AI Systems Builder — LLMs, RAG & Agents From Someone Who Ships

Marcel O.

Hi — I'm Marcel, and I tutor computer science, programming, AI, and web design. Before I ever wrote software for a living, I was a teacher. I trained at the University of Auckland and hold a Diploma of Teaching, and I've taught in real classrooms in New Zealand, South Korea, and the United States — everyone from elementary students to adults changing careers. Since then I've spent more than twenty years building software professionally: architect systems, shipping products, and leading engineering teams. Today I design and run Artificial Intelligence systems in production, including local large language model deployments, retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, and agent applications — and I write critically about AI, because I'm one of the people who knows exactly what these systems can and cannot do.

My approach to tutoring is simple: I meet you where you are, and we build from there. Teaching taught me that confusion usually isn't about intelligence — it's about a missing foundation, and my job is to find it. I explain things in plain language first, bring in the technical vocabulary only once the idea has landed, and I never make you feel bad for asking. So whether you're a student working through your first computer science course, grinding through Python assignments, making sense of machine learning, building a web design portfolio, or a professional leveling up into any of the above, you'll get the same thing: someone who has done the work, knows where people typically get stuck, and genuinely enjoys the moment it clicks.

I welcome any materials or context you can share before we start — a syllabus, current assignments, or past work that shows where you're beginning from — and I adjust every session to the student in front of me rather than working from a fixed script. I'm happy to answer questions from students or parents before booking a first session.