Hadi Valipour

Highly adaptable data scientist, software engineer, team leader, and passionate about learning and teaching.
Analytically minded and self-motivated with a decade of experience collaborating with cross-functional teams in agile environments.
Excelled in business problem modeling, machine learning, statistical analysis, and data-driven decision-making.
Proficient in statistical methods like regression models, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and dimensionality reduction.
Experienced in deep learning, autoencoders, recurrent and convolutional neural networks, and graph neural networks.
Experienced in developing and delivering data projects in predictive models, pricing, and recommendation systems.
Experienced in directing and delivering data projects in customer retention increment and order fulfillment process optimization.
Experienced in domain knowledge in various industries like e-commerce, two-sided marketplaces, retail, and media.
Excelled in system-level architectural design, Program-specific implementation, and complete software development life-cycle.
Educated in Computer Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning at the graduate level with a good publications record.

Work Experiences

Data Science Manager at Mable, Melbourne, Australia

May 2022 – Now

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Led and mentored a team of up to seven Data Scientists, Senior Data Scientists, and Analysts.
Developed and delivered data science and analytics solutions to critical business challenges.
Owned and been accountable for a portfolio of ongoing and project-based work.
Developed and built partnerships with stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Design, and other business functions.
Identified highest-value opportunities and developed structured approaches to understand and solve them with data and analysis.
Led exploratory analysis to identify trends and insights and verify hypotheses.
Communicated the analysis, data science concepts and outcomes, insights, and recommendations to non-technical audiences.
Led the development and testing of rapid prototypes for data science services.
Collaborated with Data Engineers to develop a final product from the data team’s prototypes and proof of concepts.
Fostered an innovative and collaborative culture within my team and the broader company.

Head of Data Science at Ostadkar, Tehran, Iran

Jul 2019 – March 2022 (2 yrs 9 mos)

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Established a data team for the company consisting of five data scientists and engineers.
Developed and led data projects in pricing, retention, recommendation, funnel optimization, churn modeling, sales and revenue forecasting, dispatching, sentiment analysis, customer lifetime value, and fraud detection.
Designed an architecture for the Data pipeline and Machine Learning pipeline.
Supervised system infrastructure to ensure functionality and efficiency.
Communicated the data strategy to the company partners and investors.
Contributed to the company and team’s OKR declaration and initiatives.
Briefed executives on data risks and suggested ways to alleviate concerns.

Achievements:

Successful Product Rewrite with a newly established team and migrated all processes and data to the new Ostadkar product.
Increased Product Reliability by establishing an SRE team and redesigning the broken points (bottlenecks, race conditions, etc.).
Increased company Revenue Share (take-rate) from 3% to 10% using an adaptive pricing and revenue model selection.
Increased Fulfillment Rate by 20% by developing a ticketing system with an intelligent automatic ticket generation process.
Decreased marketing costs using a Markov model for high-value service selection for promotion.
Decreased the providers’ (suppliers) churn rate by ~30% using a simple regression model and an automatic re-touch process.
Increased the number of full-time providers (with the least income per week) by 300% using a probabilistic dispatching model.

Technical Lead and Head of Data Science at SIB Team, Tehran, Iran

Dec 2013 – Jul 2019 (5 yrs 8 mos)

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Led engineering and data teams.
Established an Agile culture using Scrum by supporting and educating the team.
Designed and developed a recommender system using unsupervised methods for the service suggestion process.
Developed and led data projects in retention, recommendation, revenue forecasting, fraud detection, and sentiment analysis.
Analyzed systems for software products developed in the company.
Designed a microservice architecture for the SIB service delivery platform (~1M daily transactions).
Designed an architecture for data management in a high amount of service transactions.
Designed a multitier enterprise architecture for the SIB sale system in Goldiran company (a nationwide project).

Achievements:

Decreased the development to deployment time by 50% using continuous tests, feature flags, and gradual rollout.
Increased service purchase retention (one-year period) from 15% to 35% using a service suggestion model.
Created an average of ~150 million Rials GSV daily by increasing the retention rate.

