Open for Data Scientist roles

Reetu Thimmaiah

Data Scientist.

I work on end-to-end data science problems, from analyzing data and building machine learning models to deploying them in the cloud.

I have taught yoga to 100+ students and mentored junior data scientists.

Focus
Data Science
Based in
San Francisco
Work Experience
6.5 years
Published
2
Reetu Thimmaiah holding her Outstanding International Student Service Award certificate at the RIT Student Leadership Awards
Rochester Institute of TechnologyStudent Leadership Awards · 2025–2026

Recognized by RIT for 2025–26 service through AI research outreach in the Rochester community, weekly yoga classes, fundraising, and helping students find their footing on campus.

Where I've worked

2025

Data Scientist (Co-op)

Gorbel Inc.

New York · Jan 2025 – Jan 2026

I built an end-to-end ML decision-support system for operations and procurement, covering 10K–15K monthly transfers and an estimated 7% cost savings.

2024

Graduate Research Assistant

Rochester Institute of Technology

Rochester, New York · 2024 – 2026

Published two research papers at ASME FEDSM 2026 on using machine learning for heat sink cooling predictions.

Recognition
  • Graduate Scholarship — 40% of tuition 2024
2017

Senior Data Scientist

Tata Consultancy Services

Bangalore, India · Aug 2017 – Jun 2023

Built and ran the data systems enterprise clients depend on: pipelines, services, and the batch jobs behind them, handed over in a state the next engineer could maintain.

Recognition
  • Service and Commitment Award 2023
  • On the Spot Award 2022

Things I've built, and published

Heat sink cooling predictor

Problem
Thermal resistance & pressure drop, without waiting on a CFD solve
Data
Parametric simulation runs over fin geometry and flow conditions
Model
Ensemble regression · scikit-learn / XGBoost
Serving
An answer in milliseconds, inside the design loop

A regression pipeline that predicts thermal resistance and pressure drop for heat sink geometries, trained on simulation data. Designers get an answer in milliseconds instead of waiting hours for a CFD run, which turns thermal design into something you can iterate on. Includes a feature-importance view so the model's reasoning stays inspectable.

Pythonscikit-learnXGBoostCFD dataStreamlit

Churn without a cancel button

Problem
A grocery basket has no cancel button — churn has to be inferred, not observed
Method
Uplift modelling against a randomised control group
Decision
Rank customers by response × value, not by risk
Shipped
A Streamlit app that takes a budget and returns a targeting list

Retail customers do not announce that they have left; someone who churned and someone simply due for their next shop look identical in the data. This project uses a campaign’s randomised holdout to measure what an offer actually caused, then asks which customers are worth spending on.

Finding

At a 5% budget, targeting by likely response returns 147 extra purchases per 1,000 customers against 32 for targeting by churn risk — but the keenest responders spend the least. Weight response by spend and the ranking inverts: ₽1.24M incremental revenue per 1,000 against ₽0.27M. Neither “who is leaving” nor “who responds” is enough on its own.

Pythonuplift modellingscikit-learnStreamlitA/B holdout

PriceWise — C2B vehicle pricing

Problem
What is this car worth, what should we offer, and what margin is left?
Model
CatBoost regression on log price · engineered age & interaction features
Serving
FastAPI endpoints for price, recommendation, and model health
Loop
Every recommendation logged as accepted, rejected, or overridden

A pricing decision product rather than a notebook: a pricing user enters vehicle details and the system predicts market value, recommends an acquisition offer, estimates margin after reconditioning, flags quotes needing approval, and records what the human did with the recommendation.

PythonCatBoostFastAPIReact consoledecision logging

Lakehouse operations dashboard

Problem
Broken pipelines surfacing downstream instead of on a dashboard
Signals
Ingestion runs, table freshness, and spend, in one view
Platform
Databricks lakehouse · PySpark on Azure
Audience
The data team, before the people downstream

A single view over ingestion jobs, freshness, and cost across a Databricks lakehouse — so the team stops finding out about a broken pipeline from the people downstream.

AzureDatabricksPySparkPower BI
Also on GitHub
Published research
ASME FEDSM 2026Accepted

Predicting heat sink thermal performance with supervised learning

Models trained on parametric simulation data estimate thermal resistance across fin geometries and flow conditions, with an error analysis showing where the surrogate stays reliable and where it should defer back to full simulation.

Role · Lead authorMethod · Ensemble regression
Schematic: airflow over fin geometry → surrogate model → predicted thermal resistance

What I work with

The tools I reach for most days.

Python
Scripting
SQL
Databases
PyTorch
Deep learning
scikit-learn
Modelling
PySpark
Big data
Databricks
Lakehouse
Azure
Cloud
Docker
Containers
Git
Version control
FastAPI
Backend APIs
Airflow
Orchestration
Power BI
Dashboards
In detail

Programming

PythonJavaC++JavaScriptSQLBash

Machine learning

scikit-learnTensorFlowPyTorchXGBoostNumPyPandasModel evaluation

Data & cloud

AzureDatabricksPySparkETL designData modelingPower BISnowflake

Backend & APIs

FastAPIREST APIsNode.jsPostgreSQLAzure FunctionsMLflow

Tools

GitDockerGitHub ActionsJupyterJiraLinux

Communication & leadership

Public speakingTechnical writingTeachingMentoringStakeholder updatesEvent organizing

Teaching, speaking, and showing up

The work I do around campus, outside the code.

RIT Power Yoga Club

Volunteer instructor leading weekly power yoga sessions for students, with fundraising classes open to the wider campus.

100+ students · $3,000 raised

Toastmasters International

Ongoing member, with Level 1: Presentation Mastery completed. The regular speaking practice shows up directly in how I present research and run design reviews.

Presentation Mastery · Level 1

Student service at RIT

Supporting international student life through orientation help, campus events, and the day-to-day work of helping people settle into a new place. Recognised with the Outstanding International Student Service Award.

Award recipient · 2026

Working with Reetu

Recommendations from managers and colleagues at Tata Consultancy Services, RIT, and my co-op team.

Over seven months she took complete ownership of designing and implementing a modern data and ML engineering pipeline. She built the ingestion workflows in Azure Data Factory, transformed the data through Azure Data Lake and Databricks, and deployed models through Azure ML Studio with full MLOps integration. She stepped into a team leadership role naturally and delivered with minimal guidance.

Aaron CollinsDirector of Enterprise Applications & Architecture

Reetu developed predictive models for inventory demand and stock optimization during her data science co-op. She turned complex operational data into decisions people could act on, and she communicated the results clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.

Aniket ShuklaSenior Data Scientist & BI Developer

Reetu is a Python developer with a good understanding of the language and its frameworks. Her ability to write clean, efficient, structured code is commendable, and her aptitude for problem solving is one of her greatest strengths.

Tanuj MittalTechnology Head, Tata Consultancy Services

I worked with Reetu on DevOps projects and she consistently impressed me with her deep understanding of CI/CD, automation, and cloud infrastructure.

Ankith NageshAI/ML, Cloud & DevSecOps Engineer

Reetu is energetic, curious, and keen to learn. Having worked with her for over a year, I can say she puts her best into everything, and her ideas carried real weight in team discussions.

Payal PandyaSenior Executive Professional, CARO

Book thirty minutes

No agenda required. Bring a role you're hiring for, a problem you're stuck on, or a paper you'd like to talk through.

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Pick a time

Looking for my next role.

Software engineering, machine learning, and data roles. If you're building a team that does the work carefully, I'd like to hear about it.