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 Processing

Assisting 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
Learn more at takuti.me/services.

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 Marketing

As 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.
After completing the one-year volunteer assignment, I transitioned to providing advisory services as a contractor through my Canadian self-employed business. In my current role as Acting ICT Director, I oversee the organization's strategic technology investments. I remotely manage teams of 5-10 Malawian professionals, offering guidance in IT operations, communication, and marketing.

2021/08 – 2022/08

Software Development Engineer - Personalization

Amazon, Vancouver, BC, Canada

TypeScript Scala Python AWS Apache Spark Apache Airflow Recommender Systems

Contributed 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)

Python Apache Hive IoT Data Science Product Management

As an Engineer:
  • 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 Systems

In 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 Processing

Contributed 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 GIS

Led 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:

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:

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)