Vector search has become the default first move in RAG pipelines, but for a meaningful class of workloads, the vector database is the slowest part of the system. This talk shows where vector search hurts P99 latency, when alternatives like BM25, learned sparse retrieval, in-context retrieval, and structured indexing outperform it, and how to make the call deliberately based on real measurements.
Computer scientist with 14 years of experience, Jubin is a Senior Software Engineer at Yahoo Finance, where he leads Data Infrastructure and Platforms team. Author of the upcoming Manning book AI-Native Infrastructure, and speaker at conferences including P99 Conf and API Days. Jubin has deep expertise in AI, distributed systems and cloud-native architectures, he focuses on building resilient platforms for real-time and big data processing. Jubin has authored and peer reviewed technical papers such as IEEE, served on jury panels for technology awards, and shares his insights through industry publications. He is passionate about advancing the state of big data and event-driven systems.
