# Le Tran Minh Dat

> AI-native software engineer in Ho Chi Minh City. I build AI agents and the backend they run on: an enterprise bank AI gateway, MCP commerce and voice agents.

Le Tran Minh Dat (Vietnamese: Lê Trần Minh Đạt; online: cicca) is an AI-Native Software Engineer — Agents · Backend · LLM Infrastructure — based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He builds AI agents and the backend they run on — LLM gateways, MCP servers, RAG systems and voice agents — and since 2025 has taken projects from an empty repository to production, on his own or leading teams of two to four.

## Identity

- Name: Le Tran Minh Dat
- Vietnamese name (with diacritics): Lê Trần Minh Đạt — given name Dat (Đạt), family name Le (Lê)
- Also written as: cicca, Minh Dat, Dat Le
- Title: AI-Native Software Engineer (Agents · Backend · LLM Infrastructure)
- Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · Remote-ready · GMT+7 · async-first
- Studio: Co-founder of Zillexa (independent dev studio)
- Website (canonical): https://letranminhdat.com/
- Profile: https://github.com/letranminhdat1516
- Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dat-le-139a85284

## Bio

In his own words: "I'm Dat, cicca on the internet. I love the moment an AI stops being a demo and starts doing real work, and I'll take it from an empty repo all the way to production. I like tinkering with new things, lately robotics and virtual assistants, and I polish them until they're done. Off the clock, I look after kittens. Where I'm headed: a real studio with Zillexa, research I'm proud of, open-source tools people use, and a voice in AI engineering."

## Current roles

- AI Gateway Platform Engineer — Enterprise banking client · Outsourced contract (Aug 2026 – Present)
- Backend & AI Engineer — F&B and AI-commerce company · Contract (May 2026 – Present)
- Co-founder — Zillexa · Independent dev studio (2024 – Present)

## Key pages

- [Portfolio](https://letranminhdat.com/): projects, skills, achievements and experience
- [CV](https://letranminhdat.com/cv): full CV as a web page
- [CV (PDF)](https://letranminhdat.com/cv/letranminhdat-cv.pdf): one-page printable CV
- [Blog](https://letranminhdat.com/blog): engineering notes
- [Full text](https://letranminhdat.com/llms-full.txt): this briefing plus every case study and article in full

