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Naveed Ahmed Janvekar – Geek on the top | “Success is like a ladder and no one has ever climbed a ladder with their hands in their pockets”

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Geek on the top is all about success stories of Geeks who are working hard to chase their goals and are the inspiration for other geeks.

Today we have brought to you the story of Naveed Ahmed Janvekar who is currently working as a Senior Data Scientist at Amazon at one of the world’s leading technology companies – Amazon. He leads the abuse prevention programs for Amazon using Data Science and Machine Learning. He has successfully implemented several supervised and unsupervised machine learning methodologies to detect millions of abusive products, sellers, and customers who are violating Amazon’s policies and thus enabling a pleasant shopping experience for customers in the USA and other parts of the world. With an evolving space such as abuse, Naveed has been able to build robust machine learning systems that quickly adapt to changes and work at optimal performance. His current research areas are in the space of Graph Modeling, Emerging Threat Detection, and Active Learning to improve machine learning model performance.
 

 

In his free time, he likes to travel & do Fitness.

A quote which he lives by is –

“Success is like a ladder and no one has ever climbed a ladder with their hands in their pockets” — Zig Ziglar

Let’s know him a little more & get inspired by his journey.

What do you do in Amazon? How does it feel to bag such a good offer?

I work on implementing a Machine Learning model that prevents abuse on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. My day-to-day work involves building a data science roadmap for my team, sourcing necessary data for machine learning models, feature engineering, meetings with stakeholders like Product Managers, and collaborating with other scientists within the company.

It feels great to be part of a big tech company like Amazon. A lot of interesting and challenging problems need to be solved at scale.

What was your journey to your current role? How did you get recruited?

After completion of my Bachelor of Engineering, I worked at Fidelity Investments for about a year and then moved to the U.S. to pursue my Master’s. During my course at The University of Texas at Dallas, I got offered a summer internship at a Boston-based startup called Nanigans. Once I graduated with a Master’s degree I got a full-time offer at KPMG, where I was working as a Business Intelligence Developer for about a year. Then I applied to a couple of positions at Amazon that matched my interests and skill-set and I was able to crack the interview at Amazon.

How did you prepare for interviews? How did GeeksforGeeks help you in your journey?

I focused on the necessary skill set required for the analytics/data science role which includes SQL, Machine Learning – supervised, unsupervised, Python programming and along with technical skills I also focused on being able to talk effectively about my past projects in terms of how impactful they were. GFG was very helpful with its contents across all these different areas, so I could learn and practice.

Tell us something about yourself, that might surprise us

Well, that would be an icebreaker question 😀 
I am coming up with data science-backed strategies in financial investing. Still in the experimentation phase, but this is something I am doing in my interest. It’s an interesting project that I am working on currently.

What will be that one thing you would like to say to your past self?

Making a journal of mistakes that I may have done in the past and making sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It actually helps in keeping a check on the mistakes that we make & learning from them. 

Also, one more thing that I would like to say to my past self would be to be more involved in research from early on in my profession. Generally, most of us make the mistake of not doing research on the latest technologies, updates, languages, etc. I believe every coder should be fully active in this area from the initial years of starting their journey as a coder.

Tips that would like to share with us based on your interview experience with top tech firms?

Be your best self, be composed, structure your responses, and focus on conveying the value you bring in with your candidacy.
To be your best self all that you need to do is discover who you really are, maximize your strengths & work on your weakness. 
Through the interview, you get an awesome opportunity to convince the employer why you are the best candidate for that particular job. So, do your best!

What suggestions do you have for a fresher who wants to become a Data scientist?

Participate in data science competitions, participate in research and publications, invent data science-related technology. Focus on business problems as much as you would on technology. As Data Scientists we are at the intersection of tech and business. Also, be an effective communicator.

Any major challenges that you faced during your journey to becoming a Data Scientist & how did you overcome them/that?

The main challenge that I faced during my journey was being able to get the correct data to solve business problems, engineering relevant features for the machine learning model. I got better at it over time by spending more time with business stakeholders, understanding the root cause of a problem which helped me munge the data in a way that was most useful for the machine learning models. We all face challenges in our jobs, isn’t it? All we need to do is not lose hope & smartly with patience analyze the issues & tackle them.

Do you have any tips for aspiring Amazonians?

My suggestion would be in general for candidates aspiring to get into big tech is to focus on building your technical portfolio – valuable projects, knowing details of technical implementations, being able to build narratives around your projects. The projects that you have worked on are a very good way to showcase your skills to prospective employers & chances of you/your resume getting shortlisted will certainly increase.
 

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Naveed Ahmed Janvekar and do not express the views or opinions of his employer.

Naveed can be reached on LinkedIn

Want to become a Data scientist? This article might help you know the complete roadmap to become a Data Scientist

If you know a top Geek whose interview should also be published, please drop an e-mail to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org.

Let the top geeks inspire other students!!
 


Last Updated : 23 Feb, 2022
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