Exploring a Chief Technology Officer's Decade Career in FinTech and AdTech Industry From his early days at Carnegie Mellon University to co-founding a SaaS startup, Gupta's journey reflects the power of blending technical brilliance with entrepreneurial grit.

Niloy Gupta's career combines curiosity, innovation, and hard-earned expertise to reshape industries. With over a decade of experience in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), he built scalable systems and has become a leader and innovator in his field. From his early days at Carnegie Mellon University to co-founding a SaaS startup, Gupta's journey reflects the power of blending technical brilliance with entrepreneurial grit.

Currently a staff machine learning engineer and tech lead at Attentive Mobile, Niloy Gupta has built a career that spans AdTech, FinTech, and SaaS. Whether optimizing ad performance at Yelp or helping Affirm's financial models drive millions in revenue, Gupta believes technology is about creating opportunities and building trust.

From Campus to Cutting-Edge Tech

Gupta's fascination with technology started during his studies at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, where he graduated as a top-ranked student. His academic excellence earned him a gold medal and a ticket to Carnegie Mellon University, one of the world's top institutions for computer science.

At Carnegie Mellon, Gupta specialized in computational data science, where he was challenged to think critically about how machine learning systems could address real-world challenges. This foundation would later define his work across diverse industries.

After completing his bachelor's degree, Gupta's career began at Goldman Sachs, where he honed his skills in building enterprise systems for financial data management, and gave him a strong understanding of scalable architectures.

Breaking Barriers in FinTech

As an early engineer at Affirm, a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) company, Gupta contributed to its transformation into a FinTech giant. Affirm went public in 2021, a milestone Gupta considers a highlight of his career.

At Affirm, he led teams that built machine learning systems to optimize loan terms, interest rates, and repayment behaviors. These models enhanced the company's financial performance and ensured regulatory compliance. One standout project involved developing simulation systems that drove millions of U.S. dollars in contribution margin.

Transparency in machine learning was another priority. Gupta developed "Shparkley," a Spark-based tool that calculates Shapley Values to explain AI decisions. He extended its impact beyond Affirm by open-sourcing Shparkley, benefiting the broader machine-learning community.

Making Waves in AdTech

Before his time at Affirm, Gupta sharpened his machine-learning skills at Yelp. As a senior machine learning engineer, he reshaped the company's approach to ad targeting. His models for predicting click-through rates (CTR) significantly improved ad revenue, demonstrating his knack for creating solutions with measurable results.

Gupta optimized gradient-boosted tree inference, achieving a staggering 3x speed improvement. Additionally, he developed distributed machine learning pipelines that could handle billions of samples, enhancing the efficiency of Yelp's ad delivery systems.

"AdTech is all about scalability," Gupta explains. "You need to build models that perform well and handle the real-time demands of modern advertising platforms."

The Entrepreneurial Turn

In 2023, Gupta took a bold step by co-founding Lambent Logic, a SaaS platform for revenue management in the pharmaceutical industry. As chief technology officer, he led the product's development from the ground up, successfully onboarding enterprise clients and raising $1 million in pre-seed funding.

Lambent Logic aimed to address a critical gap in the pharmaceutical industry. Gupta leveraged to design data analytics and machine learning systems that streamlined manufacturers' revenue management processes. Although his entrepreneurial chapter was brief, it provided invaluable lessons about navigating the intersection of technology and business.

Impact Inside and Outside His Profession

Today, Gupta continues his career as a staff machine learning engineer and tech lead at Attentive Mobile. Applying insights gained from years of experience in fintech and adtech, he focuses on building AI/ML models that enhance user engagement and drive e-commerce success.

However, Gupta's contributions extend beyond his professional roles. His patent application for optimizing financing programs and his research on biomedical text summarization are just a few examples of his versatility. He has also made significant open-source contributions, such as Shparkley, which empowers developers to build more interpretable machine-learning models.

Gupta's humanitarian efforts further illustrate his commitment to making a difference. He led a team that developed assistive technologies for the visually impaired, earning recognition in publications like The Hindu, The Times of India, and Deccan Herald.

As Gupta continues pushing technology's boundaries, his career inspires technologists and entrepreneurs alike to use technology to improve lives and create positive societal impact globally.