

Work Side projects

Ramp, Applied AI

Senior Software Engineer, Since March 2026

I helped launch Glass. I work on the intelligence layer: the semantic layer, context graphs, contextual understanding and memory. I also delivered a unified data layer end to end, from the product down to the foundation, that we build agentic systems on.

The Stack
  1. Product
  2. Agents
  3. Intelligence Layersemantic layer, context graphs, contextual understanding, memory
  4. Unified Data Layerdelivered end to end
  5. Foundation

Amazon, Bedrock

Software Engineer, Oct. 2024 to March 2026

I worked on hosting and inference for Anthropic’s models on Bedrock: the infrastructure to launch them, scale them, analyze them, and understand how people were using them.

$200,000,000
A cost optimizer I built for global LLM compute, using integer linear programming.
100 Petabytes
Of inference metrics my pipelines took in every month.

Deloitte, M&A

Sept. 2023 to Oct. 2024

M&A at Deloitte. Placed second out of 200+ in a nationwide Google gen AI hackathon.

2nd of 200+
In a nationwide Google gen AI hackathon.

RoomMe

Founder & CEO, 2021 to Sept. 2023

I started RoomMe in 2021 at UVA. A consumer app for finding roommates, with AI matching, social verification and in-app chat. 25,000+ users.

Led a team of five to eight, raised capital, negotiated six-figure contracts. Ran it until September 2023.

roomme.app; App Store

25,000+
Users.
Section B

Projects.

On the Side
What I’ve Built on the Side
CompanyYearsWhat It Does
Julie AI2024–25People discovery infra; vertical AI for finding people
Vahalla2025Modern engineering community and practice
A–CD–FG–IJ–LM–OP–RS–UV–XY–ZENGR.FIN.LAWEXPERTNo. 40,211NAMEFIRMFIELDEmail verified, three timesCall booked for Tuesday
Julie AI

Julie AI

People discovery infrastructure: vertical AI for finding people.

An autonomous agent using MCP with tools and subagents. Searched 500M+ profiles, triple-verified emails (under 1% bounce rate) and scheduled expert calls. 2024 to 2025.

julieai.dev

clientapicachequeuedbDesign a URL shortener.45 min.
Vahalla

Vahalla

A modern engineering community and practice.

An IDE in the browser, multi-level challenges, AI-assisted coding, and whiteboard system design. 2025.

vahalla.dev

Section C

Everything Else.

Off the Clock

UVA

Economics & Computer Science, 2019 to Jan. 2023

I studied econ and CS at the University of Virginia and graduated early, in January 2023. I had a great time there, and it’s where I started RoomMe.

New York, Right Now

New York City

Sun rises
—
Sun sets
—
Weather
—
Local time
—

Where I Post

YouTube. Longer videos, at @StartUpSeb.

TikTok. Short videos, at @startupsebb.

Instagram. Photographs, at @startupseb.

Get in Touch

All my links

What I’m Into

AI Products

The five workflow patterns from Anthropic’s guide to building agents.

RSI

A toy model of recursive self-improvement. Both descend the same valley; one also rewrites its own step size as it goes.

Proactive Agents

    The same morning twice. One agent waits to be asked; the other speaks up when something changes.

    RL on Unique Datasets

    A real Q-learning agent, learning this maze in your browser. The blue wash is what it has learned is worth reaching.