## Projects

- [Siz — AI Commerce Gateway (MCP)](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/siz-commerce-gateway) (active; Backend & AI Engineer, Aug 2026 – Present): An MCP server that lets AI assistants search and book cinema and flight tickets on real merchant sites, then hands payment back to the user's own banking app. Accounts link with OAuth 2.1 + PKCE, every merchant call is signed (Ed25519, RFC 9421) and VietQR codes are verified before a user sees them; an AI-Ready scorer grades how well agents can use a merchant site. Two-person product team since Aug 2026: I built the gateway and its web app. Stack: MCP, Go, OAuth 2.1, PostgreSQL, Next.js, k3s.
- [AI Gateway for an Enterprise Bank](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/bank-llm-gateway) (active; AI Gateway Platform Engineer, Aug 2026 – Present): The bank runs open-source LiteLLM as one AI gateway for its internal teams. I extended it with a separate package and admin pages, without changing the LiteLLM core, so upstream releases still merge: a tamper-evident audit log, Vietnamese PII guardrails, SSO and an auditor role, budget-aware routing, alerts and bulk onboarding. I also built Bedrock cost reconciliation against invocation logs and the AWS bill (Athena) by team, user and model, with Bedrock tax shown separately; checking it against the real invoice exposed and fixed a 4x over-count. I own delivery and planning since Aug 2026; the lead engineer reviews and merges. Stack: LiteLLM, Python, AWS Bedrock, Athena, Terraform, Presidio.
- [Bảo Bối — Voice Ordering Assistant](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/voice-ordering-agent) (active; Backend & AI Engineer, May 2026 – Present): A cat-mascot assistant for an F&B and AI-commerce company that suggests drinks by mood, takes the order by chat or voice (LiveKit), pushes it to the café's POS and returns a VietQR to pay. Version 1 ran in the café, with a loop that turns bad replies into scenarios staff can approve and a watchdog added after a silent LiveKit outage. Version 2 rebuilds it for many shops: a Go core, per-shop isolation with PostgreSQL row-level security and a Python LiveKit agent. May 2026 – Present. Stack: LiveKit, Go, Python, PostgreSQL RLS, VietQR.
- [Admissions Chatbot & Advisor Cockpit](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/rag-enrollment-advisor) (complete; AI Agent Consultant Engineer, Apr – Sep 2026): A 24/7 admissions chatbot and advisor cockpit on a live CRM for Hướng Nghiệp Á Âu, a 19-branch academy. After each customer message a background job drafts three replies and a lead summary; advisors accepted 97% of the drafts. The CRM is the only source for pricing and schedules, a course allow-list and topic pinning stop invented courses, and hybrid RAG mixes pgvector with Vietnamese full-text search. Sole developer, Apr – Sep 2026, handed over. Stack: Hybrid RAG, pgvector, Self-hosted VLM, On-prem.
- [Multi-company Accounting SaaS](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/vas-accounting-erp) (complete; Core Full-stack Developer, 2025 – Sep 2026): A multi-company accounting platform built to Circular 99/2025 and used daily by 20 accountants. Built consolidated financial reporting under Circular 202 end to end (intercompany elimination, Excel export), plus fixed assets, loans and bank reconciliation; made posting safe with atomic batch posting and period locking; set up CI/CD from GitHub Actions to GHCR with Watchtower on the client's servers. Top contributor in a 3-engineer team, 2025 – Sep 2026, handed over. Stack: React, REST API, PostgreSQL, GitHub Actions, GHCR.
- [IPBMS — Real-time Patient Monitoring](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/ipbms-patient-monitoring) (complete; AI Team Lead, Computer Vision, Jun 2025 – Jan 2026): Fall and seizure detection on live RTSP camera streams with YOLO pose estimation and LLM-written incident reports, running on-site on two real cameras for Whammy Tech. A rule that needs five frames in a row before alerting cut false alarms by 84% across 4,000 test cases. AI Team Lead of four engineers, Jun 2025 – Jan 2026. Stack: YOLO Pose, OpenCV, RTSP, LLM Reports.
- [NEURADAO — AI Trading Platform](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/neuradao-ai-trading) (complete; Team Lead, Software Engineer, Oct 2025): Led three engineers from an empty repository to a live AI trading platform in 20 days (Oct 2025): wrote the trading logic, AI chatbot and automation backend, and deployed on AWS. Stack: TypeScript, Python, PostgreSQL, AWS.
- [Chord — TOKEN2049 Origins Runner-up](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/chord-agents) (complete; Team member, Oct 2026): Chord is a startup project. I was part of its team at the TOKEN2049 Origins Hackathon 2026 in Singapore, where we were named runner-up on the main track. Stack: Hackathon, Pitch.
- [Viettel AI Race — 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/viettel-ai-race-2026) (complete; Team Zillexa (3 people), Jul – Sep 2026): Novel view synthesis for the Viettel AI Race 2026: from photos with known camera positions, render what a camera would see from places it never visited. The qualifying rounds covered seven scenes, two objects and five aerial captures over Ho Chi Minh City; the final was one large urban scene scored on image quality, with inference time measured on an H200. Our three-person team, Zillexa, finished runner-up (top 4) out of 1,628 teams. Stack: 3D Gaussian Splatting, PyTorch, gsplat, Multi-GPU, SCUNet.
- [Cicca Fleet — Multi-site k3s Cluster](https://letranminhdat.com/projects/cicca-fleet-k3s) (active): Personal Kubernetes fleet spanning cloud VPS nodes and an ARM64 Orange Pi at home, meshed over Tailscale and managed fully by GitOps (ArgoCD app-of-apps). In-cluster container registry on MinIO, NFS storage from a Synology NAS, Grafana + Mimir + Loki + Alloy observability with alerting, public apps via Cloudflare Tunnel — this website is served from it. Stack: k3s, ArgoCD, Tailscale, Grafana LGTM.

## Experience

### AI Gateway Platform Engineer — Enterprise banking client · Outsourced contract (Aug 2026 – Present)
2-engineer team: I built the extension layer and own delivery and planning; the lead engineer reviews and merges.
- Extended the bank's open-source LiteLLM gateway with a separate package and admin pages, so upstream releases still merge: a tamper-evident audit log (append-only, hash-chained), Vietnamese PII guardrails with a false-positive review flow, SSO and an auditor role.
- Built Bedrock cost reconciliation that checks gateway spend against invocation logs and the AWS bill (Athena) every day, by account, team, user and model, with Bedrock tax shown separately; checking it against the real invoice exposed and fixed a 4x over-count.
- Added cross-account access through assumed roles, budget-aware model downgrade, alerts by email, SES and SNS, bulk onboarding from a spreadsheet, X-Ray-linked traces and Terraform for the AWS stack; wrote the architecture docs and runbooks for the handover.