Senior Software Engineer / Data Scientist at Parslib, Tehran, Iran

Feb 2012 – Dec 2013 (1 yr 11 mos)

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Led development and infrastructure teams in Service Delivery and Content Pool platforms.
Developed models in production for sentiment analysis of book reviews, automatic book classification by content, book recommendation, and automatic image labeling for search.
Designed an architecture for a Content Pool system maintaining ~100K content items.
Developed Content Pool system with all side systems integration (accounting, billing, CRM, etc.).

Software Engineer at Parslib, Tehran, Iran

Jan 2010 – Feb 2012 (2 yrs 1 mo)

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Analyzed systems and requirements in the Parslib Service Delivery platform.
Developed core modules for the Parslib Service Delivery platform (transaction handling and service life cycle).
Developed main interfaces for the Parslib Service Delivery platform.

Research Assistant at LIMP Laboratory, Tehran, Iran

Oct 2009 – Feb 2012 (2 yrs 4 mos)

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Researched applications of machine learning methods in communications and digital signal processing.
Developed a complete Software-Defined Radio focused on robust digital modulation recognition (C++, Matlab, Python).
Researched Emotional Learning control approaches for non-linear problems.

Achievements:

Best Paper and Outstanding Paper Awards in CSI and SNDP conferences.

Software Development Intern at IranAir, Tehran, Iran

Jun 2008 – Feb 2009 (8 mos)

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Developed modules for an online flight reservation system with Mono and GTK#.

Research Assistant at Robotics and AI Lab, Tehran, Iran

Jun 2008 – Feb 2009 (8 mos)

Key Activities and Responsibilities:

Developed modules for an online flight reservation system with Mono and GTK#.

Technical Skills

Programming and Query: Python, C++, SQL, R(limited), Java (limited), C# (limited), Rust (limited)

Libraries/Frameworks: TensorFlow, Keras, Scikit-learn, NumPy, Pandas, PySpark, PyTorch, AWS SageMaker, NLTK, OpenCV, Databricks

Database/Warehouse/Stream: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, RabitMQ, Elasticsearch, Redshift

Machine Learning: Regression, Clustering, Neural Networks, Deep Learning, SVM, Decision Trees, Classification, Recommendation Systems, Association Rules, Bayesian Models, Dimensionality Reduction, Boosting and Ensemble Methods

Software Architectures/Models: SOA, EDA, DDD, Microservices, Multitier, OOP

Software Engineering Methodologies: Agile, Scrum, Kanban

Development and Documentation Tools: Git, Jira, Confluence, Gitlab CI/CD

Education

Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Masters Degree in Computer Engineering - Artificial Intelligence
2009 - 2012

Shahid Rajaee University, Tehran, Iran
Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology
2004 - 2008

Allame Helli Pre-College School (Affiliated with NODET), Tehran, Iran
Pre-College Degree in Mathematics and Physics
2003 - 2004

Allame Helli High School (Affiliated with NODET), Tehran, Iran
Diploma in Mathematics and Physics
2000 - 2003

Selected Publications - Google Scholar

[1] Z. Z. Darban, and M. Hadi Valipour, “GHRS: Graph-based Hybrid Recommendation System with Application to Movie Recommendation,” in Expert Systems with Applications (Impact Factor: 8.7), Vol 200, 2022.

[2] M. Hosseini, A. Naemi, and M. Hadi Valipour, “A Hybrid Machine Learning Model for House Cleaning Service Demand Modeling for High-Seasons in COVID-19 Pandemic,” Prepared to be submitted to PLOS ONE (in progress), 2022.

[3] M. Hadi Valipour, K. N. Maleki and S. Shiry Ghidary, “Optimization of Emotional Learning Approach to Control Systems with Unstable Equilibrium,” in Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 569, pp 45-56, Springer International Publishing, 2015.

