About

Jian Yang Lum is an experienced ML Engineer with a passion for social impact. With over 6 years of relevant experience, he has built multiple end-to-end Machine Learning projects that have had a strong impact on product revenue. He has worked on a variety of projects, including user clustering using deep-learning embeddings, email CTR prediction using gradient boosting, NLP techniques for merchant detection, and likelihood-of-approval prediction. Jian is experienced in working with different parts of the data ecosystem to deliver ML solutions with a strong product impact. He has worked with PMs to define targets and key business objectives, data analysts to cut/slide data, data engineers to help scale up self-prototyped ETL pipelines, backend engineers to put ML models and pipelines into production, and frontend engineers to track data flow of ML models. Currently, Jian is working as a Software Engineer (Machine Learning) at Pinterest, where he is building neural network models for Ads Targeting. Previously, he worked at NerdWallet as a Data Scientist (Machine Learning), where he led several key projects, including feature-engineering, training, and online deployment of a new Likelihood of Approval user-facing feature using Random Forests. This feature led to a 20% increase in user conversions. He also led the offline deployment of an NLP project: merchant-name standardization project using conditional random fields, which led to a standardized-merchant accuracy rate of 85%. Jian has a Master of Science (M.S.) in Statistics and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in International Relations from Stanford University. He is skilled in a variety of technologies, including ML, Software Engineer, Data Scientist, NLP, Research Scientist, ETL, Neural Networks, and Frontend and Backend development. Jian is a team player who is passionate about leveraging his skills to create a positive social impact.