Ted Chai

Senior ML Engineer @ Shopify/Sidekick

About

Senior Machine Learning Engineer on the Shopify's Sidekick team — fine-tuning large language models and applying other post-training techniques to enhance Sidekick’s capabilities.
Previously worked on large language model applications — including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and in-context learning (ICL) — as well as recommendation systems at Crossing Minds. Examples of my work can be found here and here.
Earned a Master's in Applied Computing (MScAC) from the University of Toronto. During the program, completed an applied research internship (also) at Crossing Minds, focusing on accelerating Hyperparameter Optimization with meta-learning.
Worked for three years at Agoda as a Machine Learning Engineer, developing ML models based on over 600 million daily user interactions to predict preferences, improve user experiences, and increase revenue.
Outside of work: snowboards, Hearthstone (used to at least) , and walks my dog.

Projects