Summary

AI leader with 12+ years of experience in financial services, e-commerce and mobility.
I build and lead AI teams, and ship applied ML and LLM products that solve concrete business problems in pricing, supply chain, customer screening and retention.

Experience

Associate Director, Data Science

Publicis Sapient - Berlin, Germany
Jun 2023 - Present

  • Lead AI for key financial services clients, focusing on customer screening and internal research assistants using large language models and retrieval systems.
  • Manage and grow a distributed craft team (~15 data scientists and MLOps engineers), including performance management, feedback and career development.
  • Work with client stakeholders, product and engineering to turn vague problem statements into AI projects with measurable impact.
  • Contribute to internal applied AI/GenAI offerings based on shipped work with clients.

Tech Lead, Data Science / Senior ML Scientist

Wayfair - Berlin, Germany
Mar 2022 - May 2023

  • Tech lead in a cross-functional team (~10) of ML engineers, analysts and data scientists.
  • Improved temporal reactivity and quality of order-to-delivery time predictions used in customer-facing experiences and internal tools.
  • Led model operations across multiple A/B tests and production deployments, demonstrating large incremental revenue potential from better delivery-time predictions.

Staff Data Scientist

Sixt SE - Munich, Germany
Mar 2018 - Feb 2022

  • Led a 6-person team working on AI-based dynamic pricing across Sixt Rent and Sixt Share.
  • Designed and shipped dynamic pricing systems that delivered:
    • ~3% improvement in revenue per day for Sixt Rent through automated price optimisation.
    • ~7% improvement in revenue per day in the USA through fleet and pricing optimisation.
  • Drove quality assurance of data science products and contributed to international hiring across several teams.

Manager, Data Science

Endurance International Group - Bengaluru, India
Jan 2016 - Mar 2018

  • Built and led a 5-person data science team from scratch.
  • Led the shift to data-driven retention, customer support, upsell and targeted marketing.
  • Delivered a churn prediction model that improved renewal rates by ~2%.
  • Built a website classifier that outperformed IBM Watson’s taxonomy API by 16 percentage points in F1 across 12 classes.

Data Scientist

Applied Materials - Bengaluru, India
Mar 2015 - Jan 2016

  • Data science consultant in the FabVantage group (Applied Global Services), working on defect-reduction projects in semiconductor manufacturing.

Data Scientist

SapientNitro - Gurugram, India
Jul 2013 - Mar 2015

  • Developed algorithms for blob tracking and indoor localisation using IoT sensor data in physical retail environments.
  • Built models to identify customer–product interactions using multi-spectrum sound signals.

Education

National Institute of Technology Surathkal - India
Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering
Jul 2009 - May 2013

Research internships

  • Biometrics Research Lab, IIT Delhi - Biometric authentication using reinforcement learning (Summer 2012).
  • Computational Intelligence Lab, IISc Bengaluru - Motion sensing of the human body (Summer 2011).

Leadership

  • Built and led multiple high-performing data science teams (up to ~15 people), including fully remote setups.
  • Experienced in performance management, coaching and career development for data scientists and ML engineers.
  • Led delivery of AI products in pricing, fleet optimisation, customer screening, churn prediction and delivery-time prediction.
  • Helped shape internal AI/ML viewpoints and offerings grounded in production projects.

Skills

Applications
Dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, fleet optimisation, supply chain optimisation, automated customer screening, churn prediction, delivery-time prediction

Languages
Python, SQL, R

ML & Data
TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, pandas, NumPy

Cloud & DevOps
GCP (primary), AWS, Azure, Git, Docker, Buildkite

LLMs
Experience with production use of GPT-family and Gemini-family models for both internal tools and customer-facing workflows