Harley McKee – Employee Spotlight

What do you do at LitLingo?

Principal Full Stack Engineer

Favorite part of working at LitLingo?

I have been interested in Natural Language Processing (“NLP”) for a while now, and finally, I have an opportunity to work hands-on with NLP systems. Getting paid to work across the stack on applied NLP systems is a dream come true.

What do you find most rewarding about your role?

Sitting in and seeing non-technical users grokking at how our models work is pretty fantastic.

What makes someone successful on your team?

Ideally, they have a passion for language and teaching computers to understand, paired with an acute ability to listen and see through our end users’ eyes.

What’s the biggest problem your team is solving?

Since 2018 there have been significant developments in NLP (e.g., BERT and transformers), so taking those cutting-edge advancements and applying them to our product to help improve how we as humans convey information to each other is a big lift.

What projects are you most excited about?

Configuring the data in a digestible dashboard for our non-technical users. Our solution could be the best in the world, but if our buyers and end-users aren’t appreciating the value it’s bringing to the table, that’s an issue.

Favorite thing to do in Austin?

Hike with my dog and partner, then grab a bite to eat afterward.

Guilty pleasure?

Fancy mezcal

What food do you hate?

Cream cheese

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