Kohei Sakurai

Kohei Sakurai is an experienced AI Product Engineer at PLAID, Inc. since September 2025, with a strong background in software engineering and data science. Prior to this role, Kohei worked at Rakuten from July 2019 to August 2025 as a software engineer, focusing on backend development for Rakuma, a C2C platform, and engaging in data analysis and predictive modeling using explainable AI and causal inference. Previous experience includes a role as a data scientist and consultant at IBM from April 2016 to June 2019, where Kohei specialized in predictive modeling with machine learning across various industries. Kohei holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Yokohama National University, obtained in 2016.