Takuya Kitazawa
- Experienced product developer with over 10 years in startups, Big Tech, and freelancing, holding a master's degree in Information Science and Technology with expertise in recommender systems.
- Passionate about leveraging technology to enhance lives in an information-rich world, specializing in full-stack software development, data science, machine learning, and product management.
- Driven by empathy, I thrive in diverse environments, contributing to global businesses, open-source projects, research communities, mentorship, and philanthropic initiatives.
Work
2022/09 – Present
Freelance Software Developer
Self-employed in British Columbia, Canada
Python Google Cloud Apache Beam Data Engineering Natural Language ProcessingAssisting individuals and small businesses (up to 150 people) in transforming data into actionable insights through analytics pipelines, ML/NLP models, and customer-facing applications. Services provided include:
- Full-stack software development
- Data science, analytics, and machine learning consulting
- Product management and development
- Mentorship, training, and writing
2025/01 – Present
Acting ICT Director
2023/08 – 2024/12
Information and Communication Technology Advisor
Emerge Livelihoods (formerly known as Mzuzu Entrepreneur Hub), Mzuzu, Malawi
C# .NET Digital MarketingAs a Canadian international volunteer with the World University Service of Canada, I advanced equitable access to ICT in Malawi, a landlocked country in southeast Africa. Highlights of this work are featured in the article "Spotlight on Takuya: An Uplifting Volunteer Experience" on wusc.ca.
- Conducted an organization-wide ICT capacity assessment and provided strategic recommendations to stakeholders.
- Trained 19 Malawian youth (9 females, 10 males, aged 18-31) in a 3-month Python programming course.
- Optimized a Flask-based web application, achieving up to 50% improvement in Lighthouse Performance metrics.
- Implemented a digital marketing infrastructure, launched campaigns, and transferred best practices to local staff.
- Led the completion and launch of an Android-based e-learning application on Google Play, taking on Program, Project, and Product Manager roles.
2021/08 – 2022/08
Software Development Engineer - Personalization
Amazon, Vancouver, BC, Canada
TypeScript Scala Python AWS Apache Spark Apache Airflow Recommender SystemsContributed to the development of Amazon's "Buy Again" repeat purchase recommender system, implementing both frontend components and backend data pipelines to enhance customer experience and drive repeat purchases.
2020/10 – 2021/08
Senior Product Manager
2021/02 – 2021/08
Treasure Data (Canada), Vancouver, BC, Canada
2020/10 – 2021/02
Treasure Data, Tokyo, Japan
Python Data Visualization Predictive Modeling Digital Marketing Product Management
- Managed product development in digital marketing, data analytics, and machine learning, delivering features such as out-of-the-box data visualization, A/B testing, and predictive customer scoring.
- Developed and productized solution templates within the in-house Treasure Boxes ecosystem to enable strategic use of customer data, in collaboration with the business development team and partners.
2020/02 – 2020/09
Product Manager
2019/04 – 2020/01
Staff Engineer
2018/08 – 2019/03
Senior Engineer
Arm, Tokyo, Japan
(Spin-off Treasure Data as an independent organization)
- Promoted the integration of big data, machine learning, data science, and IoT through internal and external advocacy.
- Collaborated with the sales engineering team, serving as a data science consultant to deliver machine learning solutions across industries such as retail, gaming, and online media.
- Developed IoT-data integrated use cases and solution prototypes, working closely with global teams to address customer needs.
- Led the creation of a Python SDK for an enterprise big data analytics platform, enhancing the surrounding data science ecosystem.
As a Product Manager:
- Coordinated multi-regional, cross-functional teams to deliver marketer-facing features for an enterprise customer data platform, bridging communication between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Focused on applied machine learning and customer data analytics, contributing to the platform's recognition as a "Strong Performer" in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Analytics Technologies, Q3 2020.
- Led a collaborative project with Arm Research, resulting in the publication of a data-driven multi-touch attribution solution template.
2017/02 – 2018/07
Data Science Engineer
Treasure Data, Tokyo, Japan
(Acquired by Arm)
Java Apache Hive Apache Spark Ruby on Rails
- Contributed to the development of Apache Hivemall, a scalable machine learning library for Apache Hive and Spark, enhancing its capabilities and usability.
- Led the creation of out-of-the-box machine learning solutions, managing the entire development lifecycle from competitor analysis and requirement gathering to implementation and customer onboarding.
2015/08 – 2016/06
Part-time Software Engineer
Rakuten Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
Python PHP Recommender SystemsIn the research organization, I have worked on the development of recommendation algorithms for an online golf booking service. Based on a baseline study, I have conducted further assessments and proposed improvement ideas in terms of both theory and practice.
2012/02 – 2013/02
Part-time Software Engineer
HANASAKE PICTURES, Fukushima, Japan
Objective-C PHP Image ProcessingContributed to the development of (1) PHP applications for an avatar-based social networking service, and (2) an iOS application for virtual trial fitting using an image blending algorithm named Poisson Image Blending.
2011/10 – 2013/03
Part-time Research Assistant / Web Developer
The University of Aizu, Fukushima, Japan
Ruby on Rails Data Visualization GISLed the development of a Ruby on Rails-based web application "Aizu Weather" for regional weather monitoring, accompanied by interactive geospatial data visualization using d3.js.
Education
2015/04 – 2017/03
Master of Information Science and Technology
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Degree credential: WES Verified International Academic Qualifications
Thesis: Persistently Cold-Starting Online Item Recommendation for Implicit Feedback Data
Advisor: Dr. Takayasu Matsuo
GPA: 4.0
Activities:
- Served as a student volunteer at RecSys 2016 (Sep 2016)
- Participated in Machine Learning Summer School Kyoto 2015 (Aug 2015)
Internship:
-
R&D Intern at Silver Egg Technology (Dec 2016 – Jan 2017)
- In-depth data analysis on customer's purchase dataset collected from a real-world e-commerce service.
- Proposing a novel recommendation algorithm, which has been a part of my master's thesis, to achieve higher accuracy of recommendation in the long run.
-
Machine Learning Intern at Treasure Data (Aug – Sep 2016)
- Implementing user-defined functions (UDFs) for state-of-the-art recommendation and anomaly detection techniques on Apache Hivemall.
- PoC implementation of a next-generation anomaly detection system for multiple system metrics, collected from an enterprise big data management platform.
2011/04 – 2015/03
B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering
The University of Aizu, Fukushima, Japan
Thesis: User Modeling in Folksonomies: Relational Clustering and Tag Weighting
Advisor: Dr. Masahide Sugiyama
GPA: 3.97
Honors and Awards:
- President's Award — Summa Cum Laude equivalent (2015)
- Dean's List of Distinguished Students (2012 – 2015)
- Best Paper Prize, IEEE Sendai Section Student Awards (2014)
- Innovative Award, The Tokyo American Center and Keio SFC Entrepreneurship Seminar and Business Plan Competition (2012)
Activities:
- Served as a teaching assistant in a Numerical Analysis course, and taught Java coding of numerical methods to 20+ undergraduates (Fall 2014)
- Participated in Security and Programming Camp, a multi-day group training program in computer security (Aug 2011)