Dr. Priya Narang
Senior ML Engineer & Researcher
Applied ML researcher turning messy data into deployed models. I work on recommendation, forecasting, and the unglamorous MLOps that keeps them alive in production. PhD in ML, allergic to hype.
+7.2%
Conversion ↑
11
Publications
40ms
p99 latency
3B
Daily candidates
About
My PhD was on sequence models for healthcare time series — which taught me that the model is the easy part. The hard part is the data pipeline, the evaluation that doesn't lie to you, and the deployment that survives contact with reality. I've since built recommendation and forecasting systems serving millions of users, and I've learned to be deeply suspicious of any metric that only improves offline. I publish when the work is genuinely new, and I ship when it genuinely helps.
Build models that are honest offline and useful online.
Track Record
Applied ML across recommendation, forecasting, and healthcare — research to production
Senior ML Engineer
Shopify
Lead the recommendation ranking team. New two-tower model lifted conversion 7.2% and GMV measurably.
2021 – Present
ML Scientist
Layer6 AI
Built demand-forecasting systems for retail clients; reduced forecast error (sMAPE) by 18%.
2019 – 2021
Research Intern
Vector Institute
Sequence modelling for clinical time series.
2018
Education
PhD, Machine Learning — University of Toronto · 2019
B.Tech, Computer Science — IIT Delhi · 2014
Skills
PyTorch · Python · Recommendation Systems · Forecasting · MLOps · Spark · Feature Stores · A/B Testing · Causal Inference
Works
Two-tower ranking at scale
Rebuilt the recommendation ranker — +7.2% conversion, 40ms p99 at 3B daily candidates. Architecture + online eval.
RecSys · Production · +7.2%
forecast-kit (OSS)
A probabilistic forecasting library with proper backtesting built in. 1.8k stars.
OSS · Forecasting
Clinical sequence models
PhD work: attention models for ICU time series. Published at NeurIPS workshop, code released.
Research · Healthcare
Eval you can trust
A framework for offline/online metric alignment that catches overfit before it ships.
MLOps · Evaluation
Word on the Street
“Priya's instinct for what will actually move the metric — not just the loss curve — is unmatched. The ranking win was one of the biggest of the year.”
Honors
- ★ 3 papers at NeurIPS / ICML workshops
- ★ Reviewer, NeurIPS & ICLR
- ★ 1.8k⭐ on forecast-kit
- ★ Patent: adaptive ranking (pending)