Hi! :wave: :wave: :wave:

I’m Garrett. I’m a Machine Learning, Infrastructure and Platform Engineering guy. I’m a nerd who loves to learn. I’m addicted to the feeling you get when you finally understand something. I am inspired by the people I consider to be the best STEM teachers in the world. Like contemporary ML researcher Chris Olah and the iconic Richard Feynman, I seek to “understand things and explain them clearly”.

I’m a Staff Engineer at Reddit working on ML systems for model development lifecycle management (e.g. features, training, deployment, inference and observability) and recommendations, ranking, and personalization that serve tens of thousands of requests per second for internal stakeholders across the company. I also do a bit of consulting on the side and am always tinkering on some side project or another. Right now I’m particularly interested in the intersection of ML Infra and K8s native software development as well as tools, systems and processes for improving the software design process.

Prior to Reddit I was the Director of Data Science and Machine Learning at Stocktwits / Trade App where I led a small team that built software “powered” by data – and the infrastructure to deliver and maintain it – to improve and personalize the user experience in our apps. I also previously had a two year stint as an Instructor at Metis, teaching part-time professional development classes in Beginner Python and Math for Data Science and Introduction to Data Science. In a past life I was an actuary making educated guesses of the value of uncertain things using probability, simulation and financial theory. Yes, I passed all of those darn exams.

My academic background is in Math and Computer Science. I got my BA in Mathematics from TCNJ, a small state school in New Jersey. My MS is in Computer Science with a focus on Machine Learning and Interactive Intelligence from Georgia Tech.

When I’m not thinking about ml, kubernetes and platform engineering I’m probably thinking about basketball or the Avett Brothers.

reach out!

garrett.lee.hoffman@gmail.com