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Eugene Yan

I build ML, RecSys, and LLM systems that serve customers at scale, and write about what I learn along the way. Join 7,500+ subscribers!

Hi, I'm Eugene Yan. I design, build, and operate machine learning systems that serve customers at scale. I also write and speak about ML, RecSys, LLMs, and engineering.

I'm currently a Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon where I focus on helping customers read more. Here, I built systems including real-time retrieval, bandit-based ranking, and recsys in search (see RecSys 2022 keynote). More recently, I'm exploring how LLMs can help us serve customers better.

Previously, I led machine learning at Lazada (acquired by Alibaba in 2016). Here, I built the product ranking system (conversion & revenue up 5-20%), smart push-notifications (CTR & add-to-cart up 10%), and automated product & review classification (cost down 90%). Hypergrowth's fun!

As an early hire in a healthtech Series A, I led the team to ship an ML system for Southeast Asia's largest healthcare provider. At IBM, I built job forecasts & recommendations.

Outside of work, I share the ghost knowledge of applying ML via curated papers, guides, and practitioner interviews, and host a monthly meetup on ML in industry. I also angel invest in early-stage data/ML, infra, and devtool startups.

2020-now: Senior Applied Scientist @ Amazon (ML, RecSys, LLMs)

2018-2019: ML Lead @ Healthtech Series A (Disease Detection, Cost Estimation)

2017-2018: VP, Data Science @ Lazada (Alibaba) (E-Commerce ML Systems)

2015-2017: Data Scientist @ Lazada (Alibaba) (Ranking, ML Automation, MLOps)

2013-2015: Data Scientist @ IBM (Workforce Analytics, Fraud Detection)