Sep 2026 — present
Senior Vice President of Engineering
Recursive Inc.
Technology executive specializing in AI, machine learning, and engineering leadership.
Engineering leadership · Applied AI · Japan
Ryan Ginstrom · Senior Vice President of Engineering
Building AI that works in the real world.
I'm Ryan Ginstrom, SVPoE at Recursive Inc. and a technology executive with more than 20 years of experience. I bring together deep software experience, machine learning, and pragmatic organizational leadership to turn promising technology into dependable products.
01 / A little about me
Technology, people, and the space between.
My career has moved between hands-on software development, applied machine learning, and building engineering organizations. Along the way I've worked across startups and established technology companies in both the United States and Japan.
I'm especially interested in making AI useful and trustworthy: how we evaluate models, engineer reliable production systems, and create teams that can deliver confidently without losing their appetite for experimentation.
My background also includes linguistics, technical translation, and work across English and Japanese—perspectives that have shaped how I think about communication, product development, and leadership.
02 / Selected experience
From writing code to leading the organizations behind it.
Jul 2025 — Jul 2026
Chief Technology Officer & Director
Corpy & Co.
Led engineering strategy, delivery governance, and AI platform initiatives across a multinational organization.
- Oversaw more than 20 concurrent client engagements and internal initiatives.
- Introduced engineering governance, project health monitoring, and career development frameworks.
- Led design and deployment of CONFIDE, a RAG and agentic workflow platform.
Aug 2021 — Sep 2025
Engineering Manager / Technical Leader
Mercari, Inc.
Helped establish Search ML and later led the dedicated LLM engineering team.
- Delivered production ML and LLM capabilities, including early customer-facing AI features.
- Built MLOps infrastructure and model A/B testing, and spearheaded image search development.
Oct 2019 — May 2021
Senior Software Engineer
LivePerson
Built text-intent capabilities, high-volume ML systems, and automated model training and deployment pipelines.
Dec 2015 — Oct 2019
Tech Lead / Engineering Manager
Conversica
Developed ML-based conversation automation and a microservices AI architecture, with CI/CD and learning from human feedback.
Feb 2015 — Dec 2015
Senior Software Engineer
Lending Robot
Productionized loan-default prediction models and built automated investment and secondary-market systems.
Dec 2013 — Dec 2014
Senior Software Engineer
Gathered Table
Developed menu planning using linear programming, automated grocery lists, and backend systems.
Mar 2011 — Dec 2014
Bilingual Engineer
Nintendo of America
Built NLP pipelines for multilingual document processing, backend tools, and translation support systems.
Jun 1999 — Mar 2011
Sole Proprietor / Remote Contractor
Japan
Created Felix translation productivity software and ran an independent business specializing in NLP and document processing.
03 / Expertise
Technical depth. Organizational perspective.
Engineering leadership
Technology strategy, organizational development, portfolio oversight, delivery governance, mentoring, and executive stakeholder communication.
AI & machine learning
LLMs, agentic systems, RAG, NLP, conversational AI, MLOps, evaluation, explainability, and enterprise AI governance.
Production systems
Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, distributed systems, observability, Kafka, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, vector search, and hybrid retrieval.
Languages: Python · C++ · Go · Kotlin
04 / In public
Talks, interviews & selected writing.
Talk · Berlin Buzzwords 2023Building MLOps Infrastructure at Japan’s Largest C2C E-Commerce SiteWith Teo Narboneta Zosa. A look at the infrastructure supporting machine learning in Mercari search.Watch the recording ↗Talk · LLM engineeringPractical Explainability for Reliable Production LLM SystemsAn engineering approach to explainability and operating robust LLM applications.Event & talk details ↗Interview · 2026Shipping Technology in Mission-Critical DomainsOn reliability, engineering standards, and delivering AI where failure matters.Read the interview ↗Interview · MercariMercari’s AI Vision and Technological TransformationA conversation with Mercari AI team leaders about ML products and company-wide adoption.Read the article ↗Interview · TokyoDevRapid Growth and Big Impacts as an Engineering ManagerOn leadership, experimentation, and engineering culture in Japan.Read the interview ↗Research · 2025Using Item Recommendations and LLMs in Marketing Email TitlesCoauthored paper on applying LLM generation at marketplace scale.Read the paper (PDF) ↗More updatesMore ideas, projects & conversationsMy professional updates and writing in one place.Find me on LinkedIn ↗
Patents
Named co-inventor on four granted US patents in NLP and conversational AI.
- US11301632B2Systems and methods for natural language processing and classification ↗
- US11106871B2Systems and methods for configurable messaging response-action engine ↗
- US11100285B2Systems and methods for configurable messaging with feature extraction ↗
- US11010555B2Systems and methods for automated question response ↗
05 / Résumé