Meet Scape — Pili 🇦🇷, Tech Lead

Our team is focused on building the 3D map of the world: the platform on top of which all future industries, like Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics and Augmented Reality will sit. This includes anything from APIs and data visualization, to machine learning and high performance computing. We’d love for you to meet the people behind the team — first up, here’s one of our Tech Leads, Pili!

Hey Pili! Introduce yourself in few words please.

¡Hola! I lead the Data Acquisition team here at Scape and, in comparison to the rest of the Engineering team, I know very little about Computer Vision.

What’s your background?

I am Argentinian, born and raised in Buenos Aires. I studied Computer Science at Harvard University. I worked in software engineering in Silicon Valley for a few years, and I later worked in open data for the Argentine national government. I recently finished a masters in Smart Cities and Urban Analytics at UCL, here in London.

What attracted you to Scape?

The first thing that attracted me to Scape was the technology itself — the potential impact and applications of an accurate and reliable digital representation of the physical world blew my mind. And then I met the team, and I was blown away by the impressive skills and backgrounds of everyone at Scape.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

From a technical perspective, I enjoy the craftsmanship required to make data pipelines efficient and well-architected. From an operational perspective, I love figuring out how to best work, communicate, and elevate the team’s individual strengths given the diversity of the team in terms of work styles and cultural backgrounds.

What are you most excited for this year at Scape?

I’m very excited about the development of our Evolving Maps, because without them we would only have a stale representation of the physical world. I’m also looking forward to growing the team, as it will allow us to be even more ambitious.

What’s the most interesting challenge you’ve come across since you joined Scape?

Recently, we, the Data Acquisition team, have been designing the data platform and API designs to support Evolving Maps: Taking images that flow through the Localization API and exposing them to the Mapping Pipeline. As a result, we’ve had to understand the company’s entire pipeline and coordinate with several stakeholders at once.

It has required us not only to refactor our code extensively without breaking anything, but also to understand the intricacies of dealing with media data like images and videos and their application to 3D mapping.

If you had to pick one thing — what’s the best thing about working Scape?

Pasta Mondays. Just kidding, but I do really, really like pasta Mondays. Besides lunch time, my favourite thing is the team’s culture of constant learning, which makes everyone at Scape curious, humble, and open to new approaches and ideas.

What was your favourite social event that Scape has organised?

Pub quiz — even though I was completely useless. It was very cool to participate in a very British tradition with a bunch of other foreigners who know very little about pop culture but a lot about computer vision and world geography.

Can you describe your team in 3 words?

The Data Acquisition team is caffeinated, hard-working and resourceful.

Do you have a hidden talent?

I went to circus school for a while when I was younger, so I can juggle and do a few aerial tricks on the trapeze. I also took drumming for a while, so I can make a few semi-rhythmic sounds. I cannot, unfortunately, juggle drumsticks yet.

When you’re not at Scape, what kind of things are you into?

I have played hockey since I was 5, and I have a tough time shutting up about it. For clarity purposes, when I say “hockey” I don’t mean ice hockey, but the sport with the fastest swing speed and the third most popular sport in the world instead ;)