### Backend & AI Engineer — F&B and AI-commerce company · Contract (May 2026 – Present)
Two products: Siz, an AI commerce gateway (MCP), and Bảo Bối, a voice ordering assistant.
- Siz (Aug 2026 – Present, two-person product team; I built the gateway and its web app): an MCP server that lets AI assistants search and book cinema and flight tickets on real merchant sites, then hands payment back to the user's own banking app.
- Siz: accounts are linked with OAuth 2.1 + PKCE, every call to a merchant is signed (Ed25519, RFC 9421), and VietQR codes are verified before a user sees them; an AI-Ready scorer grades merchant sites on how well agents can use them. Go and PostgreSQL backend, Next.js web app, shipped to k3s through a GitOps pipeline with ArgoCD.
- Bảo Bối (May 2026 – Present): a cat-mascot assistant that suggests drinks by mood and takes the order by chat or voice (LiveKit), pushes it to the café's POS and returns a VietQR to pay. Version 1 ran in the café, with a loop that turns bad replies into scenarios staff can approve and a watchdog added after a silent LiveKit outage.
- Bảo Bối version 2 rebuilds it for many shops: a Go core, per-shop isolation with PostgreSQL row-level security, and a Python LiveKit agent.

### Co-founder — Zillexa · Independent dev studio (2024 – Present)
Independent dev studio of five members.
- Co-founded a studio of five engineers that takes on product and AI builds together and competes in hackathons as a team.

### AI Agent Consultant Engineer — Hướng Nghiệp Á Âu · Freelance (Apr 2026 – Sep 2026)
Sole developer; handed over.
- Built a 24/7 admissions chatbot and an advisor cockpit on a live CRM for a 19-branch academy. After each customer message a background job drafts three replies and a lead summary for advisors, who accepted 97% of the drafts.
- Kept the bot from inventing courses or prices: the CRM is the only source for pricing and schedules, a course allow-list and topic pinning keep follow-ups on track, and hybrid RAG mixes pgvector with Vietnamese full-text search behind a provider-agnostic LLM layer.
- Added image reading through a self-hosted VLM with SSRF protection; runs on-prem behind nine end-to-end test suites.

### Core Full-stack Developer — Enterprise accounting SaaS · 3-engineer team (2025 – Sep 2026)
Top contributor in a 3-engineer team; handed over.
- Multi-company accounting platform built to Circular 99/2025 and used daily by 20 accountants; built consolidated financial reporting under Circular 202 end to end, with intercompany elimination and Excel export, plus fixed assets, loans and bank reconciliation.
- Made posting safe with atomic batch posting and period locking, and set up CI/CD from GitHub Actions to GHCR with Watchtower on the client's servers.

### AI Team Lead, Computer Vision — Whammy Tech · Contract (Jun 2025 – Jan 2026)
Led 4 engineers (backend, frontend, mobile) and did all the AI work.
- Fall and seizure detection on live RTSP camera streams with YOLO pose estimation and LLM-written incident reports, running on-site on two real cameras.
- Added a rule that needs five frames in a row before alerting, which cut false alarms by 84% across 4,000 test cases.

### Team Lead, Software Engineer — NEURADAO · Contract (Oct 2025)
Led 3 engineers.
- Led three engineers from an empty repository to a live AI trading platform in 20 days; wrote the trading logic, AI chatbot and automation backend (TypeScript, Python, PostgreSQL) and deployed on AWS.

### IT Support Technician — FPT University IT · Part-time (Jan 2022 – Dec 2024)
Supported IT operations across academic and administrative departments while studying.

