Sheng Gao

Machine learning, AI, Data science, ML product architecture, LLM (RAG, Agent, vectorDB)

In the age of AI, success isn’t defined by who writes the most code, but by who asks the smartest questions. Strategic thinking has never been more important.

About

  • 20+ years in Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Speech Recognition, Multimedia Analysis, and NLP; 40+ publications.
  • 5+ years in e-commerce and media industries, solving real business problems with ML.
  • End-to-end ML product development: data pipelines, modeling, optimization, and API deployment.
  • Tech stack: PyTorch, Python, SQL, Keras, TensorFlow, C/C++/C#, Databricks, Scala, PySpark, MATLAB, LangChain, FastAPI, Airflow, Redis.

Experience

MatchMove Pay / SVP Enterprise AI Lead Dec 2025 – present
  • Partnered with CXOs to define and execute enterprise AI strategy across the digital payments ecosystem
  • Led the architecture and delivery of an enterprise agentic AI platform for a MAS-regulated Banking-as-a-Service fintech operating across five APAC markets.
  • Built AWS-based medallion lakehouse and hybrid RAG infrastructure integrating enterprise platforms including Freshdesk, Confluence, Google Workspace, Monday.com, and Slack.
  • Led internal AI automation initiatives, including card management and KYC/KYB systems, chargeback automation, suspicious transaction report automation, reconciliation, fintech intelligence layer, and drove collaboration initiatives on responsible AI governance, risk and compliance.

Experience

ATTIX / Senior LLM Developer Apr 2024 – May 2025
  • Developed PilotAI, an agentic fintech product using OpenAI, Llama, Anthropic, etc.
  • Built real-time APIs for portfolio strategies, stock analysis, user profiling, and SEC/news processing.
Lazada / VP Nov 2019 – Jan 2024, Singapore
  • Led AIGC projects: mannequin fashion image transformation, virtual avatar generation (SD & LoRA).
  • Improved product content match (AUC +10%) with ResNet, ViT, multilingual CLIP, MoCo.
  • Built product match, seller allocation, smart voucher, and multilingual classification systems.
MediaCorp / Lead Data Scientist (AVP) Jul 2018 – Nov 2019, Singapore
  • Led team of 5 to deliver CTR optimizers (+50%), audience profiling, and traffic forecasting models.
I2R, A*STAR / Senior Scientist Jan 2003 – Jul 2018, Singapore
  • Led research in audio search, NLP, multimedia retrieval, sentiment analysis, and image tagging.
  • Published 30+ papers; productized music search (10M+ songs) for Baidu with 97% precision.
NUS / Research Fellow Jan 2002 – Dec 2002

Worked on speech recognition, text categorization & retrieval.

ATR, Japan / Invited Researcher Jun 2001 – Dec 2001

Researched acoustic modeling for large vocabulary spontaneous Chinese speech.

Education

  • Ph.D., Institute of Automation, CAS – Apr 1998 – Jun 2001
    Context-dependent acoustic modeling
  • M.Eng., BUPT – Sep 1993 – May 1996
    Isolated Chinese digit recognition
  • B.E., Northwestern Polytechnical University – Sep 1989 – Jul 1993

Awards

  • Lazada Forward Tech Star (FY22)
  • ImageClef 2009 – 1st (text), 3rd (mixed modality)
  • ImageClef 2007 – 2nd (auto), 3rd (overall)
  • TRECVID 2005 – 3rd (video search)
  • Dean Scholarship, CAS (2001); Best Student Paper (ISCSLP 2000)
  • Huawei, Motorola, and Haiying Scholarships

Publications

40+ publications in ACM Multimedia, IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, ICIP, CIKM, SIGIR, etc.
[Full list of publications]