Irene Ros

ireneros.com | hello@ireneros.com | (413) 265 3704 | github

Summary

As a seasoned software engineering expert with nearly two decades of experience spanning industry and research, I bring a wealth of expertise in large scale full-stack software engineering, data visualization, user experience design, and information retrieval. I am committed to delivering technology-agnostic impactful user experiences that truly matter. I am deeply passionate about building teams, providing mentorship, and cultivating collaborative environments that fuel innovation and success.

Work Experience

Staff Software Engineer

Google | 06/2020 - Present | Cambridge, MA

Staff Software Engineer at Google, leading efforts in Search Quality (Ranking & Features) to help everyone find better answers on the web. Designed and launched a set of high traffic features to present users with nuanced information. Currently working on new and exciting LLM-powered Search experiences through Labs: https://labs.google/sge/.
I lead a cross-org team, successfully navigate organizational complexity to introduce and execute on novel and complex ideas, contribute technically as an IC and advise across a variety of other projects within our broader organization. I also dedicate a significant portion of my time to mentorship and coaching.

Senior Software Engineer

Google | 01/2018 - 06/2020 | Cambridge, MA

Designing, developing and leading efforts around Google Search, focusing on economic well-being and the job search journey. In this role, I work across Google's full-stack, focusing on ranking, retrieval, machine learning, back/front-end engineering and product leadership.

Founding Director and Principal Data Visualization Engineer

Bocoup, LLC | 07/2011 - 07/2017 | Boston, MA

Founded and led the Data Visualization team at Bocoup. This role involved:

Planned and executed strategic direction for the Data Visualization business at Bocoup
Designed, developed and led technical data visualization projects across the full pipeline: data analysis & transformation, user research, design & prototyping, front and back end development for the web.
Contributed technically to the field of data visualization through public speaking, educational resources, strategic projects, events and mentorship.
Founded and organized OpenVis Conf, a conference about the practice of data visualization on the web running yearly since 2013. Served as its Program Chair. OpenVis Conf fundamentally changed the data visualization community by fostering open and transparent conversations and establishing a spirit of teaching.
Engaged in team management, business development, grant writing, client/account management, sales and marketing.

Selected works:

Measurement Lab - Visualizing the health of the Internet based on 800,000,000+ speed tests.
information design, ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline, cloud infrastructure
LINCS Cancer Browser - Enabling researchers to investigate breast cancer biology and drug response through exploratory visualizations.
information design, user research
Stereotropes - Exploring language used to describe gender tropes in film through an interactive visualization experiment.
information design, user research, text analysis and natural language processing, ETL pipeline, prototyping, front/back end development and deployment
Npm By Numbers - Exploring the state of software packages on the NPM.js ecosystem, with custom-designed desktop and mobile experiences.
information design, data analysis, prototyping, front/back end development and deployment
MobileVis - Gathering examples of data visualization usage on mobile devices and observed best practices for building mobile data visualization interfaces in a collaborative web-based gallery.
information design, research, front/back end development and deployment

Research Staff Software Engineer

Visual Communication Lab, IBM Research | 06/2008 - 07/2011 | Cambridge, MA

Designed, prototyped and developed novel information visualization techniques and tools to explore collaborative methods of interacting with data on the web. Participated in academic publication.

Selected works:

ManyBills.us - Exploring congressional legislation. Designed novel visualization and analysis techniques for large bodies of text.
information design, research and prototyping, machine learning, front/back end development and deployment
NYTWrites - Exploring topics The New York Times journalists write about in an interactive experiment.
information design, data analysis, prototyping, front/back end development and deployment
Many Eyes - Allowing users to gather data, visualize it, and discuss their visualizations on a collaborative visualization platform. Designed and developed features and components for the application.
front/back end development and deployment

Skills

Disciplines: Data Visualization & Information Design, User Experience Design, User Research, Prototyping, Data Analysis, Text Analysis, Front-end Development, REST API Design, ETL Pipelines, Back-end Development, Deployment, Teaching, Public Speaking
Programing Languages: JavaScript, Python, Java, CSS, HTML, R, Ruby (+Rails)
Libraries & Tools: D3.js, React.js, Redux, git, AWS (Primarily EC2, S3, SES), Google Cloud (Dataflow, Bigquery), Pandas, Tidyverse, Ansible, Vagrant, Webpack, Docker, Jupyter Notebooks, nginx, Backbone.js, redis, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, Sketch

Education

University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA

Bachelors of Science in Computer Science - GPA: 3.848
Graduated with Honors (Summa Cum Laude) from Commonwealth Honors College

Frequent invited speaker. Speaking engagements: www.ireneros.com/speaking.html

Publications

Many Bills: Visualizing the Anatomy of Congressional Legislation E. Aktolga, I. Ros, Y. Assogba, J. DiMicco Workshop on Scalable Integration of Analytics and Visualization, AAAI 2011.
Detecting Outlier Sections in US Congressional Legislation E. Aktolga, I. Ros, Y. Assogba SIGIR 2011, pp. 235-244.
Many Bills: Engaging Citizens through Visualizations of Congressional Legislation. Y. Assogba, I. Ros, J. DiMicco, M. McKeon ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2011).
DocBlocks: Communication-minded Visualization of Topics in U.S. Congressional Bills Y. Assogba, I. Ros, M. Mckeon Work In Progress Paper, CHI 2010, April 2010.
Evolution of a cross-platform, multimedia courseware presentation system B. Wallace, W.R. Adrion, P. Dickson, W. Cooper, I. Ros and K. Watts ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, June 2006.
Integrating CASA ERC Wireless Networking into Education B. Wallace, W. Burlson, B. Donovan, J. Kurose, I. Ros, and M. Zink Education, San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 2006.

Personal

I am committed to delivering high quality work in everything I do. I am a strategic thinker, but I also know how to get things done. I love finding the right tools for the job and solving challenges big and small. I've spent many years growing as a business leader while developing my craft as an engineer and information designer. I bring a spirit of collaboration to the teams I lead, fostering a sense of community, shared purpose and drive to excel.