
Stefan Decker
Verified Expert in Engineering
Data Scientist Developer
Berlin, Germany
Toptal member since February 22, 2021
Stefan is a senior data scientist and AI engineer specializing in NLP and LLMs. He builds production ML systems in healthcare AI, including transformer models that automate medical coding for millions of radiology reports and LLM-powered labeling pipelines that replaced manual expert annotation. Stefan has 10 years of experience across data science, startup founding, and enterprise consulting. He also builds AI-powered products independently, from B2B order automation to AI workout generation.
Portfolio
Experience
- Python - 8 years
- Machine Learning - 6 years
- Transformers - 5 years
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) - 4 years
- API Integration - 4 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 3 years
- Large Language Models (LLMs) - 2 years
- Prompt Engineering - 2 years
Preferred Environment
PyCharm, MacOS, Slack
The most amazing...
...thing I built is an extractive QA system for medical coding that became a top-requested product feature, from concept to production with LLM-based labeling.
Work Experience
Senior Data Scientist
Maverick
- Led the data science workstream for a major client onboarding, coordinating cross-functional teams (product, engineering, key accounts) to deliver on time, with model performance exceeding expectations.
- Built a custom multi-input BERT classifier for automated medical coding (CPT/ICD) on radiology reports, combining clinical text with patient metadata to automate 85% of coding decisions in production.
- Designed and shipped a novel extractive QA system that highlights evidence text for thousands of ICD codes across millions of radiology reports, a previously unsolved capability and one of the most requested product features.
- Pioneered a large language model (LLM)-based data labeling pipeline that replaced manual annotation by domain experts, enabling rapid model development with only spot-check validation, cutting labeling time and cost by an order of magnitude.
Data Scientist
Mathemathicai
- Conceptualized and trained a model for the IoT classification task (predictive maintenance) based on power consumption.
- Created a BERT model for the sentiment classification of English text.
- Supported with iterative model improvements by creating custom evaluation pipelines.
Data Scientist
Zeitgold
- Conceptualized, trained, and implemented deep learning and other machine learning models for document classification to significantly reduce the need for manual labor.
- Provided analysis and took part in discussions with top-level executives about the machine learning strategy of the company.
- Improved and maintained existing models and integrated retraining functionality in the core back end.
Data Scientist
I2x
- Built production-ready NLP features (Python, C++) that are now an integral part of the product.
- Trained custom word vector models on movie subtitles to improve the handling of swear words.
- Led a team of two machine learning engineers through the development of critical NLP components.
- Acted as technical project lead for a machine learning project with the largest customer.
- Conceptualized the data labeling process and built classifiers to improve labeling efficiency by using active learning.
Co-founder and Managing Director
Invincible Brands
- Bootstrapped brand with no external funding to €20,000 monthly revenue in less than 12 months.
- Built an Instagram scraping and analytics tool using Excel (XML Import) that enabled rapid scaling of marketing activities.
- Initiated and facilitated the acquisition by Invincible Brands.
- Set up a process to outsource almost all operational work.
- Hired and managed a team of four fulfillment and customer support employees.
Growth & Analytics Specialist
SwitchUp
- Set up a complex rule-based Excel tool to manage the send-out of reminder emails for customers. This made the development of a Ruby application unnecessary for the time being.
- Developed an Excel BI tool using system and Mixpanel data to monitor company-wide KPIs and support strategic decisions.
- Set up and managed A/B testing campaigns to help the company find product-market fit.
Co-founder | CMO
JUNIQE.com
- Raised €450,000 from institutional investors. Co-created the pitch deck and financial model and took part in the negotiations.
- Led a cross-functional team of seven, including designers, back- and front-end developers, to accomplish a product pivot.
- Set up the web and mobile BI system using Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Adjust.io.
Consultant
EY
- Supported several M&A deals including the biggest real estate deal in Germany since 2008.
- Calculated ß factors with regression by using historical stock prices for all internal customers of Ernst & Young Germany.
- Managed the outsourcing of data retrieval tasks in an M&A project to meet critical deadlines.
Experience
Order Robot | AI-powered B2B Order Automation for Shopify
THE PROBLEM
D2C brands receiving wholesale orders via PDF or email manually re-enter them into Shopify, a tedious and error-prone process. Order Robot eliminates this by using a large language model (LLM)-based document parsing to extract line items, quantities, pricing, and customer data from unstructured order documents, then automatically creates Draft Orders via the Shopify GraphQL API.
TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS
LLM-powered document parsing with structured output extraction, Shopify GraphQL API integration (Draft Orders, B2B pricing with Company/Location/Catalog/Price List hierarchy), email-based order intake, and a web-based interface for order review and confirmation.
This project demonstrates end-to-end AI product development: identifying a real business pain point, designing the solution architecture, building the full stack, and deploying to production all as a single developer.
SpinForge | AI Workout Generator for Zwift
https://spinforge-restless-water-7912.fly.dev/Users specify their training preferences (duration, focus area, intensity) and receive a structured workout tailored to their goals. The key differentiator: workouts can be refined through natural language conversation. Users describe changes in plain English (e.g., 'make the intervals shorter but more intense' or 'add a longer warm-up'), and the LLM modifies the workout accordingly while ensuring it still meets the original constraints.
TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION
Large language model (LLM)-powered workout generation with constraint validation (ensuring duration, intensity zones, and training focus remain consistent), conversational refinement interface for iterative workout editing, structured output generation in Zwift-compatible workout format, and deployment on Fly.io.
This project showcases practical LLM application design: not just generating content, but maintaining structured constraints while allowing flexible natural language interaction, a pattern applicable to any domain where users need AI-assisted creation within defined parameters.
Neural Search QA System for German Politicians
• Created custom training and evaluation datasets by hand-labeling 144 questions across 525 political tweets.
• Fine-tuned both retriever and ranker on this domain-specific data, significantly boosting recall and F1 scores.
• Deployed as a Flask web app on Google Cloud Run with a PostgreSQL-backed FAISS document store.
• Built the full pipeline solo: data collection via the Twitter API, text normalization, model training, evaluation, and cloud deployment.
Deep House Spy
https://github.com/sbadecker/deep_house_spyThe idea for the project came to me while listening to a deep house DJ set on SoundCloud. I really liked the song that I was listening to, but Shazam just wouldn't recognize it. This happens very often, and the reason is (most of the time) that Shazam doesn't have the song in its database because it hasn't been released yet.
My approach to solving this problem was to learn the styles of artists by using already released songs and then identifying the respective artists of unreleased songs.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration
Georg-August-Universität - Göttingen, Germany
Certifications
Deep Learning Specialization
Coursera
Data Science
Galvanize
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Shopify API
Tools
PyCharm, Google Sheets, ChatGPT, Google Analytics, Git, Haystack
Languages
Python, SQL
Paradigms
Automation
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Mixpanel, Google Ads, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
PostgreSQL, Google Cloud, MongoDB
Frameworks
Django
Other
Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Analytics, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Hugging Face, Transformers, Large Language Models (LLMs), Prompt Engineering, API Integration, Data Visualization, Facebook Ads, Web Scraping, Capital Markets, Leadership, Consulting, OpenAI GPT-4 API, eCommerce, Amazon Bedrock, BERT, Medical Coding, Data Labeling, Document Processing
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