Tools for Deploying Data Models into Production

Today's guest is mighty Erik Bernhardsson — creator of Spotify's music recommender, prolific open-source developer, world-leading technical blogger, and now model-deployment-tool entrepreneur via Modal Labs.

Erik:
• Is the Founder and CEO of Modal Labs, a startup building innovative tools and infrastructure for data teams.
• Previously was CTO of the real estate startup Better, where he grew the engineering team from the size of 1 — himself — to 300 people.
• Was also previously an Engineering Manager at Spotify, where he created their now-ubiquitous music-recommendation algorithm.
• Is a prolific open-sourcer, having created the popular Luigi and Annoy libraries, among several others.
• Is an industry-leading blogger with posts that frequently feature on the front page of Hacker News.

Today’s episode gets deep into the weeds at points, so it will be particularly appealing to practicing data scientists, ML engineers, and the like, but much of the fascinating, wide-ranging conversation in this episode will appeal to any curious listener.

In this episode, Erik details:
• How the Spotify music recommender he built works so well at scale.
•The litany of new data science and engineering tools he’s excited about and thinks you should be excited about too.
•What open-source library he would develop next.
•Why he founded his Modal and how their tools empower data teams.
• Having interviewed more than 2000 candidates for engineering roles, his top tips both for succeeding as an interviewer and as an interviewee.

The SuperDataScience show's available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

MLOps: Machine Learning

Analogous to the role DevOps plays for software development, MLOps enables efficient ML training and deployment. MLOps expert Mikiko Bazeley is our guide!

Mikiko:
• Is a Senior Software Engineer responsible for MLOps at Intuit Mailchimp.
• Previously held technical roles at a range of Bay Area startups, with responsibilities including software engineering, MLOps, data engineering, data science, and data analytics.
• Is a prominent content creator on MLOps – across live workshops, her YouTube channel, her personal blog, and the NVIDIA blog.

Today’s episode will appeal primarily to hands-on practitioners such as data scientists and software engineers.

In this episode, Mikiko details:
• What MLOps is.
• Why MLOps is critical for the efficiency of any data science team.
• The three most important MLOps tools.
• The four myths holding people back from MLOps expertise.
• The six most essential MLOps skills for data scientists.
• Her productivity tricks for balancing software engineering, content creation, and her athletic pursuits.

The SuperDataScience show's available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

High-Impact Data Science Made Easy

Today, the wise Noah Gift weighs pros and cons of data science learning options (university degrees vs online certifications; full-time vs on-the-job) as well as how MLOps can quickly make you exponentially more impactful.

Noah has worked in countless technical leadership roles. He held the roles at companies ranging from tech start-ups he founded to prominent institutions like ABC, Caltech, and AT&T. Today, Noah’s founder of a consultancy called Pragmatic AI Labs — and he devises and teaches data science curricula at several of the most prestigious American universities, including Duke, Northwestern, and Berkeley. He has written eight books, including the bestselling Python for DevOps and the forthcoming Practical MLOps.

On top of all that incredible background, Noah has rich, well-formed life philosophies, which we dig into into detail. I learned a ton from him during this episode, and have been thinking about concepts we discussed time and again since filming. I highly recommend checking the episode out!

You can listen or watch here.