Adrian Mendoza

Head of Data at Cinder Ops | ex-Capital One

Cinder Ops

San Jose, CA · PT (UTC-8)

12+ years experience

Rice University

English, Arabic

Hiring

Messaging unavailable

Overview

I've spent 12 years on recommendation systems - first at Shopify, now at Cinder Ops. Taught SQL to 136 non-analysts. Moved the homepage from rules to a learned ranker. Before that: Capital One and Meta. Most at home with Spark and PyTorch. Learning woodworking.

Good reasons to reach out

Candidates for the role I'm hiring for
Second opinions on ranking decisions
Working sessions on Python
Thoughtful intros to people in my field

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Courses and coaching offers
Crypto token projects
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Skills

Sparkrecommender systemsembeddingsPythonPyTorchranking

HiringHiring for a role

closes in 3 months

Building out recommendations at Cinder Ops: analytics engineers wanted in San Jose

Role: Analytics engineer
Level: Senior
Type: Full-time
Work mode: On-site
Compensation: $161k-$191k
Team: Recommendations, 6 people
Start: Within two months
Must have: Production experience with recommender systems Production experience with embeddings Clear written communication
Process: Two interviews and a paid trial day

Comp $163k-$267k. Four conversations, no take-home. Message me with one thing you shipped that you're proud of.

San Jose, CArecommender systemsrankingspark

Open

Experience

Head of Data
May 2024 - Present
Cinder Ops · 2 yr 5 mo · Full-time · San Jose, CA
- Built the recommendations models now used in 12 product decisions a quarter.
- Moved the homepage from rules to a learned ranker.
- Wrote the metric definitions the leadership team reviews every week.
Staff Data Scientist
Nov 2021 - Mar 2024
Capital One · 2 yr 4 mo · Full-time · San Jose, CA
- Shipped a ranking change that increased conversion 5.5%.
- Taught SQL to 43 non-analysts.
Senior Data Scientist
Mar 2018 - Nov 2021
Meta · 3 yr 8 mo · Full-time · San Jose, CA
- Wrote the metric definitions the leadership team reviews every week.
Data Analyst
Jan 2016 - Mar 2018
Nike · 2 yr 2 mo · Full-time · San Jose, CA
- Replaced 89 hand-built dashboards with one metrics layer people trust.
Data Scientist
Jul 2014 - Oct 2015
Shopify · 1 yr 3 mo · Full-time · San Jose, CA
- Moved the homepage from rules to a learned ranker.
- Shipped a ranking change that increased conversion 4.2%.

Projects

Write-up: recommendation systems in practice

2026

A long-form guide to recommendation systems for people starting out.

References

No references yet.

Education

Rice University
BA, Mathematics
2009 - 2013

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