# Vicki Boykis

> Vicki Boykis is a founding ML engineer and one of the most respected voices in applied machine learning. Known for making complex systems legible through rigorous writing and dry wit, she runs the Normcore Tech newsletter, authored a widely-cited deep dive on embeddings, built Viberary (a semantic book recommendation engine), and created Normconf - an unconventional data conference celebrating the unglamorous realities of ML work. She brings an economist's skepticism and a software engineer's discipline to a field that often confuses hype for progress.

- **Role:** Founding ML Engineer (startup)
- **Organizations:** Mozilla.ai, Automattic/Tumblr, Duo Security, Comcast
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor's in Economics, Penn State University, MBA, Temple University, Computer Science coursework, Community College
- **Known for:** Created Lumigator, an open-source self-hosted LLM evaluation framework at Mozilla.ai, Authored 'What Are Embeddings?' - a comprehensive 70+ page technical reference widely cited in the ML community, Built Viberary - a semantic search engine for book recommendations using Sentence Transformers

## Career timeline

- **2012-2015** — MBA at Temple University
- **2015-2017** — Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at Comcast
- **2017-2019** — Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Duo Security
- **2020-2022** — ML Engineer at Automattic/Tumblr, building recommendation systems for WordPress.com and Tumblr
- **2022** — Organized Normconf, an unconventional ML/data conference on December 15
- **2023** — Launched Viberary, a semantic book recommendation engine
- **2023** — Published 70+ page deep-dive paper 'What Are Embeddings?'
- **2023-2024** — Senior ML Engineer at Mozilla.ai, led development of Lumigator LLM evaluation tool
- **2024-present** — Founding ML Engineer at an early-stage startup, focusing on recommendation systems and personalization

## Achievements

- Created Lumigator, an open-source self-hosted LLM evaluation framework at Mozilla.ai
- Authored 'What Are Embeddings?' - a comprehensive 70+ page technical reference widely cited in the ML community
- Built Viberary - a semantic search engine for book recommendations using Sentence Transformers
- Founded and organized Normconf (2022), a 15-hour virtual conference on practical ML and data work
- Runs Normcore Tech, a newsletter with thousands of subscribers covering ML engineering and data culture
- Keynote speaker at PyCon Italia 2024 (Florence)
- Presenter at PyData Amsterdam 2023
- Co-authored 'What is ML Engineering?' with Gergely Orosz in The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter
- Published in Increment Magazine and The Pragmatic Programmer

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Published 'Querying 3 billion vectors' on her blog
- **2025-12** — Published '2025 in Review' annual retrospective
- **2025-09** — Published 'How big are our embeddings now and why?' and 'Walking around the app'
- **2025-01** — Published 'Everything I did in 2024' retrospective
- **2024-05** — Keynote speaker at PyCon Italia 2024 in Florence
- **2024-01** — Published 'What's new with ML in production' and Viberary retrospective

## Links

- Website: https://vickiboykis.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickiboykis
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/vboykis
- GitHub: https://github.com/veekaybee

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/vicki-boykis
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-20