CURRICULUM VITAE

MAX PAGELS

contact@maxpagels.com

What I'm looking for

The hardest computer science and machine learning problems you have; the ones with the potential to change the world we live and work in. Despite recent work history on the CTO-level, I'm still hands-on, believing that you cannot lead technical teams unless you continuously hone your technical skills.

Open as employee, freelancer, founder, or pre-seed investor where I can be genuinely useful.

Technical expertise

Primary domain: online (incremental) machine learning — algorithms that update per-observation in O(1) amortised time rather than requiring full batch retraining. Applied focus on contextual bandits, off-policy evaluation (IPS, DR, doubly-robust estimators), and reward estimation under partial feedback and non-stationarity. Author of Formative, a causal estimation library, and author of the off-policy evaluation tutorial in the official Vowpal Wabbit documentation.

Secondary domains: linear and mixed-integer optimisation (LP/MIP formulations for scheduling, routing and resource allocation), time-series and signals analysis (spectral methods, change-point and anomaly detection, pattern-of-life / normalcy modelling), and distributed backend architectures for real-time inference (streaming ingestion, feature stores, sub-millisecond serving layers).

Selected Work

Contextual bandits & real-time optimisation

Built some of the first real-time contextual bandit systems for high-volume recommendations in the Nordics, and real-time webpage optimisation for fashion retail. Constraints: per-observation online updates, partial (bandit) feedback, non-stationary reward distributions, and serving inside sub-second request budgets. Evaluation done off-policy (IPS / doubly-robust) rather than on live traffic where experimentation was constrained.

Bidding under partial information

Bidding algorithms for second-price advertisement auctions under partial information, allocating ten-digit (€1B+) annual media budgets. Constraints: censored feedback from lost auctions, budget pacing, and non-stationary competition.

Causal estimation of bonus program retention

Estimated the causal impact on retention of a third-party bonus/loyalty program carrying eight-digit (€10M+) annual license fees, to decide whether the spend was actually driving incremental behaviour. Constraints: no clean randomised holdout, confounding from self-selecting engaged users, and a decision that had to withstand scrutiny. Used instrumental-variable regression and difference-in-differences to isolate the effect; the incremental retention did not justify the fees, and the program was decommissioned, saving €10M+ annually.

High-availability payments infrastructure

Implemented payment processing (charges, holds, automatic refunds) and high-availability hosting for retail with multi-million annual revenues, alongside event-driven backends and a storefront for personalised fashion.

Career

2026 — Present

On gardening leave

2022 — 2026

Head of Technology, Marimekko

2021 — 2023

Head of Technology, Fourkind / Thoughtworks

2017 — 2021

Machine Learning Partner, Fourkind

2015 — 2017

Developer → Data Science Specialist, SC5

Education

MSc, Computer Science, University of Helsinki; major in software systems, extended minor in mathematics and statistics. Natively trilingual (Swedish, Finnish, English).

Military service

Finnish Defence Forces active reservist.

Select Papers

On Prompting, Priors, and What It Takes for LLMs to Produce Novelty, 2026

Improving the Delivery Cycle: A Multiple-Case Study of the Toolchains in Finnish Software Intensive Enterprises, IST, 2016

The Highways and Country Roads to Continuous Deployment, IEEE Software, 2015

A Behavior Marker tool for measurement of the Non-Technical Skills of Software Professionals: An Empirical Investigation, SEKE, 2015

Examining the Structure of Lean and Agile Values Among Software Developers, XP, 2014