Roman Zykov is a data and machine learning leader with 22 years of experience and a track record of turning research-grade algorithms into profitable products, including cofounding Retail Rocket which exited for $24.5M after a $500k seed. He combines deep technical hands-on expertise—from Scala/Spark big-data recommender systems and HFT research to modern GenAI stacks with local LLMs and RAGs—with practical product impact across LATAM, Western Europe and CIS markets. At scale he has led analytics and data science teams to ship systems that cut experimentation time, automated KYC/AML workflows, and generated significant revenue for e-commerce and fintech clients. Author of a bestselling data-monetization book and a RecSys MIT speaker, he holds an M.Sc. in applied mathematics from MIPT and is UK Global Talent visa holder (O-1 eligible). Notably, he pairs startup founder instincts with production engineering discipline, routinely moving projects from MVP to widely used, cash-positive operations.
11 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science Applied mathematics, Master of Science Applied mathematics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State University) (MIPT)
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.
Request Free Trial
Roman Zykov - Head Of Machine Learning And Data Science