Hi! I’m Alex Rudy. I’m building the Machine Learning Platform for Discord, and helping to create the spaces where anyone can build belonging on the internet.

I approach and model the world scientifically – I try to understand the why as well as the how. The modeling I do is not about just shoving everything into the black box. I try to embody the scientist – where models represent our approximations of the way the world works. I’ve had sucess building models we can intuit, coupling human intuition to data at scale. My favorite models are the ones which tell a story, where we can really learn about the why in the world, as well as the what.

I’ve worked at a CloudTrucks, a startup building the backend for independent truck drivers. There, I spent my time solving routing and pricing problems I’ve worked in regulated financial spaces, where I built underwriting models for credit card applications. I’ve worked on bespoke lifetime-value monitoring, built data warehouses from the ground up, and designed novel algorithms from scratch. I’ve also handled some truly big datasets (such as the billions of clicks per month on the Bitly link shortening platform) In the past, I have built research-grade hardware and control systems for astronomical instrumentation, and have experience engineering in constrained environments with physical systems.

When I’m not building models, I’m a sometimes contributor to open source software, a tinkerer and a builder. When there is snow outside, I’m also a skier.