Michael Punzalan

About

I'm a seasoned data technologist with deep experience in data engineering, analytics, experimentation, and machine learning. I've helped startups launch data functions from scratch, building pipelines and dashboards, instrumenting key workflows, and supporting early product and operational decisions. I’ve also led the development and scaling of systems that drove $XXM+ in incremental revenue, and built ML solutions that delivered double-digit improvements in operational efficiency. I’m comfortable operating across domains, with proven success in healthcare, e-commerce, and social media, and at both early-stage and hyperscale. I'm currently open to fractional and full-time roles. I enjoy helping teams build reliable, high-leverage data systems that drive product and strategy. Whether it's hands-on work, team-building, or strategic leadership, I bring a pragmatic, outcome-focused approach. If you're thinking about how data can power your next phase of growth, I’d love to connect.

Experience

• Lead Machine Learning Engineer · Firefly Health2022-06-01 – 2025-07-01

  Drove mission-critical product strategy: Identified opportunities, scoped and executed greenfield R&D, and worked cross-functionally to ensure deployment. Added generative AI summarization to internal platform, increasing staff throughput by XX%, added ranking to internal provider recommendation workflow, reducing medical care expenditure by XX%, added A/B testing module to internal application, and introduced logging to internal application to unlock productivity analytics (leading to an XX% improvement in gross margin for operational partner). Defined, performed, and socialized analyses to inform long-term decisions. Lead internal ML efforts: Managed deployment and performance of real-time LLM-based chat message classifier (gross margin improvement, no downtime, minimum ongoing cost), provided hands-on introduction to building products with generative models by organizing first ML hackathon (i.e. planning, infrastructure, internal marketing, model training, demo), explained and demonstrated usage of off-the-shelf vs. internally trained models. Designed V2 of ML build and deployment pipelines. Enhanced data warehouse and reporting: Diagnosed usage issues with Looker and updated design principles for dashboard and BI design, wrote Looker YAML generation web app to increase team productivity, reduced failure rate and debugging time in data pipelines by updating pipeline and application design patterns, increased team productivity with pairing, mentoring, and team discussions. Improve external stakeholder relations: Anticipated challenges in sales meetings and produced new measurements to address them, improved coordination between sales and analytics, oversaw and presented technical "ML for clinical"material to external audiences.

• Senior Manager, Data Science · Wayfair2019-11-01 – 2022-06-01

  Grew ML identity product from idea ($0 impact) to prototype ($X million) to batch tables and REST endpoint ($XX million), and beyond. Built initial product and was responsible for vision, roadmaps, and change management. Recognized for growth-oriented people management. Raised technical standard of parent team (~10 DS) by providing training on engineering topics, leading hack on development of statistical microservice, and supporting managers and ICs in meetings with partner engineering teams. Influenced broader Data Science team practices in manager calibrations, interview case revision, causal inference reading group, and ad hoc ML engineering group. Revitalized Wayfair Data Science blog, assembled new editorial group, set pipeline goals and hit them, developed internal web app to improve funnel management, and partnered with Talent organization on broader tech blog strategy. Joined as Tech Lead/Manager and was promoted to Senior Manager.

• Data Scientist · Devoted Health2018-09-01 – 2019-09-01

  Senior hire with critical responsibilities around launch. Stood up data pipelines for and monitoring of core functions for executive team. Generated leverage by creating robust, reusable tooling. Surfaced actionable insights with extremely limited data on a wide variety of problems. Mentored junior teammates in DS and across the firm.

• Data Scientist · Facebook2018-01-01 – 2018-08-01

  Product analytics, strategy, and experimentation R&D for Facebook Groups. Supported two high-risk products with a wide range of product analytic and statistical techniques. Delivered ecosystem analysis that generated new, fundamental insights into the Groups product. Identified a significant variance reduction opportunity in the default A/B test setup.

• Data Scientist · Clover Health2016-06-01 – 2017-09-01

  Led company-wide cost reduction initiative, identifying opportunities amounting to 5% of revenue and a recommendation system reducing 70% of work for a core operational team. Drove improvements within Data Science such as optimization of the ad hoc analytics service and improvements in tooling for unit testing.

• Research Assistant · The Wharton School2009-01-01 – 2014-01-01

  Wrote economic models, cleaned and managed data, proposed and implemented econometric estimators, and interpreted model estimates.

Education

• The Wharton SchoolDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Managerial Science and Applied Economics
• The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

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