I'm a self-taught machine learning geek who's turned a fascination with computer science into a pretty cool career.
My story kicked off with Andrew Ng's course, which got me hooked on machine learning.
Sure, I didn't know what a derivative was at first, and math and I weren't exactly best friends, but I dove headfirst into the challenge anyway.
Without a traditional background, I knew I needed to prove myself.
So, I decided to jump into the competitive world of Kaggle.
It was tough, but I loved every minute of it.
I ended up winning a few competitions, becoming a Kaggle Competitions Grandmaster, and even made it to the 12th spot in the global rankings out of over 180,000 data scientists.
This success opened up some amazing opportunities.
I landed the role of Lead Data Scientist at Upwork Inc., where I got to develop a pretty neat reranking system that improved how we qualified freelancers on the platform.
As a freelancer myself, I've worked on some exciting projects, like creating machine learning models for startups and Fortune 500 companies.
One of my favorites was developing an artwork pricing model for an art analysis startup.
But it's not all about work for me. I love sharing what I've learned with others.
I've been a content advisor at UC Berkeley's Data-X, authored a popular book called "Manual Prático de Data Science," and even created an online course where I taught more than 900 students how to build machine learning pipelines with Python.
On my YouTube channel I've been sharing free lessons on data science and machine learning in Portuguese, and we've built a community of over 23,000 subscribers.
This blog is my latest project in this educational journey.
I believe my unconventional learning journey has its perks. It's made me more open-minded and willing to experiment, always on the lookout for what works best in practice.
This approach has served me well so far and I'm excited to see where it'll take me next.
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Kaggle Competitions Grandmaster with multiple 1st place finishes in global Kaggle competitions, and top global rank at 12th of 50,000+.
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Lead Data Scientist at Upwork Inc between 2018 and 2019. Worked on machine learning ranking models to match 8 million freelancers to jobs posted by 2.5 million companies every day on the platform.
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Content advisor to Applied Data Science with Venture Applications: Data-X (INDENG 135/235) at UC Berkeley.
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Freelancing through platforms and referrals since 2014.
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Have a Youtube channel (Brazilian Portuguese) with over 20,000 subscribers and 50,000+ hours watched.
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Author of "Manual Prático de Data Science" (Brazilian Portuguese) available at Amazon.
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Completed 127 1-on-1 mentoring sessions at Codementor, receiving 105 5-star reviews from learners.