Bay Area AI: Nick Handel, Machine Learning Infrastructure at an Early Stage

ai.bythebay.io Nov 2025, Oakland, full-stack AI conference Scale By the Bay 2019 is held on November 13-15 in sunny Oakland, California, on the shores of Lake Merritt: https://scale.bythebay.io. Join us! ----- Good machine learning is built on infrastructure but many startups don't have the bandwidth or resources to build this foundation while scaling. It's difficult to prioritize the pieces of ML Infrastructure that data scientists and engineers need to be productive and successful when the scale of these projects can be months or years for small teams of engineers. The dividends are large down the road but the cost of pursuing infrastructure that doesn't work or doesn't solve the right problems can leave a team months down the road without necessary progress. This talk focuses on the foundation that any good machine learning system is built on and the elements of ML infrastructure to focus on first. Speaker Bio: Nick Handel serves as Branch International's Head of Data Science. Prior to joining Branch, he was a Product Manager for Airbnb's machine learning infrastructure teams. Before moving to centralize the company's artificial intelligence efforts, he was an early member of the company's data science team, helping the company expand internationally between 2014 and 2015 and leading a data science team that launched Airbnb's Trips product in 2016. Before joining Airbnb, he was a research economist at BlackRock, focusing on emerging market debt.