Alexander Kwok is a Head of Data Science & ML Engineering based in Sydney, Australia. Over the past decade, he has built and led teams that ship production AI/ML systems — from petabyte-scale data platforms at AWS to personalised recommendation engines serving millions of customers at Woolworths, to building an entire data organisation from scratch at Linkby.
From enterprise ML at AWS to startup velocity at Linkby — each chapter shaped a different dimension of how to ship AI that works in production.
Joined with a blank slate and a mandate to build Linkby's entire data capability from zero. Hired an ML Engineer and a Data Scientist — a deliberate one-pizza team. In nine months, shipped a Databricks platform, migrated analytics to ClickHouse, built AI-agent-driven Dagster pipelines, and deployed a personalised click pricing model live in production.
Led a team of 10 building data-centric network availability strategies at petabyte scale. Implemented LLM Ops automation that eliminated over 100 manual engineering processes, driving a 10x productivity gain across the organisation. Contributed to a patent for a novel ML algorithm for complex network applications.
Led a team of 21 delivering personalised recommendation engines across Web, App, and Email for millions of Woolworths customers. Built graph neural network and ALS-based recommendation systems with real-time feature engineering at national retail scale. This was the chapter that taught the difference between a model that works in a notebook and a model that works at 3am on a Saturday when nobody is watching.
Parallel to full-time roles, Alexander advises startups and enterprises on production AI strategy. Recent engagements include a LangChain sales automation platform with network analysis and Slack RAG, and a clinical transcription system for Indonesian hospitals using fine-tuned Whisper for Bahasa Indonesia medical audio.
The technologies Alexander reaches for when building production AI/ML systems. Opinions included.
Whether you are hiring for a technical leadership role, need an AI/ML advisor, or just want to talk about production systems — I am always open to a conversation.