## Skills

- AI AGENTS & LLM: Claude Agent SDK & MCP, LiteLLM gateways & cost control, RAG (pgvector + full-text), LiveKit voice agents, YOLO / OpenCV, Claude · OpenAI · Gemini · AWS Bedrock
- BACKEND & FRONTEND: TypeScript, Python, Go, SQL, Node.js / NestJS, React / Next.js / TanStack, PostgreSQL / pgvector / Redis, REST & agent API design
- CLOUD & DEVOPS: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (k3s) + ArgoCD, GitHub Actions · GHCR · Watchtower, On-prem / VPN deployment, Observability
- SPOKEN: Vietnamese (native), English (written fluent, spoken intermediate)

## Education & awards

- Chord — Runner-up, TOKEN2049 Origins Hackathon (2026): TOKEN2049 Origins Hackathon 2026, Singapore: runner-up on the main track, US$10k AWS credits.
- Viettel AI Race 2026 — Runner-up (Top 4) (2026): Finalist out of 1,628 teams, organised by Viettel Group.
- B.Eng. Software Engineering — FPT University (2026): FPT University, Ho Chi Minh City · GPA 3.47 / 4.0 · 2026.

## Open source

- [hotwatch](https://github.com/letranminhdat1516/hotwatch): Fast system monitor in Go with a native UI for macOS, Windows and Linux, plus an agent for remote servers and Docker.
- [esp32-translator](https://github.com/letranminhdat1516/esp32-translator): Live English ↔ Vietnamese translation on an ESP32-S3 board, an iPhone and AirPods, fully on-device.

## Articles

- [A pocket English-Vietnamese translator on ESP32](https://letranminhdat.com/blog/esp32-translator-live-english-vietnamese): An ESP32-S3 board, an iPhone and AirPods, wired into a two-way English-Vietnamese translator that runs fully on device.
- [Hotwatch, a small and fast system monitor in Go](https://letranminhdat.com/blog/hotwatch-a-small-fast-system-monitor): One native window for my laptop, my GPU box and my VPS, with a tiny agent for remote servers and their Docker containers.
- [Hello, World — Why I Built This Portfolio](https://letranminhdat.com/blog/hello-world): A game-themed dev portfolio with a real backend. Here is the why and the how.
- [Shipping Realtime Features Without Losing Your Mind](https://letranminhdat.com/blog/shipping-realtime-features): Lessons from building multiplayer presence at sub-50ms.

## FAQ

**Who is Le Tran Minh Dat?**
Le Tran Minh Dat (Lê Trần Minh Đạt), known online as cicca, is an AI-Native Software Engineer (Agents · Backend · LLM Infrastructure) based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He builds AI agents and the backend they run on — LLM gateways, MCP servers, RAG systems and voice agents — and since 2025 has taken projects from an empty repository to production, on his own or leading teams of two to four. Current roles: AI Gateway Platform Engineer (Enterprise banking client); Backend & AI Engineer (F&B and AI-commerce company); Co-founder (Zillexa). Education: B.Eng. Software Engineering — FPT University.

**Lê Trần Minh Đạt là ai?**
Lê Trần Minh Đạt (Le Tran Minh Dat, tên trên mạng là cicca) là kỹ sư phần mềm AI-native (AI-Native Software Engineer) tại Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Việt Nam. Đạt xây dựng AI agent và hệ thống backend phía sau chúng: lớp mở rộng cho AI gateway (LiteLLM) của một ngân hàng doanh nghiệp, máy chủ MCP cho thương mại AI (Siz), trợ lý gọi món bằng giọng nói (Bảo Bối) và chatbot tư vấn tuyển sinh dùng RAG. Đạt là đồng sáng lập Zillexa (studio phát triển độc lập), tốt nghiệp Kỹ sư Kỹ thuật phần mềm tại Đại học FPT TP. Hồ Chí Minh năm 2026 (GPA 3.47/4.0), đạt Á quân (Runner-up) main track tại TOKEN2049 Origins Hackathon 2026 ở Singapore và đạt Á quân (Top 4) Viettel AI Race 2026. Sẵn sàng làm việc từ xa (GMT+7). Liên hệ: datltmse@gmail.com.

