Yanir provided helpful mentorship as I transitioned into freelance consultant. He shared useful insights from his own experience on structuring service offerings, creating lead magnets to attract potential clients, and pricing strategies. Yanir's guidance gave me a solid foundation for starting out on my own. I'm grateful for his willingness to share his knowledge and would highly recommend him as a mentor.
Miao Chen
Had a great session with Yanir discussing the immediate challenges around choosing the right tech stack as well as planning appropriately for the longer term involving ML/AI technologies. Was great to be able to pick his brains in these areas to enable me to get a head start on the challenges to come involving AI models and the infrastructure and personnel required to set up and run these, as well as the likely costs involved. Was also kind enough to go above and beyond our allocated time so for that I was extremely grateful!
Martin Taylor
I enjoyed the talk and the willingness to help as well as going deep on the matter and reading and learning about it for the meeting.
The afterwards introductions and connections are already opening further discussions helping to open the mind.
Thanks, Yanir
Maydan W
Bio
Check out my LinkedIn or website for full history.
Quotes from people I've worked with:
- "Yanir is that rare data/AI practitioner who combines deep experience in data science with breadth in software engineering and experience working with marketing and product teams."
- "Yanir is an exceptional data scientist with the rare combination of data science expertise and strong software engineering principles. He is a strategic thinker and problem solver, adept at identifying root causes and implementing engineering solutions."
- "I'd recommend Yanir any day if you are looking for someone who can execute thoughtfully and leave no stone unturned."
- "Yanir's proactivity, creativity and high quality of work have been invaluable to our organisation. I strongly recommend Yanir to anyone looking to implement data & AI projects."
- "In addition to taking (and excelling at) ownership of the entire data segment of the company, he also accepted key responsibilities within the vision setting, goal setting, and fund raising parts of the business."
- "Yanir is a fantastic engineer."
- "Yanir practically s**** beautiful code."
Expertise
Artificial intelligence
The line between AI and data science is blurry and keeps changing. There's also the question of what you define as AI. For example, my PhD was nominally in AI, with a focus on natural language processing and recommender systems. When I graduated, AI wasn't a hot term, so I called myself a data scientist. Now (2024) things have shifted back, though it feels like we're hitting peak AI hype.
Anyway, I'm happy to talk about all things data/AI/ML, especially when applied to startups.
Career guidance
As I'm getting older, I accumulate more opinions on what works and doesn't work for me. Some of this may apply to you too, especially if you come from the data and tech side (I didn't follow a marketing career path, though I've worked with marketing teams).
Data science
Got into the field back when "data scientist" still meant "a person who's better at software engineering than any statistician and better at statistics than any software engineer". Started off nearly 20 years ago as a software engineer, then moved to data science / AI engineering via a PhD that I finished in 2012. I've worked with various startups & scaleups in data science-y / tech lead roles since then (including in marketing/growth roles).
Toolkit
Git
Not exactly a marketer's dream, but Git is how I manage my website and various other projects. I also use GitHub for personal backlog management. I've also used less popular Git-based platforms like Bitbucket.
LinkedIn Ads
While I've been on LinkedIn since 2010, I started to get serious about LinkedIn content marketing for my solo consulting business in 2024. I'd be happy to exchange tips on what works and what doesn't, keeping in mind that I'm far from a LinkedIn expert.
Linux
My laptop runs on Ubuntu. I switched from Windows back in 2007 and never looked back. I've also worked quite a bit on Linux-based servers, including container setup with Docker and related technologies.
MySQL
I've had to use MySQL in various roles, including integration work when I was with WordPress.com. For some reason, there's no option to add other SQL variants (I've used Postgres and a bunch of others), so I'm using this as a catch-all for SQL tech.
Python
Learned Python in 2010 and haven't looked back. I've used all the usual data science packages (pandas, jupyter, numpy, scikit-learn), various web frameworks (FastAPI, Django, Flask), and a bunch of others.
I also worked with a wide variety of other languages and tools, but it'd take ages to list them all. :)
Experience
Yanir Seroussi Consulting
AI/ML Success Architect
Problems I help with:
- Establishing and revising your AI/ML strategy
- Reviewing your architecture and roadmaps
- Implementing AI/ML projects
- Selecting AI/ML tools and platforms
- Engaging with vendors and agencies
- Hiring your first AI/ML professionals
Modes of engagement:
- Advisory calls
- Well-scoped short-term AI/ML projects
- Fractional Head of AI/ML engagements
We start with low-commitment engagements to assess fit and build mutual trust. If there’s scope for deeper work, I’ll embed with your team to help with hands-on delivery. My goal is to help you build in-house capabilities so you can keep growing independently.
