Professional Work

My professional work has focused on building large-scale machine learning and computer vision systems, along with the organizations and platforms needed to support them. I’ve worked across applied ML, infrastructure, and product-facing systems, from early-stage startups to company-wide platforms used in production.

Highlights

• Founded ML Platform at Pinterest (2017–2025), Related Pins recommendations (2015–2017), and Visual Search (2013–2014)

• Exploring machine learning, computer vision, and audio analysis since 2007.

Timeline

2026–present • Creative Sabbatical

Currently exploring projects at the intersection of interactive software, hardware, and art.

2017–2025 • Pinterest • Senior Director of Engineering, Machine Learning Platforms

I founded this team and grew it to span ML Data, ML Training, and ML Serving. It’s used by 300 ML engineers throughout the company for 40+ use cases such as Home, Search, Related Pins, Shopping, Ads.

2015–2017 • Pinterest • Tech Lead / Engineering Manager, Related Pins

Started the Related Pins recommendations team at Pinterest. As tech lead, and later engineering manager, I drove ML-based improvements in relevance that grew Related Pins to 40% of site-wide engagement.

2013–2014 • VisualGraph → Pinterest • Founding Engineer, Visual Search

Founding engineer at VisualGraph, a computer vision startup acquired by Pinterest to form the Pinterest Visual Search team. Built foundational infrastructure for applying computer vision across all of Pinterest’s images.

2007–2010 • Independent research

I’ve been exploring machine learning since high school, doing projects in music analysis, speech recognition, and computer vision.

2008–2013 • Internships

High school and college internships with NASA Ames Research Center, Facebook, Google, Palantir, D. E. Shaw & Co.

2003–2008 • DCLsoft • Freelance software development

Freelance contract programming work starting at age 11.

See also: LinkedIn.