David Smith
Principal Developer Advocate (Core AI)
Adelaide, South Australia
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDavid Smith is a Principal Developer Advocate specializing in Core AI with over two decades of experience applying AI and ML across pharmaceuticals, finance, manufacturing and healthcare IT. He combines deep technical roots in data science and early open-source R work with senior product and community leadership at startups and Big Tech, including roles that led to acquisitions at Insightful and Revolution Analytics. At Microsoft he grew global R and data-science communities, led AI/ML developer advocacy and represented Microsoft on the R Consortium board before joining GitHub to work on Foundry and Copilot. A seasoned presenter and community builder, David is fluent in turning complex research-grade techniques into practical developer-facing tools and training—evidenced by his contributions to Microsoft’s AI learning-path materials and ONNX/Computer Vision tooling. Holding a PhD in Statistics from Lancaster and an international background from Australia to the Bay Area, he blends rigorous academic discipline with product instincts and an aptitude for cross-cultural technical communication.
11 years of coding experience
21 years of employment as a software developer
Honours B.Sc. Statistics, Honours B.Sc. Statistics at University of AdelaidePhD Statistics, PhD Statistics at Lancaster University
French
Stackoverflow
2,154reputation
201kreached
7answers
3questions
r
top-5%
Github Skills (21)
python10
azure-cognitive-services10
scripting10
azure-cli10
script10
ai10
sh10
computer-vision10
shell10
r9
onnx9
machine-learning9
vector6
dictionary6
emacs6
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
microsoft/ignite-learning-paths-training-aiml
Oct 2019 - Apr 2020
Microsoft Ignite Learning Path, Train the Trainer materials: Developers Guide to AI
Role in this project:
ML Engineer
ML EngineerContributions:40 commits, 16 PRs, 6 comments in 6 months
Contributions summary:David contributed significantly to the AI/ML-focused repository, as evidenced by their involvement in creating and modifying scripts related to Cognitive Services, including the Computer Vision API. They developed and updated shell scripts for interacting with the Azure CLI, setting up Cognitive Services resources, and analyzing images. They also worked with ONNX models, which suggests model deployment or manipulation.
developers-guideignitetrainerlearning-pathmicrosoft
revodavid/20-years-of-R
Mar 2020 - Nov 2020
Twenty Years of R (Presentation)
Contributions:17 commits, 4 PRs, 16 pushes in 8 months
r-packagepresentationrstats
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