My focus is on climate & nature tech ventures, but I'm happy to consider other positive-impact work if I have the capacity.
Please message me directly if you'd like to discuss working together.
Blue Carbon
Chief AI Officer (Fractional)
Helping Blue Carbon lay a solid data foundation and ship AI/ML solutions – an Ocean Intelligence layer on top of proprietary hardware.
Climate Tech Partners
Expert Circle Member (AI & Energy focus)
Helping with technical due diligence on AI/ML capabilities of climate tech startups and scaleups.
Orkestra
Principal Technology Lead | Lead Data Scientist
Helped lay the foundations for a new product in the renewable energy sector.
Tasks included leading architecture and technical design decisions, setting up data and machine learning pipelines, building models for time-series forecasting of price and energy consumption, and more. My work was key to the company securing their first funding round.
Used Python with modern data and machine learning libraries, with code deployed to AWS. Learned quite a bit about the energy market, though there's always more to learn.
Automattic
Experimentation Tech Lead | Machine Learning Engineer | Distinguished Data Scientist
Automattic is behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and several other products. Highlights from my work include:
- Leading the architecture & build of a unified experimentation platform, and spreading causal inference best practices throughout the company. This resulted in millions of dollars of measurable impact.
- Initiating and co-leading the development of machine learning pipelines and systems for effective targeting of customers. This resulted in millions of dollars of incremental revenue.
- End-to-end implementation of automated customer chat tagging with machine learning.
- Improving measurement and presentation of key engagement metrics.
- Increasing adoption of engineering best practices in data science projects.
- Leading an employee resource group to promote sustainability at Automattic. This resulted in carbon offsetting based on my research and advocacy, and positive coverage for the company.
Key technologies used include Python data and machine learning libraries, Hadoop tools like Impala, Hive, and Spark, and some PHP and JavaScript as needed.
Car Next Door
Head of Data Science (Engineering focus)
Acquired by Uber in 2022 and rebranded Uber Carshare, Car Next Door was Australia's leading peer-to-peer car-sharing service during my time there. My daily work at the company spanned the full data science spectrum from statistics to software engineering. Highlights for each area include:
- Predictive modelling & statistics: Modelled vehicle utilisation and customer value. Drove experimental design and data analysis to improve key business metrics.
- Analytics & data engineering: Productionised live views of key business metrics. Implemented data pipelines that monitor changes and ensure data integrity over time.
- Software engineering: Supported engineering with code and design reviews, refactored legacy code, set up monitoring and continuous integration systems, and championed tech debt reduction.
- Leadership & mentoring: Led the company's data engineering/science function, evangelised adherence to industry best practices in software engineering and product management, and helped shape the business through involvement in planning and prioritisation.
Yanir Seroussi Consulting
Independent Data Science Consultant & Entrepreneur
Doing a mix of consulting, training, and work on my own projects (mainly Price Dingo and BCRecommender).
Consulting projects have included churn/engagement models and personalisation of customer experience, in addition to general predictive modelling and advisory work. Past clients include General Assembly, GetUp, and Commonwealth Bank. I tend to use Python for analysis, data munging, visualisation, and modelling, but have also worked with technologies such as Teradata, Redshift, Scala, R, Hadoop, and Hive.
Price Dingo was an unbiased price comparison engine that aimed to serve results that users could trust. Just like general web search engines, the main ranking factor was relevance to the user, and merchants didn't have to pay to have their products listed. Relevance was also achieved by implementing Price Dingo as a network of independent sites, each focused on a specific product category. I built the backend and frontend for Price Dingo using Python (scrapy, celery, scikit-learn, gensim), JavaScript (express, backbone), MongoDB, Algolia, and other technologies. Despite getting some initial traction through SEO, SEM, and content marketing, I decided to shut Price Dingo down to focus on other ventures.
BCRecommender was a web-based recommendation system that helped people discover music from the millions of tracks and albums available on Bandcamp. This project was originally meant to address my own problem, but had received wider adoption since its public launch. The backend for BCRecommender included custom Python code and relied on many Python libraries (e.g., flask, gensim, celery), MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and various other technologies. The frontend employed some standard HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, and JavaScript. More details on the technology and development process can be found on https://yanirseroussi.com/tags/bcrecommender/. I grew and maintained the project until November 2017.
