Articles by: Monica Torres

Returning To Work After Childbirth And During A Global Pandemic

In this post, we interview Jing Hao, a Software Engineer on the Solutions team. She’s one of the newest mom’s at Diffbot.

 

Hi Jing! Congratulations on the new addition to your family and welcome back to work – we’ve missed you and can’t wait to hear all about your journey into motherhood during a time of uncertainty. I think it’s a good idea to help parents-to-be understand how to navigate the current environment.
Continue reading

Welcome Huzail Ssemakula – Technical Recruiter

Hello everyone,

My name is Huzail Ssemakula (pronounced who-zail semakula). I will be joining Diffbot as a technical recruiter on our amazing recruiting team.

My recruiting journey started at Amazon where I helped grow several teams such as Amazon Prime and the Alexa technologies. Since then, my career took me to Google and Cruise Automation where I focused on working with teams solving Machine Learning problems. I am very impressed with what Diffbot has achieved with such a small group of talented people. I look forward to helping the company achieve its mission, by bringing in more talented individuals to the Diffbot family.

On a personal note, I enjoy spending time with my family doing outside activities. We live in the Seattle area surrounded by nature and parks. I’m also huge on sports, soccer/futbol being my number one. Fun facts; I’m left handed, born and raised in Uganda, and I can speak several languages.

I can’t wait to meet you all in person once the world is back in order 🙂

Welcome Ondrej Pacovsky – Machine Learning Engineer

Hi there! I am Ondřej Pacovský, from the mighty Czech Republic. I had just started as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer in the research group.

A little bit about myself – I made my first cash writing software when I was 14 and decided to focus my endeavors making computers smarter, that is, artificial intelligence. After graduating from Charles University and Sussex University, I started working in game development as an AI expert and also a lead developer on the side. I then joined Google, and worked on various machine learning projects, most notably Gmail Priority Inbox and the Google Knowledge Graph. I returned to Prague to co-found Eyen, a company specializing in cryo electron microscopy data analysis and special-purpose GPU development.

With Eyen working beautifully on its own, I was looking for a meaningful opportunity to push the boundaries of AI. The Diffbot’s mission fits that goal perfectly – in fact, what we’re doing here was my initial dream when I was thinking about intelligent computers as a boy: a machine that learns about the world just by observing it.

I greatly enjoy teaching my own small biological brains to be smarter than me. I play ice hockey, soccer, tennis, squash and have climbed a 6000m mountain. I also developed and installed my own smart home and enjoy making wood furniture.

 

Welcome Steve Peterson – Enterprise Account Executive

Hi everyone, I’m Steve Peterson. I’ve just joined Aron’s team to help with Enterprise Sales to Global 2000 accounts.  Having had some experience with Big Data and Analytics tools at Oracle and IBM, I’m excited to join a company with a vision to distill the entire Web into a structured format easily incorporated by businesses into their Data pipelines. This is a very exciting place to be!  I’m working on helping Diffbot become an essential piece of the data landscape for Billion dollar companies in areas like PR, Marketing, Sales and even areas like M&A.  Most companies never heard of zoom.info 3 years ago, now it’s table-stakes for most Sales orgs. I see Diffbot with a similar future, but in many parts of the Enterprise Data Stack.

I’m based in the north part of Phoenix, just past the first set of mountains heading to Flagstaff.  My wife, Cari, and I have 5 kids between us, and 5 grandkids, with one on the way (we’re thankful she had some kids early in life!).  We enjoy concerts, the pool, camping and boating.  I take my home office buddy Dallas (she’s the sweetest dog you’ve ever met — a grey-pit bull) with me on desert walks almost every morning.