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Joshua Pham
Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Spotify
Joshua Pham is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Spotify, based in Boston, Massachusetts. He has a robust background in software engineering and machine learning, with a focus on developing models that enhance user experiences through personalized recommendations.
Professional Experience
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Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Spotify (September 2023 - Present): Joshua leads projects that involve deep learning models for voice queries and podcast recommendations, utilizing technologies such as Google Cloud, TensorFlow, and Kubeflow.
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Previous Roles at Spotify:
- Machine Learning Engineer II (August 2021 - September 2023): He contributed to various models, including recommendations for music and podcasts.
- Machine Learning Engineer (September 2020 - August 2021) and Data Engineer (September 2018 - August 2020): In these roles, he focused on building and optimizing data-driven solutions.
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Internships: Joshua also has experience as a Data Engineering Intern at Spotify and a Software Development Intern at Dolby Laboratories, where he worked on innovative projects related to media technology.
Education
Joshua holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin, which he completed between 2015 and 2018.
Personal Interests
Beyond his technical expertise, Joshua is passionate about integrating technology with creativity, with interests in photography and music production. He aims to develop tools that enhance human creativity and has an active presence in the photography community, showcasing his work online.12
Highlights
When David Murgatroyd and I struck up a conversation years ago about what it could look like if one could ask for music to fit the occasion, I was in college and aside from knowing about latent dirichlet allocation, mostly just had an imagination. I got the chance to intern at Spotify the following summer and could hardly believe I had the chance to prototype mood-based playlists (s/o Ajay Kalia, Gemma Smith-Vondras, and the rest of Forge :spotifam:).
The craft of experiences like this has stayed close through my career at Spotify that has followed: peeling back the layers of user intent to help them engage with the creativity and stories of artists.
With AI Playlist, you can curate playlists for any occasion with text prompts. Building it this past year has blown me away with cool technical challenges (i.e. it can do... what?) on the content system and an incredible team that's fueled it all with earnestness and excitement from start to launch. In short, it's been fun, and I feel very grateful :)
I'm so, so excited and proud that as of this week, we're sharing this with the world! AI Playlist is in beta for Premium users in the UK and Australia, with the US soon to come.
Thanks to the many who helped turn it from an idea into a product -- Paul Lamere Sebastian Peleato Humberto Corona Mark Jones Bernd Huber Allan Johns Tim Morrill James Spencer Renato Gamboa Justin Guan Yoshnee R. Keenan Cassidy Elizabeth Pearson Mat Budelman Jordi Parra Jennifer Lind José Luis Redondo García Enrico Palumbo Johanna Mercurio Gillian MacDonald and special thanks to Sandeep Ghael Chris Harris and Oscar Celma!
I just took a walk after a sad day where we lost some incredible colleagues at #Spotify. I put on Daylist and happened across the lyrics to a song by Madison Cunningham that stopped me dead in my tracks:
What do I know? What do I hold That will not fade away? All things fade away Where will I be? The crop and the wheat Feast and fade away All things fade away Putting on a business coat For the tear in the jeans, the hole in the boat To make the burden float, to pay in full this time When you're living on a dreamer's salary A broken harvest, feels like robbery What do I do this for, if it's just gonna pour out easily?
It's a hard pill to swallow that not even the agency of having a deep curiosity, acumen, and joy for crafting serendipitous, meaningful audio discovery experiences can stand a chance against the whims of the market. To those with whom we've had to part ways today -- even in our goodbyes, your work echoes loud and clear.
I owe so much of my growth and opened doors to many of you (you know who you are). Building this won't be the same without you. I wish you all the best! Hope our paths will cross in the future.
If you're hiring, please feel free to comment below for reach, and if you were affected, please feel free to reach out to me when you feel ready to look for new opportunities. I'd be happy to connect you.
