In this episode, I chat with Rob Albritton, Senior Director for the Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence within Octo's oLabs. Rob and I have a wide ranging conversation about the cutting edge work being done at Octo, why especially veterans should consider opportunities at Octo, Rob's personal data science journey/background in the Air Force, his insights as a hiring manager for AI/ML teams, and finally the current AI race and what keeps him up at night.

FEATURED GUEST:

Name: Rob Albritton

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robalbritton/

SUPPORT THE DATA CANTEEN (LIKE PBS, WE'RE LISTENER SUPPORTED!):

Donate: https://vetsindatascience.com/support-join

EPISODE LINKS:

Octo's Career Opportunities for Veterans: https://tinyurl.com/ape4xc

Octo: https://www.octoconsulting.com/

Octo's oLabs: https://tinyurl.com/yyha236j

oLabs' AI Center of Excellence: https://tinyurl.com/kt3zpp2u

MLFlow: https://mlflow.org/

Kubeflow: https://www.kubeflow.org/

How to deploy Kubeflow with minikube on a single node: https://tinyurl.com/myyyd2ht

Lex Fridman Podcast: https://tinyurl.com/5dpbk67f

The AI Podcast (Nvidia): https://tinyurl.com/axphyb6a

PODCAST INFO:

Host: Ted Hallum

Website: https://vetsindatascience.com/thedatacanteen

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-data-canteen/id1551751086

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaNx9aLFRy1h9P22hd8ZPyw

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-data-canteen

CONTACT THE DATA CANTEEN:

Voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/datacanteen

VETERANS IN DATA SCIENCE & MACHINE LEARNING:

Website: https://vetsindatascience.com/

Join the Community on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8989903/

OUTLINE:

00:00:07 ​ - Introduction

00:01:12 - All about Octo, oLabs, and the AI Center of Excellence

00:08:01 - What makes Octo so unique in the GovCon space

00:11:10 - What makes Octo a great career fit for veterans

00:13:56 ​ - Domain experience (i.e., veteran's military experience) is important to Octo's mission

00:16:43 ​ - Octo's Program to Hire Veterans

00:17:45 - Rob's Journey from the Air Force to DS, ML, and AI

00:22:44 - You don't necessarily need a Master's Degree to get into DS/ML

00:24:04 - Rob's insights as a hiring manager for AI/ML teams

00:30:56 - Do you need a U.S. Government security clearance to work at Octo?

00:31:58 - How to best frame your DS/ML skills to get an interview

00:36:02 - Rob's recommended upskilling path to get into DS/ML

00:39:42 - The current "killer skill" to put you in high-demand (MLOps!)

00:42:12 - Rob's advice about how to start learning MLOps

00:54:42 ​ - What scenarios keep Rob up at night?

00:55:13 - Rob's favorite podcast recommendations

00:56:46 ​ - How to contact Rob