Portrait of Hesam Shahrokhi

Hesam Shahrokhi

Hesam is a Computer Scientist with a Ph.D. in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh. He completed his M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Information Technology at Sharif University of Technology. Hesam specializes in the design of high-performance data processing systems, query engines, and compiler-based optimizations. He has been involved in both industrial and academic projects and gained deep expertise in the development of cloud, web, and system software solutions. Hesam's research has also been published in top-tier international venues and transformed into open-source tools on GitHub.

/ Industrial Experience

Job Experience

  1. Oct 2025 - Now
    Principal Software Engineer
    RelationalAI, Edinburgh, United Kingdom (Remote)
  2. Jun 2024 - Sep 2025
    Senior Researcher in Databases
    Huawei Research, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  3. Dec 2019 - Feb 2021
    Software Development Team Lead
    Orchid Pharmed, Tehran, Iran
  4. Aug 2015 - Oct 2021
    Founder, Product Manager, and Software Engineer
    Sharif Pars, Tehran, Iran

/ Academic Experience

Publications

  1. PyTond: Efficient Python Data Science on the Shoulders of Databases
    Hesam Shahrokhi, Amirali Kaboli, Mahdi Ghorbani, Amir Shaikhha
    IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), 2024, Utrecht, Netherlands.
  2. Efficient Query Processing in Python Using Compilation
    Hesam Shahrokhi, Callum Groeger, Yizhou Yang, Amir Shaikhha
    ACM International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD), 2023, Seattle, US.
  3. An Efficient Vectorized Hash Table for Batch Computations
    Hesam Shahrokhi, Amir Shaikhha
    European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), 2023, Seattle, US.
  4. Building a Compiled Query Engine in Python
    Hesam Shahrokhi, Amir Shaikhha
    ACM International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC), 2023, Montreal, Canada.
  5. Hinted Dictionaries: Efficient Functional Ordered Sets and Maps
    Amir Shaikhha, Mahdi Ghorbani, Hesam Shahrokhi
    European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), 2022 (Extended Abstract)/2023 (Full Paper), Seattle, US.

Services

Teaching

  1. 2015 and 2016
    Invited Lecturer, Web Programming
    CE Department, Sharif University of Technology
  2. 2015
    Invited Lecturer, Operating Systems Design
    CE Department, Sharif University of Technology

/ Projects

  • Difflow

    research

    A PDE compiler that computes exact gradients through complex solvers — making large-scale inverse problems tractable.

  • QaaS Platform

    research

    An efficient compiler-based OLAP-query-processing service with multi-frontend and multi-storage format support.

  • PyTond

    research open-source

    A tool for automated translation of data science workloads (Pandas/NumPy) into optimized SQL with support for sparse and dense data layouts.

  • VecHT

    research open-source

    The first hardware-conscious vectorized hash table that offers efficient batch lookups by exploiting multi-threading, prefetching, and SIMD.

  • SDQL.py

    research open-source

    The first compiled query engine embedded in Python for highly efficient analytical query processing.

  • Planeto

    product

    A free cloud-based personal task-management service tailored for Persian users, featuring web and Android interfaces, with a 10K+ user base.

/ Honors and Awards

  • Recognized as a Global Talent The Royal Society of United Kingdom, 2024
  • The University of Edinburgh Nominee for the Schmidt Science Fellowship 2024
  • Ph.D. Scholarship University of Edinburgh, 2021
  • Ranked 8 (out of 3,000) in Nationwide Ph.D. Admission Competitions Iran, 2015
  • Ranked 12 (out of 10,000) in Nationwide Postgraduate Admission Competitions Iran, 2013