Next Commerce
Head of Data Science | Recommendation Tech Lead
The main focus of this role was on heading the development of Hynt – a cloud-hosted recommender system that presented smart product recommendations to visitors of e-commerce websites. Recommendations were generated by harnessing machine learning to infer user preferences based on various sources such as intent data, shopping behaviour, knowledge graphs, and social networks.
Responsibilities included:
- Designing, implementing and scaling up the recommendation algorithms that drive Hynt.
- Leading the engineering team responsible for implementing and maintaining the Hynt stack (from the AWS-hosted infrastructure through the MongoDB/Python/Django back-end to the AngularJS front-end).
- Ensuring the adoption of software development best practices such as code reviews, automated testing, and continuous integration.
- Managing product vision and planning in accordance with business goals together with senior management.
Giveable
Founding Data Scientist & Backend Engineer
- Built a web-scale system for product recommendation and interest discovery based on data from social media and various other sources, such as the Freebase knowledge graph
- Developed statistical methods for solving various business problems in a scalable manner
- Implemented software in Python for a web environment, exposed via RESTful APIs, using tools such as Django, MongoDB, Celery, NLTK and Scikit-learn
- Took part in product design and in shaping the business direction of the company
Monash University
PhD Candidate, Artificial Intelligence
Thesis title: Text Mining and Rating Prediction with Topical User Models
This thesis develops novel statistical methods to infer implicit information from online user-generated texts. These methods analyse texts to identify and characterise users, detect their sentiments, and predict their preferences for items such as films. The inferred information may be harnessed for improved personalisation of online user experience.
Highlights:
- Built custom machine learning models and a distributed experimental framework in Java and Python.
- Published five refereed conference papers and two refereed journal articles in highly-ranked venues.
- Served as the postgraduate representative on the school's occupational health and safety committee, co-organiser of a postgraduate seminar series, and a member of the university's scuba dive club committee.
- Taught introductory computer science subjects as a seasonal tutor.
- Awarded the 2012 Mollie Holman Medal for the best PhD thesis in the Faculty of Information Technology.
- Worked on a confidential project in the area of social networking
- Worked with various Google technologies and libraries, such as App Engine, FlumeJava, Guice, Megastore and Protocol Buffers
- Implemented software in Java for a web environment
Qualcomm
Software Engineer
- Universal Broadcast Modem (UBM) upper-layers software team
- Focused on implementing various aspects of the ISDB-T and DVB-H protocols
- Guided colleagues and performed code reviews
- Implemented software in C++ and C for Windows and embedded environments
Qualcomm
Software Engineering Intern
- Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) Networking and Data Services team
- Developed and maintained data networking APIs and libraries for Qualcomm's chipset solutions
- Helped introduce new team members through code reviews and general mentoring
- Implemented software in C++ and C for Windows and embedded environments
Intel
Software Engineering Intern
- Software quality assurance of chip design and verification tools
- Developed tools for automatic test management and analysis
- Implemented software under Linux using Perl, TCL and Java
Meir Medical Center
Security Guard
Helped protect medical staff and patients from terrorists and other threats (like outraged family members).
Compulsory military service in the 13th Battalion of the Golani Brigade.
Started as an infantry soldier, became a non-commissioned officer, and moved from serving as a squad leader to supporting the battalion's radio operations for the last part of my service (still considered active combat duty).
Learned to respect and question authority. Dreamt about eventually moving to Australia.
Note: I only added this position to my LinkedIn history in 2024, mostly to take a stand against all the anti-Zionist hate speech. My hope is to detract those who are blinded by hate from engaging with me. If you are merely curious and want to learn more, feel free to connect.
Lastly, despite living in Australia during the October 2023 attacks, they felt especially close to home because of the heavy causalities suffered by the 13th Battalion. I could easily imagine myself in the place of those who had fallen. They were like me, just twenty years younger. Lest we forget.
Earthnoise
QA Specialist
I finished high school a year early, so I had some time to work before my compulsory military service.
Got my first taste of the startup world: Helped manual and automated QA efforts while soaking up the atmosphere of the dotcom era.
Earthnoise was probably ahead of its time: Essentially YouTube, but before broadband access was widespread. It didn't survive when the dotcom bubble burst.
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