Episode 104: Streamlining Machine Learning In Production with Ran Romano

Show Notes(01:34) Ran reflected on his time working as a Technical Product Manager at the Israeli Intelligence army.(04:07) Ran recalled his favorite classes on Machine Learning and Computer Graphics during his education in Computer Science at Reichman University.(05:24) Ran talked about a valuable lesson learned as a Software Engineer at VMware's Cloud Provider Software Business Unit.(08:07) Ran shared his thoughts on how engineers could be more impactful in startup organizations.(09:52) Ran talked about his decision to join Wix.com to work as a software engineer focusing on data infrastructure.(12:48) Ran explained the motivation for building Wix's internal ML platform, designed to address the end-to-end ML workflow.(16:48) Ran discussed the main components of Wix's ML platform: feature store, CI/CD mechanism, UI management console, and API prediction service.(18:51) Ran unpacked the virtual feature store and the CI/CD components of Wix's ML platform.(24:41) Ran expanded on the distinction between virtual and materialized feature stores.(27:01) Ran provided three key lessons for organizations looking to build an internal ML platform (as brought upon his 2020 talk discussing Wix's ML Platform).(31:43) Ran shared the essential attributes of exceptional data and ML engineering talent.(33:54) Ran shared the founding story of Qwak, which aims to build an end-to-end ML engineering platform to automate the MLOps processes.(37:07) Ran talked about his responsibilities as the VP of Engineering at Qwak.(38:45) Ran dissected the key capabilities that are baked into the Qwak platform - a Build System, a Serving layer, a Data Lake, a Feature Store, and Automations capabilities.(44:05) Ran explained the big engineering challenges for teams to build an in-house feature store and envisioned the future of the feature store ecosystem in the upcoming years.(47:45) Ran shared valuable hiring lessons to attract the right people who are excited about Qwak's mission.(50:22) Ran reflected on the challenges for Qwak to find the early design partners.(52:43) Ran described the state of the ML Engineering community in Israel.(54:53) Closing segment.Ran's Contact InfoLinkedInQwak's ResourcesWebsite | Twitter | LinkedInWhy QwakBlogMentioned ContentTalks"Overview of Wix's Machine Learning Platform" (2020)"Feature Stores - Unified Data Pipelines for ML" (2022)PeopleAndrew NgMatei ZahariaBarr MosesBook"Principles" (by Ray Dalio)About the show

Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.

Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.

Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

Subscribe by searching for Datacast wherever you get podcasts, or click one of the links below:

If you’re new, see the podcast homepage for the most recent episodes to listen to, or browse the full guest list.