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Rajiv Shah

Agentic AI Engineer

Greater Bloomington, Illinois Area · 1 connection

OpenHands

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About

When I was in the military, my nickname was the “why guy.” I never wanted to just execute, I wanted to understand the larger goal and find a better solution. That curiosity pulled me into data science, where I helped create millions in value, earned patents and publications, trained hundreds of data scientists, and worked across industries using everything from interpretable models to deep learning. Over the last several years I’ve focused on early‑stage and high‑growth AI companies, especially customer‑facing roles where product, GTM, and solutions meet. I love working directly with customers, turning their problems into clear product narratives, and helping teams ship innovative, practical AI that actually lands inside the enterprise. I’ve been part of GTM and enablement teams at DataRobot, Snorkel AI, Hugging Face, Snowflake, and now Contextual AI, with a track record of scaling customer growth and technical adoption. I’m at my best in the messy, zero‑to‑one phase: building trust with technical buyers, explaining complex tools in plain language, and helping teams align on what “value” really means. I’m also a strong external communicator with 100+ talks and keynotes, publication

Experience

Agentic AI EngineerOpenHands
Mar 2026
Chief EvangelistContextual AI
May 2025 to Mar 2026
AI ML Engineer for GTMContextual AI
Nov 2024 to May 2025
AI ML StrategySnowflake
Feb 2024 to Oct 2024
Machine Learning EngineerHugging Face
May 2022 to Feb 2024
Instructor Machine Learning using TransformersSphere Basic company page — company details not listed yet
Feb 2023 to Mar 2023
Machine Learning Solutions EngineerSnorkel AI
Oct 2021 to May 2022
Principal Data Scientist and Director, GTM Technical EnablementDataRobot
Nov 2020 to Oct 2021
Scalable Success LeadDataRobot
Dec 2019 to Nov 2020
Customer Facing Data ScientistDataRobot
Jul 2017 to Dec 2019
Senior Data ScientistCaterpillar Inc.
Jul 2016 to Jun 2017
Data ScientistState Farm
Oct 2014 to Jul 2016
Adjunct ProfessorIllinois State University
Aug 2013 to Dec 2014
System AdministratorIllinois State University
Jul 2010 to Oct 2014

Education

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Ph.D., Communications
2004
Harvard Kennedy School
Fellow, National Center for Digital Government
2003 to 2004