About

I believe I have the ideal mix of skills when it comes to the applied and practical sides of data science. With over 15 years of professional experience I have been a part of many successful data initiatives (and projects), but more importantly I have also had my fair share of failures. Those failures have helped me greatly in becoming a strategic thinker. I attribute the success of my career to the following two aspects:

  1. Consciously striving to surround myself with people who are smarter than me
  2. Getting things done despite the most unfavorable circumstances
I am currently building models for TMNL...to catch the bad guys ;)

Work Experience

  • Principal Data Scientist, Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL)

    May 2021 - Present

    TMNL is a joint initiative of five Dutch banks: ABN AMRO, ING, Rabobank, Triodos Bank and de Volksbank. With TMNL, these banks collectively monitor their payment transactions to look for signals that could indicate money laundering or the financing of terrorism. Some of my major responsibilities and projects include:

    • Network/graph models: Community detection-based anomaly detection; targeted network search; (temporal) follow the money models
    • Led the research efforts at TMNL; published a paper at PKDD 2023 (currently finalizing the 2nd paper); supervised Master's students; presented talks at DSFC
    • HR responsibilities: Created the technical challenge for data science recruitment; hired, mentored, and guided the fellow data scientists in finalizing their growth plans
    • Founded and led the BOTs (or Bureau of Technology Standards) to help TMNL achieve the highest technology standards by using automation; and by keeping things simple
    • Designed the ontology/vision for analytics product development across TMNL
    • Standardisation: Graph representation; feature generation; product/model development
    • Architected the system for constructing a community around a party of interest in real-time
    • Built and led the development of several Python libraries which are used across several teams and models
  • Lead Data Scientist, BrandLoyalty

    Feb 2019 - April 2021 2 years 3 months

    BrandLoyalty designs, develops and implements loyalty solutions that help the world's most successful retailers to change consumers' behaviour. Some of my major responsibilities and projects included:

    • Exploring and prioritizing use cases
    • Leading the data science adoption efforts and setting the strategic vision
    • Hiring, training, and mentoring team members
    • Program impact analysis using timeseries modeling
    • RAVEN [Ratios and Volume Excellence]: A unique (demand forecasting) model implementation, combining the concepts of (both) Boosting and Bagging
    • [Early phase] A predictive model for pre-empting redemptions
  • Senior Data Scientist, Coolblue

    Feb 2016 - Feb 2019 3 years

    Coolblue is one of the largest online shops in the Benelux region. Some of my major responsibilities and projects included:

    • GFM [Generalised Forecasting Machine]: A fully automated timeseries modeling engine for operational forecasting
    • A recommender system that predicts the ideal sequence of pages, given the most recent (page) clicks of a user
    • Google Adwords bidding schedule optimiser
    • Early phase models: Pricing optimisation, email pressure, and fraud detection
    • Training and mentoring the junior team members
    • Assisting the hiring manager in the recruitment process
  • Data Scientist, Convo

    Jun 2014 – Nov 2015 1 year 6 months

    Convo is a work collaboration platform that goes beyond chat/messenger solutions. My major responsibilities and projects included:

    • Utilizing data science to improve the overall user retention rate
    • Exploratory analyses for understanding user behaviour and trends
    • Implemented a customer churn model for improving the user onboarding wizard
  • Data Analyst / BI Engineer, Pring

    Dec 2008 – May 2014 5 years 6 months

    Pring was one of the biggest micro-blogging services from Pakistan. Some of my major responsibilities and projects included:

    • Developed an NLP model for extracting and matching (pre-selected) topics
    • Extensively developed monitoring and reporting tools for Pring
    • Lead and managed the side-projects for company’s internship program
    • During the earlier period of Pring, I also gained extensive experience in software/data engineering
      • … [omitting those projects because of irrelevancy]

Skills

  • Programming: Python R Tensorflow R Shiny Django Flask JavaScript D3.js OOP RESTful API Design
  • Databases: MySQL MSSQL PostgreSQL Oracle MongoDB Cassandra Redis
  • Cloud / Distributed Computing: AWS GCP Azure Spark Hadoop
  • MLOps: Unix-like operating systems Docker TeamCity Apache Airflow

Education

  • PhD (Mathematics and Computer Science),  Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

    2022 - Ongoing

  • MSc in Advanced Computer Science (Data Science),  University of Manchester, United Kingdom

    2013 - 2014

  • BSc (Hons) in Computer Science,  NCBA&E Lahore, Pakistan

    2004 - 2008

Interests

  • Sports

    Squash Cricket
  • Cooking

Languages

English Urdu Punjabi Dutch (A2 Level)