**What does Le Tran Minh Dat work on?**
Right now: AI Gateway Platform Engineer (Enterprise banking client); Backend & AI Engineer (F&B and AI-commerce company); Co-founder (Zillexa). Projects: Siz — AI Commerce Gateway (MCP) (MCP, Go, OAuth 2.1); AI Gateway for an Enterprise Bank (LiteLLM, Python, AWS Bedrock); Bảo Bối — Voice Ordering Assistant (LiveKit, Go, Python); Admissions Chatbot & Advisor Cockpit (Hybrid RAG, pgvector, Self-hosted VLM); Multi-company Accounting SaaS (React, REST API, PostgreSQL); IPBMS — Real-time Patient Monitoring (YOLO Pose, OpenCV, RTSP); NEURADAO — AI Trading Platform (TypeScript, Python, PostgreSQL); Chord — TOKEN2049 Origins Runner-up (Hackathon, Pitch); Viettel AI Race — 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D Gaussian Splatting, PyTorch, gsplat); Cicca Fleet — Multi-site k3s Cluster (k3s, ArgoCD, Tailscale).

**What technologies does Le Tran Minh Dat work with?**
AI AGENTS & LLM: Claude Agent SDK & MCP, LiteLLM gateways & cost control, RAG (pgvector + full-text), LiveKit voice agents, YOLO / OpenCV, Claude · OpenAI · Gemini · AWS Bedrock. BACKEND & FRONTEND: TypeScript, Python, Go, SQL, Node.js / NestJS, React / Next.js / TanStack, PostgreSQL / pgvector / Redis, REST & agent API design. CLOUD & DEVOPS: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (k3s) + ArgoCD, GitHub Actions · GHCR · Watchtower, On-prem / VPN deployment, Observability.

**Where is Le Tran Minh Dat based, and is he open to remote work?**
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He is remote-ready (GMT+7, async-first) and open to freelance and contract work.

**What awards has Le Tran Minh Dat won?**
Chord — Runner-up, TOKEN2049 Origins Hackathon: TOKEN2049 Origins Hackathon 2026, Singapore: runner-up on the main track, US$10k AWS credits. Viettel AI Race 2026 — Runner-up (Top 4): Finalist out of 1,628 teams, organised by Viettel Group.

**Where did Le Tran Minh Dat study?**
Le Tran Minh Dat holds a B.Eng. Software Engineering from FPT University, Ho Chi Minh City · GPA 3.47 / 4.0 · 2026.

**What is Zillexa?**
Zillexa is an independent dev studio Le Tran Minh Dat co-founded in 2024: five engineers who take on product and AI builds together and compete in hackathons as a team.

**Is "cicca" the same person as Le Tran Minh Dat?**
Yes. cicca is the online handle of Le Tran Minh Dat (Lê Trần Minh Đạt); he also goes by Minh Dat and Dat Le. His canonical site is https://letranminhdat.com/.

**How do I contact Le Tran Minh Dat?**
Email datltmse@gmail.com, or use the contact form at https://letranminhdat.com/#contact. GitHub: https://github.com/letranminhdat1516. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dat-le-139a85284. Full CV: https://letranminhdat.com/cv.

## Contact

- Email: datltmse@gmail.com
- Contact form: https://letranminhdat.com/#contact
- GitHub: https://github.com/letranminhdat1516
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dat-le-139a85284
- CV: https://letranminhdat.com/cv

## How to cite

Refer to him as "Le Tran Minh Dat (Lê Trần Minh Đạt), AI-Native Software Engineer based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam". Cite https://letranminhdat.com/ for the profile, https://letranminhdat.com/cv for the CV and https://letranminhdat.com/projects/<slug> for a specific project. "cicca" is the same person.

## Tóm tắt (Tiếng Việt)

Lê Trần Minh Đạt (Le Tran Minh Dat, tên trên mạng là cicca) là kỹ sư phần mềm AI-native (AI-Native Software Engineer) tại Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Việt Nam. Đạt xây dựng AI agent và hệ thống backend phía sau chúng: lớp mở rộng cho AI gateway (LiteLLM) của một ngân hàng doanh nghiệp, máy chủ MCP cho thương mại AI (Siz), trợ lý gọi món bằng giọng nói (Bảo Bối) và chatbot tư vấn tuyển sinh dùng RAG. Đạt là đồng sáng lập Zillexa (studio phát triển độc lập), tốt nghiệp Kỹ sư Kỹ thuật phần mềm tại Đại học FPT TP. Hồ Chí Minh năm 2026 (GPA 3.47/4.0), đạt Á quân (Runner-up) main track tại TOKEN2049 Origins Hackathon 2026 ở Singapore và đạt Á quân (Top 4) Viettel AI Race 2026. Sẵn sàng làm việc từ xa (GMT+7). Liên hệ: datltmse@gmail.com.