Rise of the ML Engineer: Flávio Clésio, Artsy

Flávio Clésio is a data and machine learning (ML) engineer based in Berlin, working at Artsy where he deploys and maintains models that recommend artwork to users. He has been involved with ML operations (MLOps) for nearly a decade and currently works on models incorporating art-specific inputs such as period of creation, region, style, medium, and category. Clésio emphasizes the importance of balancing popularity effects in recommendation systems and measuring their impact on revenue. He also highlights the challenges faced when putting ML models into production, including data drift, privacy concerns, and regulatory issues. Clésio believes that MLOps is a response to the need for cross-functionality among data scientists, data analysts, and analytics engineers, and encourages those starting out in the industry to study software engineering practices.