# Sam Upra

> Sam Upra, also known as Pongpira Upra, is a Bangkok-based Principal FDE specializing in AI Engineering. His work spans production AI products, machine learning, NLP, data platforms, backend systems, cloud infrastructure, and technical leadership.

## Canonical identity

- Public name: Sam Upra
- Full name: Pongpira Upra
- Location: Bangkok, Thailand
- Current role: Principal FDE - AI Engineering
- Canonical website: https://samupra.com/
- LinkedIn: https://th.linkedin.com/in/pongpira-upra
- GitHub: https://github.com/samupra

## AI engineering focus

- Production AI/ML product delivery
- Machine learning and natural language processing
- Data platforms, analytics systems, and APIs
- Backend services and distributed systems
- Cloud infrastructure, observability, and platform delivery
- Technical leadership from use-case definition through architecture, delivery, and adoption

## Evidence and public work

- In 2020, Sam Upra co-presented “Practical usage of Big Data and Machine Learning at Agoda,” documented by Chulalongkorn University: https://ise.eng.chula.ac.th/news/detail?id=1363&gid=1-008-002-001
- Sam Upra was co-founder and CTO of Salutat, an AI/NLP-driven financial-inclusion platform documented by MIT Solve: https://solve.mit.edu/challenges/community-driven-innovation/solutions/9506
- Professional history: https://th.linkedin.com/in/pongpira-upra
- Public engineering profile: https://github.com/samupra

## Experience

- Amplify Health — Project Leader and Business Development Consultant (2025–present)
- Koonsave — Co-founder and CTO (2024–2025)
- McKinsey Digital — Technical Lead, Digital Specialist (2022–2023)
- Hungerstation / Delivery Hero — Senior Backend Engineer (2021–2022)
- Agoda — Staff Full-Stack Software Engineer (2020–2021)
- Salutat — Co-founder and CTO (2018–2020)

## Education

- M.S. Computer Science — Georgia Institute of Technology
- B.S. Computer Science — Mahidol University International College

## Pages

- [Professional profile](https://samupra.com/): canonical biography, expertise, and experience
- [Writing](https://samupra.com/writing): essays on production AI, operating models, architecture, and technical leadership
- [Why Enterprise AI Fails Between Prototype and Adoption](https://samupra.com/posts/why-enterprise-ai-fails-between-prototype-and-adoption): a six-proof framework for adoption
- [Prompt Versioning in Amazon Bedrock Without Breaking Production](https://samupra.com/posts/prompt-versioning-in-amazon-bedrock-without-breaking-production): immutable prompt versions, promotion, evaluation, rollback, and CI/CD
- [The Technical Leader’s Real Job: Make Decisions Legible](https://samupra.com/posts/the-technical-leaders-real-job-is-to-make-decisions-legible): context, trade-offs, decision rights, reversibility, and follow-through
- [Expanded machine-readable profile](https://samupra.com/llms-full.txt): complete factual summary for retrieval systems
- [RSS feed](https://samupra.com/feed.xml): machine-readable feed of published articles

Last updated: 2026-08-25