About Me
Short Bio
Dynamic executive leader with 15+ years of industry experience in AI, Machine Learning (ML), Data Strategy & Governance, and MLOps, driving large-scale AI innovation across finance (6 years), retail, energy, and transportation/logistics (10 years). With a master's in software engineering and a Ph.D. in machine learning, I have built AI departments from the ground up, led teams of over 50 FTEs, and successfully embedded ML into real-world products. I am also an accomplished AI researcher with five granted patents, 50+ peer-reviewed publications in high-impact venues (ACM SIGKDD, AAAI, ECML/PKDD), and keynote speaker invitations worldwide.
During the last ±3 years, I served as Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence at sennder, Europe's largest digital logistics player, leading AI and data-driven product innovation. Over the years, I have scaled AI capabilities in hyper-growth, highly regulated environments, led large cross-functional teams, and secured C-level buy-in for enterprise-wide AI transformations. Currently, I am co-creating my own 10x venture to automate the Enterprise world by AI designed from the ground up.
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AI-Led Business Growth & Revenue Impact
Designed and deployed AI-powered recommendation and bidding engines at sennder, leading to a 3X increase in TGP, reaching €8M.
Led MLOps and data platform refactoring projects across three companies, reducing OPEX by 10% in two and enabling key bottom-line gains in another.
Developed AI frameworks for real-time intelligent pricing and routing (transportation) and risk prediction (fintech), increasing total gross margin (TGM) by up to 30%.
Steered the design of a new affordability estimation engine at Kreditech and integrated an AI-based fraud detection module, reducing default rates by 5% and increasing revenues by 30%.
Scaling AI & Engineering Teams
Managed more than 50 FTEs, hiring more than 30, including Ph.D. researchers and industry experts from Amazon, Meta, Apple, Expedia, Olx, Delivery Hero, and Zalando.
Built AI and data departments from scratch in two organizations, growing them to 7 and 18 FTEs, respectively, with a fully remote, Agile-first setup.
Championed career growth, leading to 15+ promotions and industry recognitions for direct reports.
Operational Excellence & Efficiency Gains
An example from sennder:
AI platform refactoring at led to:
+70% development speed;
-80% production incidents;
-60% downtime;
Reduced firefighting time through Shift Left in ML engineering, introducing unit tests for software, data, infrastructure, and model logic, leading to a 13% reduction in Change Failure Rate (CFR).
Introduced pair programming for 40% of tasks, reducing knowledge silos and decreasing lead time for changes (LTFC) by 70%.
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Published 50+ high-impact AI/ML papers in top-tier venues, including KDD, AAAI, IEEE TKDE, and ECML/PKDD.
Delivered 20+ keynote talks worldwide, from Brisbane (Australia) to Las Palmas (Spain).
Won multiple industry awards, including a Test-of-Time Award for best paper in a world-class data mining journal (IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems).
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AI & Machine Learning: GenAI, LLMs (fine-tuning & prompt engineering), NLP, dynamic pricing, fraud detection, credit risk, affordability prediction.
MLOps & Data Platforms: Feature stores, DataOps, experiment tracking, model deployment, live/offline testing, serving, and monitoring.
Data Strategy & Governance: Policy, quality, acquisition, architecture, data warehousing (OLAP), ML services (OLTP), EdgeML/IoT.
Tech Stack: AWS (Redshift, ECS/EKS, Lambda), Python, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, W&B, Flyte, BentoML, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, RESTful APIs (FastAPI, Flask), Kubernetes, R, C++.
Leadership & Product Strategy: AI-driven product development, OKRs, Agile, data product management.
Business Communication & Stakeholder Management: Strong ability to bridge technical concepts with C-level executives, VC boards, and global stakeholders, ensuring alignment and buy-in for large-scale AI transformations.
Professional Experience
Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence
sennder GmbH | Berlin, Germany | 2022 – Present
- Executive position leading AI initiatives (€3.5M/year budget, 20+ FTEs) during sennder's hypergrowth phase, contributing to its unicorn status (€2B valuation in 2024).
- Oversee AI R&D, ML lifecycle management, and the delivery of ML services to disrupt the road logistics industry.
- Key Achievements:
- Business Impact: Delivered +€8M in total gross profit with 5x lower OPEX through hands-free ML services.
- Model Accuracy: Improved pricing model accuracy by 40pp and recommendation model accuracy by 20pp using NLP-based feature engineering, Named Entity Recognition (NER), and query expansion.
- Team Building: Formed 3 specialized teams with top talent, including Ph.D. holders and ex-FAANG professionals (Apple, Amazon, Meta) in a full remote setup with high eNPS (+50 by December'24);
- MLOps Innovation: Introduced a new MLOps Platform (Weights & Biases, Flyte, BentoML), achieving significant improvements in software quality and reliability metrics (DORA4), namely:
- -60% Lead Time for Changes (LTFC);
- -60% Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
- -13% Change Failure Rate (CFR).
- +5X Deployment Frequency (DF);
Head of Data Science
Finiata GmbH | Berlin, Germany | 2021 – 2022
- Executive Committee (ExCo) member, steering Data and ML Engineering teams to deliver ML-based products for B2B Lending (130k applications, $80M+ issued in loans).
- Key Achievements:
- Team Building: Rebuilt the Data department from scratch to 7 FTEs with ~40% gender balance and a hybrid remote setup.
- Hiring Innovation: Introduced a remote hiring program, restructuring talent sourcing, hiring processes, and onboarding.
- OKR Refinement: Revamped the company's OKR processes, increasing focus, engagement (+8%), and tech team impact.
- Productivity Enhancements: Implemented Agile practices (Scrum, Scrumban), knowledge sharing, and ownership initiatives, boosting team output by 45%.
Head of Data Science
Kreditech Holding SSL GmbH | Hamburg, Germany | 2018 – 2020
- Led the Data Science department (15+ FTEs) in R&D and CI/CD deployment of state-of-the-art ML pipelines for B2C Credit Scoring ($600M+ issued), Pricing, Affordability, and Fraud Detection.
- Key Achievements:
- Cloud Transition: Transitioned to a cloud-based (AWS) development environment, increasing productivity by 20%.
- Predictive Analytics Engine: Designed and deployed a novel ML method for estimating disposable income/affordability, increasing revenues by 30%.
- Data Source Innovation: Evaluated and deployed 10+ non-traditional data sources for credit risk assessment, reducing default rates by 10% across 3 countries.
Senior Researcher
NEC Europe Ltd. | Heidelberg, Germany | 2014 – 2018
- Led AutoML research to solve real-world problems in Transport, Retail, and Finance, focusing on tabular, unstructured, and IoT data.
- Activities included Fundamental & Applied Research, Solution Prototyping, and Pre-Sales across EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regions.
Researcher & Teaching Assistant
University of Porto | Porto, Portugal | 2009 – 2014
- Conducted Ph.D. research on Machine Learning for transportation planning and real-time control, with applications in taxi-passenger demand prediction and bus schedule reliability.
- Taught 600+ students in programming (C, C++), database systems (UML, Oracle PL/SQL), and internet technologies (HTML, XML).
