Fireside Chats at KI labs; ep. 14
By: Wyatt Carr
Tags: Hiring, Data, Data Science, Startup, Diversity

From the underground parties outside Moscow to the world of data lakes and machine learning engines, take a few minutes to learn about our Data lead, Alex.

Where did things start for you?

“I grew up in a small town near Moscow. My mother was a teacher and my father a mechanical engineer. When they were growing up, it was very difficult to get advanced education in Russia so they started working very early.

Throughout my early education, I really enjoyed math and decided not to pursue anything else. I got my first computer which I used for writing my first electronic music piece (example). Aside from computers, I played in a small local rock band playing grunge and then moved to metal. They call it “DOOM-metal” so really heavy music. There are some great videos out there. I had a lot of hair. We recorded and did some shows but never got much attraction. I played the guitar and keyboard in the band. But then I turned to electronic music because you can compose everything yourself.

I had the best scores in the high school for the university exams allowing me to enter the nearest university. I took all math classes at my university in Russia, a branch of Moscow Industrial State University, the best one near my town. I started DJing at local parties or with friends, occasionally paying off police to leave us alone at abandoned warehouses outside of the town.

After 5 years of study, I obtained a ‘Specialist’ (Russian equivalent for Masters) degree in Applied Mathematics and decided to continue my research to get my PhD. Theoretically, you can finish in 3 years, but due to the organizational difficulties, it took me 5 years. I was one of 12 people in my university to start the PhD program and the only one to get my PhD. I often thought about dropping out. I worked as an IT Specialist to survive. It took a full year just to process the defense of my thesis. Looking back, I am very proud that I was able to bring it all up to the end.

Understandably, after a decade of school, I decided to take a break in research and started working for a telecommunication company as a software engineer. For the first few years, I did nothing related to mathematical topics, just developing, DevOps and analytics. Eventually, the company built a data department and made a competition to promote it. I got first place in the competition and was offered a prize. I declined the prize but instead asked to join the department.

Why did you decide to move to Munich?

The company in Russia had HQ in Amsterdam and I was able to visit for a couple of weeks. I was impressed by the European style of living; more relaxed, good work-life balance, and significantly better infrastructure. I decided to make a change, looking for jobs across Europe. I saw that the Netherlands had practically no snow during the winter, so I looked towards Germany. I had an interview in Berlin but really did not like the ex-Soviet buildings, dirty streets, and seemingly way-too-similar Moscow style. I saw a KI labs advertisement on LinkedIn and found an immediate fit.

The setup was very attractive, working closely with big organizations while working on a diverse pool of products.

After many great conversations with the leadership, I signed the offer, got the visa in a day’s time, and moved my family and life to Munich. We love the ecology, the infrastructure, nature, how people live with each other here — in Moscow, you can’t have your own house, you have to live in a 30-storey building.

Have your expectations been met here?

To be honest, I am quite happy with how things turned out. I joined as a data scientist, but we realized that the need was larger in the data engineering area. I switched a bit closer to the engineering side and enjoyed learning new frameworks, soon challenging myself with a leadership role. It’s not an easy job, but it’s fun. It’s the nature of my job to be interrupted — and I rarely get more than an hour of concentration at a time. The ideal would be 70–30: tech-management. At the moment it’s vice-versa. This is why we’re looking for another Data Lead. In the future, we’re looking to have a very close collaboration between the data science and engineering side but inevitably will have some sort of separation.

A fraction of new companies survive; Does KI labs have a future?

I think we all believe in our potential. Our setup is working well, outperforming large consultancy firms with their continuous overpromising and underdelivering. We have done a good job at accomplishing what we set out to do and continue to bring in good results. We are taking it one day at a time.

Why would an experienced data engineer want to work here?

We work on interesting products in many different areas: automotive, logistics, transportation, retail, etc.

There is a lot of freedom in terms of choosing technical tools, communication to the leadership team and talking openly about projects with like-minded, smart people.

Also, opportunities for personal growth. We are not a product company where guys are working on the same tools for many years. Here, you can learn something new almost every day.

The international community is also a big part of what I like here. Few examples; people bring in food from their countries and I also learned a lot about Ramadan last month.

What’s the next big thing with data?

Companies will become more and more efficient, finding a way to use their own data to improve their services. In order to do it, the world needs more efficient, simple and robust tools in the area of data modeling and processing. And this is the most interesting challenge, in particular for our team — bringing our data solution to production quickly and efficiently.