The AI and ML Conversations with Iavor Botev

🎙️ In this episode of "AI and ML Conversations," I chat with Carmen Herrera, the Director of AI Engineering at Typeform, who shares an incredible journey from studying 300,000-year-old ocean data to leading AI engineering at a top SaaS company. 🚀 Carmen discusses her transition from a PhD in physical oceanography - where she used bubbles in Antarctic ice to model ancient climates - into the fast-...

🎙️ In this episode of "AI and ML Conversations," I chat with Xavier Gumara Rigol, the Head of Data at Manychat, who shares his wealth of experience transitioning from Business Intelligence to leading data functions in top tech companies like Oda and Adevinta. Xavier dives deep into the evolving relationship between data and product, explaining why data teams must move away from being "black box" s...

🎙️ In this episode of "AI and ML Conversations," I sit down with Pablo Fernandez , Head of Engineering for Pexels at Canva . Pablo brings a wealth of experience from his time at Google to co-founding multiple startups and leading engineering teams in the age of AI. We explore the shifting landscape of software engineering, specifically the rise of the "Product Engineer" and how LLMs are lowering t...

🎙️ In episode 5 of "AI and ML Conversations," I chat with Thomas Schmidt, an AI engineer at Metabase, who pivoted from agricultural science to data at Shopify and AI agent development. 🚀 Thomas shares his unique journey from a master's thesis on predicting farm animals health, to roles at an agritech startup, Shopify, and now building Metabase's AI analytics agent (Metabot).​ We dive into key top...

🎙️ In this episode of "AI and ML Conversations," I sit down with Yordan Madzhunkov, a multi-talented engineer with a fascinating background spanning physics, low-level programming, computer vision, and even politics. Yordan shares his unique journey from competing in math and physics olympiads to self-teaching programming in Pascal, eventually developing computer vision solutions for radiation mea...

In episode 3 of "AI and ML Conversations," I sit down with Diogo, a senior data scientist at Usercentrics and a PhD researcher in data science, to unpack pragmatic data science, marketing measurement, and using LLMs with strong privacy guardrails.​ Diogo traces his path from management and marketing into industry roles across Europe, balancing a remote career in Norway with research on measuring c...

🎙️ In episode 2 of "AI and ML Conversations," I sit down with Sebastián Poliak , an experienced machine learning engineer who's transitioned into an independent app developer. 🚀 Sebastián opens up about his path from applied research to building AI-powered mobile apps like Stridly and Babli ( https://publicspeakingcoach.app/ ) . With notable roles including Senior ML Engineer at Bloomreach and Ma...

In this conversation, Dimitar Nentchev shares his journey from aspiring professional soccer player to a successful career in data science and analytics. He discusses the challenges he faced during his transition, the importance of aligning data projects with business needs, and the impact of AI and LLMs on productivity. Dimitar emphasizes the value of iterative development and the necessity of qua...