2025–now
Retired
I am a retired Applied Scientist and Software Engineer based near Seattle,
Washington, USA.
Projects
- socializing, mentoring, advising
- baking, reading, writing, gaming, coding
- traveling, kayaking, hiking, drinking tea
- cardio kickboxing, playing pickleball
- mathematics, marimba, woodworking
- ...
2022–now
- helped redesign curriculum
2023–2025
Senior Staff Software Engineer
AI Training Experiences,
Meta (Facebook)
I was Technical Lead for Model Understanding algorithms, working
closely with Ads & Instagram machine learning (ML) model owners to solve
training stability problems & anomaly detection in experimental &
production ranking & recommender systems (RecSys), reducing Ads
training delays due to loss divergence from 41 days to 0 and unblocking
several model launches.
- created ML training debugging algorithms using PyTorch
intermediate
logging (IL)
- created custom learning curve anomaly detection algorithms for
training instability and loss divergence
- root-caused failed ML training runs for 12+ Ads &
Instagram ML models
2021–2023
Senior Staff Research Data Scientist (Quantitative Engineer)
Infrastructure Data Science (IDS),
Meta (Facebook)
I started on Ads ML Robustness, helping monitor and solve high
revenue-impact production model inference problems. I presented in
monthly Ads leadership reviews and advised AI Monitoring & Observability
efforts like
Hawkeye and eventually became technical lead for all
AI Infrastructure metrics. I mentored many data scientists across IDS
and became a top contributor to the open source
Kats
time series library. In just 2.5 years, I was awarded 178 formal "thanks"
from managers and peers. Outside Meta, I was also invited to moderate
the AI panel at the Northeast
Asian Economic Forum (NEAEF) / Hawaii-Asia Pacific Institute (HAPI) 32nd annual forum. (one
participant writeup)
- Ads ML Prediction Robustness
- created topline metrics such as "Revenue Loss Prevented"
- created Anomaly Detection Primer & Onboarding
- created new anomaly detection algorithms and simulation engine
- contributed to internal Monitoring Academy for AI
- misc other DS projects
2019–2021
Staff Software Engineer
Core Developer Intelligence,
Google
- invited keynote speaker at internal Anomaly Detection Summit
- volunteered at 2019 Women in Statistics and Data Science event
- 1 spot bonus, 11 peer bonuses
- analysis of COVID-19 impact on Google employee productivity,
summarized
by CFO Ruth Porat in media interviews.
- created predictive models for internal developer infrastructure
- created Developer Intelligence metrics and dashboards
- corrected YouTube WatchTime automated forecast for pandemic impact
(winner among 6+ other competing methods)
2015–2016
Principal Data Scientist
Core Data Science,
Microsoft
- architect for Windows and Devices Group (WDG) Experimentation Platform
- peer reviewer for the internal Microsoft Journal of Applied Research (MSJAR)
- session chair for the internal Machine Learning, Analysis & Data Science conference (MLADS)
- Windows 10
- A/B experimentation platform for Windows
- various other data science projects across Microsoft
2009–2012
Principal Engineer
Search Experience, Amazon
- increased incremental revenue attributed to Search by more then $1B
- improved customer-perceived latency by more than 8x, from 0% of
pages under 1 second to more than 75%
- reduced the customer-facing failure rate (CXFATAL) by more than 1000x
- ported the Search application from Perl to Java
- rearchitected Search pages to be heavily AJAX-based
- second Bar Raiser for Principal Engineers
- speaking coach for Principals of Amazon talk series
- created prediction challenge for first-ever internal machine
learning (ML) HackDay
- co-created the Data Scientist (DS) job ladder (today Applied Scientist) and hired the first two
- contributed to
Principal
Engineer Leadership Tenets
- advised external CEOs on latency reduction
- performed technical evaluations for potential acquisitions
- analyzed petabyte-scale datasets of customer behavior and website latency
- 15 patents
- Retail Search Platform (RSP)
- Remote Search Aggregator Service (RSAS)
- Search AJAX (with streaming and browser history)
- Search client telemetry (SearchCT)
- Kinematic Endpoint prediction
- predicted keyword searches (a month before Google Instant)
- sitewide latency reductions
- internal Search Experience metrics portal
- internal Search Experience weekly business reviews (WBR)
2008–2009
Distinguished Engineer
Executive Technology & Strategy, Yahoo!
- advised executive staff on deep technical strategy and M&A
- wrote strategy papers
- met with external startup founders
- prototype apps for iOS and Facebook (before those platforms
launched) and other technology demonstrations
- technical liaison for AT&T relationship
- created the Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure (CCDI) and
Audience Service Engineering divisions
2007–2008
Senior Architect
Yahoo! Open Strategy (YOS)
- invented Yahoo! Query Language (integrated into
Yahoo!
Pipes)
- opened and staffed the Yahoo! Bellevue WA office
- Yahoo! Web Services toolkit
- local "paranoid" (security architect)
- promoted to Distinguished Engineer (one of only 3 at Yahoo!)
- Yahoo! Open Strategy (YOS)
- Yahoo!
Query Language (YQL)
- Yahoo! Cloud Computing and Infrastructure Division
1998–1999
- early Space Interferometer Mission data pipeline work
- Space Interferometer Mission Collaborative Environment (SIM-CE)
- Spitzer Space Telescope
1996–1998
- AstroVR
- Network Places
- Radiative Transfer
- 2-Micron
All Sky Survey (2MASS) data pipeline
- published papers:
- The
Circumstellar Structure of the Class I Protostar TMC-1 (IRAS 04381+2540)
from Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS Data, The Astrophysical Journal
(ApJ) 2006 Vol 637 No 2.
- An
Object-Oriented Approach to Radiative Transfer in Arbitrary Media,
1997 Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 29
- Near-infrared
Hubble Space Telescope Images of Nearby Protostars, 1998
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30
- 10
Micron Search for Cool Companions of Nearby Stars, 1998 The
Astronomical Journal (AJ), Volume 116, Number 4
- A
Candidate Protoplanet in the Taurus Star-forming Region,
1998 The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), Volume 507, Number 1
