About

TLDR;

I am a technologist exploring the intersection of AI, design, startups, and the web.

Currently, I am leading an engineering organization, overseeing engineering managers and leads to deliver marquee features for Bing.com, including Deep search, Generative Search, Bing Chat, Bing Stories, as part of the Core Search and AI Group.

From 2017 until 2019, I lead and built ML and IoT projects for Microsoft’s biggest customers around the world including Walmart and Toyota.

Previously, I spent four years as a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft Canada based in Montreal. I covered technical areas such as open source technologies, open data, and cloud computing. I was a frequent international speaker and spoke at conferences such as Build, FITC, Trondheim Developer Conference, ConFoo, DroidCon (Wayback Machine), CUSEC, KWS (Wayback Machine), and TEDx at HEC Montreal.

I am passionate about design explorations, shipping high-quality code and helping development teams survive the grind.

I write a newsletter called Rami's Readings.
Get a curated weekly digest of exciting reads along with my brief notes.

Microsoft AI | Bing (2019-Present)

Principal Engineering Manager | Core Search and AI Group (2020-Present)

As part of our daily work, we collaborate with designers to brainstorm new concepts that leverage our organization’s machine learning models and unique capabilities. We collaborate with data scientists and applied ML engineers to build UX experiences that showcase the best and safest search features and result. Our team designs and develops metrics to measure the success of our experiences across multiple experiments.

Curently, my team is building Deep search (Official Blog Post) and Generative Search (Official Blog Post). Deep search is a groundbreaking feature that represents a significant milestone in my career. Deep search enhances Bing’s ability to provide relevant and comprehensive answers to complex search queries with OpenAI’s GPT-4. My team is also combining the power of Generative AI with Deep search to create bespoke and dynamic search pages to a user’s query.

My team was heavily involved in the Bing Chat release. Using the latest generative AI technologies and to support the growing demand for more visual search experiences, we also built Stories (Microsoft Blog Post). Stories provide a more engaging way to search and interact with content, offering images and short videos. Our goal is to deliver more immersive experiences in Bing and Edge that make finding answers and exploring the web more interesting, useful and fun.

My team designed, developed, and shipped a machine learning-powered feature producing compelling page insights to help users click on the best result increasing daily active users by 25% of the yearly organization target. Coordinated across teams in India and China to integrate shopping and other verticals into Page Insights. Press Release. Blog Article.

Our team also shipped a web scale page recommendation feature in Bing.com with over 40% coverage on all impressions serving 4 billion recommendations/day and increasing conditional page click rates by over 20% across multiple surfaces (Desktop, Mobile) and handling multiple entry points (initial search, click back to the page, etc.)

Bing-Azure Collaboration & Project Caspian (2019-2020)

Between 2019 and 2020, I designed, developed, and shipped the user experience integration between PowerQuery and Azure Cognitive Search, contributing major changes to two organizations, teams and repositories following their code standards and norms. I worked with engineers across multiple organizations (Azure, Bing, PowerBI) and locations (India, Egypt, China). I will fondly remember this project for its complexity and challenge in integrating multiple services together in a cohesive manner. This project allowed Azure Cognitize Ssarch to increase the number of supported data sources from 6 to over 30 data sources in one fell swoop.

MIT Sloanie (2023-2025)

I embarked on an MBA journey at MIT in 2023, driven by a desire to push my leadership and innovation skills. Surrounded by an incredible community of leaders, I immersed myself in the MIT ecosystem. My time at MIT wasn’t just about academia; it was about fostering meaningful connections, and giving back to the next generation of technologists. One of my favorite moments was presenting a talk at MIT’s Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship about Bing Deep search, Chat, Stories, GPT-4, LLMs at scale, etc. My experience at MIT is one of the most memorable learning experiences of my life.

Rami and Amrutha after completing his talk at the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship.

Rami presenting at the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship.

Microsoft Digital Transformation Leader 🗽 (2017-2019)

In 2017, I moved to New York City to start and grow an engineering team for Microsoft’s newly formed Commercial Software Engineering organization. I recruited and mentored junior software engineers and eventually managing a team of five engineers. In the New York City hub, we focused on developing and operationalization machine learning pipelines for global companies. We also developed a strong user experience and web development practice; building accessible and beautiful user experiences to help companies through their digital transformation journey.

Projects:

Built a smart factory IoT and ML solution to improve Toyota’s fork truck build quality at their Columbus, Indiana plant. Led the project from ideation to delivery with a team composed of 12 engineers and machine learning experts. Presented the solution to visiting executives from Japan which led to adoption in other factories in Japan. Press Release. (WayBack Machine).
Shipped a high-scale IoT project and deployed it to hundreds of stores for Walmart. Press Release. (Wayback Machine). Led a team of four front-end developers to build the user experience for building controls, alerting and management to accomplish Walmart’s digital transformation for their warehouse stores. Managed the customer relationship with senior & executive stakeholders.
Led the technical development of Agogosml; an open source data processing pipeline project for operationalizing machine learning models in production at scale. Agogosml was developed in partnership with ASB Bank.
Built ML-powered chatbot projects to enable cost-effective customer support in Japan and Australia.

