Sharath Rao

Sharath Rao is an experienced engineering leader and machine learning expert currently serving as Senior Director of Engineering and Principal Machine Learning Engineer for Ads at Instacart, where responsibilities include building the Ads business from the ground up, guiding machine learning efforts, and leading teams of software engineers. Prior roles at Instacart included Director of Machine Learning, where Sharath provided technical guidance and managed projects related to search, recommendations, and ad ranking. Previous experience spans companies like First Round Capital as a mentor, Intent Media Inc. as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Morgan Stanley as a Quant/Desk Strategist, and Yahoo! as a Senior Research Engineer focusing on machine learning algorithms for search and advertising. Educational credentials include a Master's in Language Technologies from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Boston University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka.