Thoughtworks Singapore Tech Talk 

September 2, 2026

Beyond vector search: Building reliable RAG for complex questions

Speakers: Pratiksha Parsewar, Senior Consultant, Thoughtworks and Teng Lei, Principal Data Scientist, Thoughtworks

Vector search is a useful starting point for RAG, but it breaks down when applications need to answer questions that span multiple documents, sources or relationships. At that point, simply tuning embeddings or increasing the number of retrieved chunks often isn’t enough. Engineers need to understand how different retrieval architectures address different failure modes—and how to know whether they actually improve results.

This session takes a practical, engineering-focused look at moving beyond naive RAG, covering approaches such as hybrid, multi-stage and graph-based retrieval, alongside a rigorous framework for evaluating them.

You’ll learn:

• Where basic vector RAG breaks down and how to identify its failure modes

• How to choose between different retrieval architectures based on the problem you're solving

• How multi-hop and graph-based retrieval can improve answers to complex questions

• How to evaluate retrieval and end-to-end answer quality systematically

• What to consider when moving more complex RAG pipelines into production

Who should attend: Software engineers, AI architects and data practitioners who are building RAG applications and want practical techniques for designing, comparing and evaluating retrieval architectures beyond basic vector search.

Date: Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Time: 6:30 - 8:30pm (Talk starts at 7pm)

Venue: Thoughtworks Singapore office, 18 Cross Street, #12-01 18 Cross, Singapore 048423