[4] Z. Z. Darban, and M. Hadi Valipour, “Interval Type-2 Locally Linear Neuro-Fuzzy Model Based on Locally Linear Model Tree.” in Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing (LNCS), Vol 9119, pp 194-304, Springer International Publishing, 2015.

[5] M. Hadi Valipour, M. A. Mehralian and M. M. Homayounpour “Automatic Digital Modulation Recognition in Presence of Noise using SVM and PSO,” in 6th International Symposium on Telecommunications (IST’2012), Tehran, Iran, 2012.

[6] M. Hadi Valipour, M. M. Homayounpour and M. A. Mehralian “Digital Modulation Recognition Based on GMM Supervector SVM,” in 17th CSI Annual Conference (CSI’2012), Tehran, Iran, 2012.

[7] M. Hadi Valipour, “Robust Automatic Modulation Recognition using Supervectors and SVM”, Master of Science Thesis, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, 2012.

[8] K. Niki Maleki, M. Hadi Valipour, Z. Z. Darban, S. M. Achajeloei, and M. R. Jamali, Object Oriented Matrix MEX Wrapper (OOMMW) Pattern for Fast Matrix Computation in Soft Computing Applications, in 2nd World Conference of Computer Science, Turkey, 2011.

[9] K. Niki Maleki, M. Hadi. Valipour, R. Y. Ashrafi, S. Mokari, M. ValadBeigi, M. Akbar, et al., “Scorpius Team Description Paper Soccer Simulation 3D league, Singapore 2010,” in Robocup World Championship, Singapore, 2010. (as part of qualification material)

[10] M. Hadi Valipour, B. AmirZafari, K. N. Maleki and N. Daneshpour, “A Brief Survey of Software Architecture Concepts and Service Oriented Architecture,” in IEEE International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (ICCSIT 2009), China, 2009.

[11] K. Niki Maleki, M. Hadi. Valipour, R. Y. Ashrafi, S. Mokari, M. ValadBeigi, and M. R. Jamali, “Scorpius Team Description Paper Virtual Robot Competitions, China 2008,” in Robocup World Championship (Soccer Simulation League), Suzhou, China, 2008. (as part of qualification material).

[12] K. Niki Maleki, M. Hadi. Valipour, R. Y. Ashrafi, S. Mokari, M. ValadBeigi, S. A. Zahiri, and M. R. Jamali, “Scorpius Team Description Paper Virtual Robot Competitions, China 2008,” in Robocup World Championship (Soccer Simulation League), Suzhou, China, 2008. (as part of qualification material).

[13] K. N. Maleki, M. Hadi Valipour, R. Y. Ashrafi, S. Mokari, M. R. Jamali and Caro Lucas, “A Simple Method for Decision Making in RoboCup Soccer Simulation 3D Environment,” Advances in Systems and Informatics, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp 109-116, 2008.

Honours, Achievements & Awards

Outstanding Paper Award in 15th IEEE/ACIS SNPD Conference, US, 2014
Best Paper Award in International Conference of Computer Society of Iran, Iran, 2012
Exceptional Talent Admission for graduate studies at Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran, 2009
First Laureate (Golden Symbol) in Khwarizmi Youth Award in the field of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, Iran, 2009
Second Place (Silver Cup) in German Open International Robocup Competitions, Germany, 2008
Third Place (Bronze Symbol) in Iran Open International Robocup Competitions, Iran, 2009
Qualified three times for participation in Robocup World Championships, 2007 and 2008
Received Honorable Mention twice in ICPC Asia Regional Programming Contest, Iran, 2005 and 2006
Admitted twice in NODET with an acceptance rate of 1%, Iran, 1998 and 2001
Invited to be a keynote speaker or technical program committee in multiple international conferences

Reviews, Speaks, Memberships

Reviewer at multiple journals and conferences
Technical Committee member of Iran Open international Robotics Competitions, 2007
National Judge of Khwarizmi Yong Award, Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology (IROST), 2011
Technical Committee member of AUTCUP International Robotics Competitions, Amirkabir Univ. of Tech., 2010
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Student Member, 2005-2008