A leave of absence to explore machine learning

At Fitbit, I’ve worked on high traffic and mission critical systems such as the API Gateway, Authentication and Authorization Service, and Experimentation Platform. I’ve learned a ton about software engineering, project management, product management, and working on a team. After 2.5 years at Fitbit, I’m taking a leave of absence for the next 3 months to take some time off, take some courses on machine learning, and work on an algorithmic trading side project that leverages knowledge from those courses.

This time will give me the chance to learn what I want to learn, and potentially get skills that will help me get to the next level of my career. Machine learning is everywhere, and machine learning engineers are in high demand. It makes sense for me to explore the space and see if I like it. I also want to explore the cryptocurrency startup space and see who’s out there.

At the very least, I want to complete Andrew Ng’s Coursera Machine Learning course. At best, I want to complete 3–4 machine-learning related courses, apply as many of those concepts as possible to the algorithmic trading system I’m building, and make the algorithmic trading system profitable. Each of those best case goals is a stretch goal, so we’ll see how far I get. I do want to take some time to relax, also :).

I’m looking for collaborators on the algorithmic trading system, as well as other people who are working solo who are interested in holding each other accountable. So reach out if you’re in either category!