Federico Castanedo, Developer in Madrid, Spain
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Federico Castanedo

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Developer

Madrid, Spain

Toptal member since December 15, 2022

Bio

Federico is a data science leader with a PhD in AI and a visiting researcher at Stanford, cited over 1,200 times. He worked for early and late-stage startups such as Wise Athena and DataRobot and large corporations such as Vodafone, specializing in leading and building data science teams. Federico is also an excellent individual contributor to complex and strategic projects and communicates complex topics and business values in simple terms.

Portfolio

IE University
Stream Processing, Spark Streaming, Communication, Language Models...
DataRobot
Data Science, Machine Learning, AutoML, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps)...
Vodafone Group
Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Spark, Big Data...

Experience

  • Data Science - 20 years
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 16 years
  • Machine Learning - 16 years
  • Big Data - 15 years
  • R - 10 years
  • Scikit-learn - 10 years
  • Data Science Product Manager - 9 years
  • Python - 6 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Big Data, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, Data Science Product Manager

The most amazing...

...thing I've done is co-founding a company from scratch as a chief data scientist. Today, the company has over 50 employees.

Work Experience

Adjunct Professor

2018 - PRESENT
IE University
  • Taught real-time analytics and stream processing at the university.
  • Prepared technical content and exercises for students.
  • Delivered an excellent teaching experience and motivated students.
Technologies: Stream Processing, Spark Streaming, Communication, Language Models, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT)

Director of Data Science Practice

2019 - 2022
DataRobot
  • Hired, led, and coached a highly skilled and talented team of data scientists and MLOps experts.
  • Covered the data science practice for customers across Southern Europe— France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy—and emerging markets—Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe.
  • Supported customers and prospects in the implementation and execution of their machine learning initiatives across a wide range of industries with a focus on banking and financial service, insurance, energy, and telecommunications.
  • Acted as a trusted advisor and provided guidance and strategic discussions on implementing and deploying machine learning to executive stakeholders to obtain business results.
  • Interacted and provided feedback to the product and R&D teams regarding new features and strategic roadmap decisions.
Technologies: Data Science, Machine Learning, AutoML, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Scikit-learn, Python, Communication, Modeling, Models, Version Control Systems, Classification, Text Classification

Head of Data Science

2016 - 2019
Vodafone Group
  • Led the development of data science products aligned with the business objectives across different departments, including consumer, enterprise, operations, marketing, network, and finance.
  • Managed and coached a data science team providing technical and scientific directions to develop cutting-edge data products.
  • Supported company-wise AI data strategy and architecture, including tech stack, architecture, data extraction and ingestion, advanced analytics and machine learning, data visualization, and internal and external monetization of data and insights.
  • Presented insights obtained to relevant stakeholders, directors, and executive committee.
  • Recognized as a top performer and top talent from all Vodafone Group and received the Vodafone Star Award.
Technologies: Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Spark, Big Data, Classification, Data Pipelines

Author and Technical Consultant

2014 - 2018
O’Reilly Media
  • Acted as a technical author for strategic O'Reilly partners, such as Teradata, VoltDB, Tamr, MarkLogic, and Zoomdata, in the area of big data and data science.
  • Created high-quality product marketing content in the data science and big data space.
  • Worked actively on many projects, some of which can be seen at www.oreilly.com/people/federico-castanedo/.
Technologies: Data Science

Academic Director, Executive Program on Data Science

2014 - 2016
U-tad
  • Built an academic program of the first data science executive program in Spain.
  • Hired and coached the professors who held the classes.
  • Taught machine learning and artificial intelligence classes.
Technologies: Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Chief Data Scientist and Co-founder

2013 - 2016
Wise Athena
  • Started a data science team from scratch, which involved hiring and coaching. Started with two co-founders and built to today's 40+ people.
  • Managed a team of data scientists working on projects such as customer analytics, fraud detection, pricing, and demand forecasting for telecommunications and FMCG companies.
  • Applied deep learning to various business problems.
Technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, Machine Learning, Data Science Product Manager, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

2011 - 2013
University of Deusto
  • Co-advised and supervised the research team and PhD students.
  • Led research in ambient intelligence, large-scale machine learning, and user modeling.
  • Managed research proposals with a balanced consortium of academic and industrial partners.
Technologies: Research, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning

Teaching Assistant and PhD Researcher

2006 - 2011
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • Researched the application of data fusion algorithms and machine learning to visual sensor networks. Developed prototypes of visual sensor networks in real indoor scenarios.
  • Acted as a teaching assistant in data analysis, reasoning under uncertainty, and computing theory.
  • Published numerous articles and papers and was cited over 1,200 times for research work.
Technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer Vision, Big Data, Machine Learning, Research

Software Engineer

2004 - 2006
Tecsidel
  • Designed and implemented proprietary security software modules for Panda Security.
  • Contributed to the VPNSecure and DesktopSecure projects for Linux.
  • Used many technologies in the projects, including GNOME, low-level Linux programming, kernel, and C.
Technologies: C, Linux

Software Engineer

2002 - 2003
Meteologica
  • Developed an application to predict water contribution, enabling more efficient water management for Spanish reservoirs based on the Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF).
  • Applied genetic algorithms and Monte Carlo simulations to optimize the set of parameters for each specific location.
  • Enabled the application to over 50 water reservoirs, and it is still in production.
Technologies: C, Optimization, Genetic Algorithms, Data Science

Experience

Data Science Content

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/applying-deep-learning/9781492039211/
As a technical author for strategic O'Reilly partners such as Teradata, VoltDB, Tamr, MarkLogic, Zoomdata, and IBM in the big data and data science field, I engaged with the technical teams to produce high-quality technical content aligned with their products. Some of the examples can be found at learning.oreilly.com/beta-search/?q=author%3A%22Federico%20Castanedo%22&type=*&order_by=relevance.

Education

2005 - 2010

PhD in Artificial Intelligence

Universidad Carlos III of Madrid - Madrid, Spain

2002 - 2005

Master's Degree in Computer Science

Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca - Madrid, Spain

1998 - 2002

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca - Madrid, Spain

Skills

Libraries/APIs

Scikit-learn, Spark Streaming

Tools

AutoML

Languages

R, Python, C

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux

Frameworks

Spark

Storage

Data Pipelines

Other

Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, Data Science Product Manager, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Communication, Modeling, Models, Version Control Systems, Classification, Big Data, Stream Processing, Text Classification, Language Models, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Optimization, Genetic Algorithms, Computer Vision, Research

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