The Tech Trek

Meet: Xin Heng is currently the VP/Head of Data at Punchh. Before joining Punchh, he was the Head of Data Science at StubHub and a Data Science Manager at Uber. He has his Ph.D. in Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering from Caltech.

What you’ll learn:

Machine Learning Software Development - the differences between building ML software for B2B and B2C companies

The Value of AI - predictivity vs interpretability

Building an AI team - from the right leader and to core team members

If you would like to connect with Xin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/xin-heng-8781302/

Meet:  Arkadiy is Head of Application & Infrastructure Security at Chime. He is passionate about all forms of digital harm reduction, ranging from technical, to policy & legal, to security management & leadership.

What you’ll learn:

Establishing a security champion and culture

Developers make for great security engineers

Learning lessons from launching his own product

If you would like to reach out to Arkadiy about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via Twitter:

Meet:  Rick Medina is a security practitioner, OSINT junkie, button pusher, and checkbox un-checker

What you’ll learn:

Dealing with Covid’s impact on security within the retail space

Security becoming more agile

If you would like to get in touch with Rick regarding anything discussed on this episode, please connect via:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardomedinajr/

Meet: Kyle is a CISO and VP, Security, Privacy, and Compliance. He has 18 years of establishing, growing, and leading Security and Software Engineering Teams that built security in consumer, enterprise, and SaaS software products.

What you’ll learn:

Bootstrapping a security program

Security policy as code

Starting point to move to shift security left

If you have any questions for Kyle, please feel free to reach out to him via LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylerandolph/

Meet:  Ken is the data engineering manager at Alto Pharmacy - which offers free, same-day medication delivery to customers.   Alto's data engineering team supports the entire business with a large focus on improving the logistical efficiency of the organization.

Ken's career has focused on data engineering in which he has held a variety of roles in management,  data engineering, and data architecture roles, and worked as both an employee and consultant.   Ken feels that data engineering is a specialization of software engineering - and benefits from many of the same process innovations - around testing, agile, DevOps, and dataops methodologies.

What you’ll learn:

What does a modern data warehousing solution look like

Data engineering shift from GUI tools to software engineering

Data engineering viewed as specialized software engineering

If you would like to get in touch with Ken regarding anything discussed on this episode, please connect via:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenfar/

Meet: Prior to LeafLink, Nikhil led the data science function for Gartner’s Marketing practice, gaining deep expertise in building scaled data products for large consumer brands. He has extensive experience in generating insights from e-commerce, search and transactional data leveraging experimentation, machine learning, and implementing business intelligence solutions. Nikhil has also held positions managing data science teams at and consulting F500 clients on marketing and advertising. Currently, Nikhil is responsible for continuing to evolve the data platform that powers the LeafLink marketplace.

What you’ll learn:

Adjusting to a less regulated industry

Building out the data infrastructure

Technology choices and tradeoffs

Meet: Nachi is a Director of Engineering at Electric.AI. Having started his career building software at a large investment bank, he has since transitioned into working for startups based out of NYC. He enjoys the role of being an early technology hire and is passionate about building inclusive & diverse engineering cultures, strong agile practices, and delighting customers.

Topic: Empowering engineers to understand the why behind what they are working on

To connect with Nachi:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/n4ch1k3t/

Meet: Kunal Bhattacharya is a Security Leader, Organization builder, and mentor who helps organizations build robust Cyberdefense and detection capabilities. He does this by building Secure SDL processes and machination encapsulating Shift left strategy, SecDevOps, Cloud, and Penetration testing. Kunal's prior experience in all phases of application development, System and database administration, and Quality engineering have helped him in building lasting relationships with peers in engineering and product organizations and working towards shared security goals. Kunal has worked with Tech Titans like PayPal, Credit Karma, Symantec, etc in the Silicon Valley and has been instrumental in building multiple high-performing organizations in his career.

What you’ll learn:

Moving security from a black box view

Thinking about security earlier in the design and development phase

Mental health aspects for security professionals

If you have any questions for Kunal, please feel free to reach out to him via LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunal-bhattacharya/

Meet: Chris Millikin is the Head of Infrastructure and Security at Nuna.

Prior to Nuna, Chris spent over a decade building security engineering teams focused on detection, response, and security by design at Google as well as Alphabet’s Security “bet”, Chronicle Security.  Chris is passionate about building strong teams and developing them to their full potential and is currently hiring passionate problem solvers.

What you’ll learn:

How a security breach can shape your future views

Applying an innovative mindset to healthcare

Striving for balance in security

If you would like to reach out to Chris about anything discussed on the podcast, please reach out to via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%97%85-chris-millikin-80b2951/

https://www.twitter.com/chrismillikin

Meet: Ben is a Senior Director of Software Engineering at Flatiron Health, where he leads the Machine Learning Team. Prior to Flatiron, he worked at Google on NLP applications for Google Search. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

What you’ll learn:

The impact of machine learning in healthcare data

Solving text classification problems

Can machine learning be overused

If you would like to reach out to Ben about anything discussed on the podcast, please reach out via:

https://twitter.com/benbirnbaum