Stephan Baier

Freelance Data Scientist

Stephan Baier
Munich, Germany

Experience

Oct 2025 - Present
4 months

Freelance Data Scientist

Baier Data & AI Consulting

Mar 2024 - Sep 2025
1 year 7 months
Munich, Germany
Hybrid

Team Lead Data Science

Check24 GmbH

  • Setting up a hybrid ML architecture on AWS and on-premises

  • Developing custom machine learning models for computer vision and information extraction

  • Evaluating and prototyping with different agentic AI tools, LLMs, and MCP

  • Collaborating with product owners to define functional requirements and security aspects

  • Leading a team of data scientists and data engineers

  • OCR pipeline: Training an EasyOCR model on domain-specific and synthetic datasets (ID cards, passports, driver’s licenses)

  • Segmentation model: Implemented a segmentation model in PyTorch for precise cropping of documents and perspective correction

  • ID classifier: Developed a CNN-based model in PyTorch to classify document types

  • Hologram detection: Developed a specialized classification model in PyTorch to verify holograms

  • Converted models to ONNX and TensorFlow Lite, including quantization and pruning of model weights to meet real-time performance requirements

  • Achieved average inference times of under 200 ms on mobile devices

  • Over one million successful real-time idents

  • Reduced manual verification effort by more than 90 %

  • Tech stack: AWS SageMaker, Bedrock, Rekognition; multimodal LLMs, Pydantic, FastMCP, prompt engineering; PyTorch, PyTorch Lightning, TensorFlow Lite, ONNX; TorchVision, OpenCV, EasyOCR

Jun 2021 - Feb 2024
2 years 9 months
Berlin, Germany

Lead Machine Learning Engineer

RS Alpha Capital GmbH

  • Set up an on-premise Kubernetes cluster using Apache Ranger

  • Automated GPU-based training jobs

  • Built CI/CD pipelines with ArgoCD and GitLab for automated model deployment

  • Implemented MLOps pipelines with Dagster and ClearML

  • Tech stack: Kubernetes, Apache Ranger, PyTorch, ArgoCD, GitLab CI/CD, Docker, Grafana, Prometheus, on-prem GPU cluster

  • Counteracted model degradation through automated retraining and deployment with minimal manual effort

  • Ensured compliance with regulatory requirements through detailed monitoring and a highly available infrastructure with 99.99 % uptime

May 2018 - May 2021
3 years 1 month
Munich, Germany

Senior Data Science Consultant

Data Reply GmbH

  • Streaming ML for Customer Message Processing (Oct 2019 – May 2021)**

  • Built a real-time ML pipeline for classifying customer communications

  • Created live dashboards for message flow, predictions, and system monitoring

  • Designed a VAIT-compliant ML lifecycle with audit trails, Jenkins CI, and deployment on Kubernetes

  • Tech stack: Kafka, OpenShift, Jenkins, MLflow, Python, scikit-learn, XGBoost, Universal Sentence Encoder

  • Enabled real-time processing of over 20,000 messages per day

  • Delivered fully traceable and regulatory-compliant ML workflows

  • NLP Pipeline for Semantic Search and Entity Linking (Aug 2018 – Sept 2019)**

  • Developed and implemented an NLP pipeline using BERT-based models for NER and entity disambiguation

  • Built a semantic search engine with Elasticsearch and Kibana dashboards for query analysis

  • Linked extracted entities and relationships in a Neo4j knowledge graph, enabling graph-based search and interactive exploration via Neo4j Bloom

  • Tech stack: PyTorch, BERT, Elasticsearch, Kibana, Neo4j, Bloom, Azure

  • Provided more timely risk assessment for credit insurance by incorporating current news events

  • Increased efficiency for claims adjusters by enabling faster identification of relevant historical claims

  • Sales Funnel Optimization for Loan Products (May 2018 – July 2018)**

  • Applied clustering and classification models to segment user behavior and identify drop-off patterns in the sales funnel

  • Performed data analysis, feature engineering, and model development

  • Developed an interactive web application to visualize conversion paths, customer segments, and model results for business stakeholders

  • Tech stack: Python, PySpark, Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, SQL, Plotly, Dash

Oct 2013 - Apr 2018
4 years 7 months
Munich, Germany

Industrial Research Fellow

Siemens AG

Sep 2012 - Jun 2013
10 months
Berlin, Germany

Software Developer

Steria Mummert AG

Summary

I am an experienced Data Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer with a strong academic background in computer science and artificial intelligence. My focus is on consulting, implementing, and operationalizing state-of-the-art machine learning solutions.

Skills

  • Programming & Frameworks: Python (Pandas, Scikit-learn, Pyspark, Fastapi), Java
  • Machine Learning & Deep Learning: Pytorch, Tensorflow, Keras, Mlflow, Azureml, Aws Sagemaker
  • Natural Language Processing: Llm, Rag, Knowledge Graph, Small Language Model Fine-tuning
  • Computer Vision: Ocr, Opencv, Torch-vision, Image Classification, Object Detection, Segmentation
  • Data Engineering & Orchestration: Sql, Apache Kafka, Elasticsearch, Dagster
  • Cloud & Virtualization: Aws, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Ci/cd

Languages

German
Native
English
Advanced

Education

Oct 2014 - Mar 2019

Ludwig Maximilian University

Ph.D. · Computer Science · Munich, Germany · summa cum laude (with highest honours)

Oct 2012 - Sep 2014

Ludwig Maximilian University

M.Sc. · Computer Science · Munich, Germany

Sep 2009 - Sep 2012

Ludwig Maximilian University

B.Sc. · Computer Science · Munich, Germany

Certifications & licenses

AWS Cloud Practitioner

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer

Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level 1

Confluent Certified Developer For Apache Kafka

Professional Scrum Master (PSM 1)

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