Sebastian Șovăilescu

I grew up in Timișoara, Romania, until I was 14, when my family immigrated to the United States. We lived briefly in Wisconsin, then moved to a Chicago suburb.

My childhood was great. Soccer was a big part of it, and I played all the time: between cars in the neighbourhood and, once I was old enough, in the nearby park. Then I joined a soccer club and went to camps and nearby cities to play. I spent months at my grandparents' house, playing hide and seek with the other kids in the neighbourhood until our grandmas called us in to eat. At summer camp I went river rafting, zip-lining, and swimming. My mom always loved travelling (she still does), and before the 2008 recession we went on lots of trips. The best were the water parks, especially in Belgium and Szeged, Hungary.

I studied Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I had a blast, joined Enactus, and travelled a lot. After my sophomore year, I started interning at AbbVie, and I've been there ever since.

Languages

• 🇷🇴Romanian · Native
• 🇺🇸English · Fluent
• 🇩🇪German · Intermediate

Interests

Focus

• •Building AI-native applications with agentic frameworks, RAG, and LLM evaluation
• •Running production infrastructure: Docker, Linux, reverse proxies, multi-provider LLM routing
• •Shipping polished full-stack products end-to-end from backend to frontend

Timeline

• Timișoara, Romania

  Until ~2016

  I spent my first fourteen years in Timișoara: family, friends, and the city that still feels like home.

• First landing

  January 28, 2016

  I'd never flown before. Coming into Chicago for the first time, the lit-up grid below us was fascinating.

  

• Wisconsin

  2016

  A short first stop in the Midwest after we immigrated — cold enough to remember, then we kept moving.

• Vernon Hills

  2016–2021

  We settled in a Chicago suburb. Vernon Hills is where I finished growing up and went to high school.

  

• UIUC

  2021–2025

  Computer Engineering at Illinois. I joined Enactus, travelled whenever I could, and had a blast.

  

• AbbVie

  2023–Present

  I started as a sophomore intern in 2023 and never really left — internships into a full-time role in North Chicago.