Worked on enhancing distributed inference reliability in the jeejeelee/vllm repository by addressing a critical issue with timeout propagation in large-scale deployments. Implemented a fix to ensure user-defined distributed timeout values are correctly passed to NCCL device groups within the vLLM distributed module. Developed a helper function to retrieve and consistently apply the timeout during process group initialization, reducing the risk of timeout-related failures in production environments. Collaborated across teams to review and sign off on the changes. Utilized expertise in distributed systems, PyTorch, and Python to improve the robustness and stability of distributed workloads without introducing new features.