Rami and a group of developers on the Toyota factory floor — Standing alongside a team of developers on the floor of the Toyota factory.

WEF Global Shaper (2014-Present)

Hubs: Montreal, New York City, Seattle (Current)

I am an Alumni member of the Global Shaper community. The Global Shapers Community is an initiative of the World Economic Forum, which comprises over 10,000 young people based in more than 500 cities in 152 countries and territories. We organized into a network of Hubs dedicated to creating local impact. Together, we formed a powerful source of grass-roots knowledge and global youth perspectives. Global Shapers take action on issues they care about, engage in local and global policy discussions, and collaborate with other national and international Hubs to make waves.

TopLink Profile (Sign-In Required)

Microsoft Open Source & Web Evangelist 🍁 (2013-2017)

I lead the web and open source developer community outreach & advocacy, messaging, and marketing & execution strategy for Microsoft Canada since August 2013.

I had the pleasure of speaking at over 75 major conferences, startup events, hackathons, and meetups, including Build, FITC, ConFoo, DroidCon, WordCamps, Startup Weekends, Lean Startup Machine, AngelHack, Founder Institute, etc. I delivered five online courses live to an average audience of >5000 people on NodeJS (Wayback Machine), Redis (Wayback Machine), MongoDB (Wayback Machine), and React for the Microsoft Virtual Academy. I organized four JavaScript conferences with leading web speakers in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary. I hosted an Open Data, Open Source & Web Standards conference that was globally live-streamed on Channel 9 from Montreal.

Rami Sayar presenting at JavaScript Open Days in 2015 with the text "I've seen the Future. It's in my browser" in large block font behind him — Captured in 2015 at JavaScript Open Days

My technical articles appeared on numerous Microsoft properties and popular, highly-trafficked sites such as SitePoint, CodeProject, and noupe, among others. See my other writing here.

I was awarded Worldwide Best in Role for FY2016 by Steve Guggenheimer and admitted into the HiPo, Lab One, and Senior Technical Leadership programs.

I developed grunt & gulp plugins to promote modern web standards among web developers that were adopted by over 15 technical evangelists worldwide.

Although I stopped being a full-time evangelist for web technologies for Microsoft in 2017, I am an advocate for the open web and will happily speak on the topic anywhere.

Rami Sayar presenting at a Make Web Not War event in 2016 — Captured in 2016 at Make Web Not War

Rami Sayar presenting at JavaScript Open Days in 2015 — Captured in 2015 at JavaScript Open Days

Community Organizer (2013-2017)

I organized monthly meetups for developers and engineers interested in a few select topics. Chief among them, I held the Montreal Unity User Group, which groups over 800 game developers, 3D artists, game designers that have an interest or use the Unity platform.

Montreal Startup Person (2013-2017)

Desiring to help build Montreal’s tech startup ecosystem, I started the local chapter for Startup Grind. From September 2013 to December 2015, I ran monthly fireside interviews featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators, and investors who share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building great companies. We hosted Julien Smith, Andy Nulman, LP Maurice, Sylvain Carle, Greg Isenberg, Bruno Morency, and others. Until 2017, I helped various Montreal startups build on cloud computing platforms like Microsoft Azure.

![Julien Smith being interviewed by Rami Sayar at Startup Grind](/media/BrF3fuMIYAEE2UJ.jpg “Interviewing Julien Smith from Breather at Startup Grind)

The Student Years (2009-2013)

Before graduating in 2013 with a Computer Engineering degree from McGill University, I founded the CodeJam @ McGill (Wayback Machine 2014), the university’s largest engineering competition, to improve practical engineering training for students. In 2012, I was awarded the Scarlet Key (PDF) for student leadership and significant contributions to the McGill community. I was also a teaching assistant and awarded the Faculty of Engineering Outstanding Teaching Assistant award.

Scarlet Key Ceremony — An unforgettable moment of honor, as I was presented with the Scarlet Key Award by the President of the Scarlet Key Society and McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum.

Speaker Press Kit

Professional Summary (Speaker Biography)

Rami Sayar is an accomplished developer advocate and software engineering manager with over a decade of experience in the technology industry. He is currently working at Microsoft Bing and is known for his expertise in building AI-powered user experiences at scale, cloud computing, and developer evangelism. He is passionate about empowering developers and organizations to create innovative solutions and transform their businesses through technology. Rami frequently speaks at conferences and events worldwide. He is also the principal author of Rami’s Readings, curating the best scientific papers, tweets, and articles from the week, and a Chemex coffee brewing fanatic.

Rami Sayar