Career journey of Thabang Mashinini-Sekgoto

1. BSc in Computational & Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University of the Witwatersrand (2014 - 2016). Foundations in mathematics, astrophysics & simulation. Mathematical modelling, astrophysics, simulation, and numerical methods.
2. BSc Honours in Computer Science, University of the Witwatersrand (2017). Wildfire estimation with kernel density estimators. Project: Wildfire Estimation Using Kernel Density Estimators.
3. System Analyst & Support, ZAR X (Mar 2017 - Nov 2017). Operational support for a newly launched stock exchange serving 13,000+ clients. Provided systems analysis and operational support for a newly launched stock exchange serving 13,000+ clients, supporting trading platform stability during go-live and early operations.
4. Data Scientist & Software Engineer, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (Nov 2017 - Jan 2018). Recognised by Mail & Guardian, CSIR & DST for innovation. Developed predictive analytics and operational intelligence systems supporting municipalities. Built Django-based decision-support systems serving 17 municipalities (including Cape Town and Gauteng) to identify operational bottlenecks and improve service delivery.
5. MSc in Computer Science (Distinction), University of the Witwatersrand (2018 - 2019). Distinction · Echo State Networks for image segmentation. Thesis: Learning Level Set Method by Echo State Network for Image Segmentation. Proposed a novel spatiotemporal deep-learning formulation of variational level set segmentation, benchmarking five recurrent and convolutional architectures.
6. Data Scientist, Business Intelligence Services - University of the Witwatersrand (Jun 2018 - Apr 2020). R2M+ annual government subsidy impact. Developed recommendation and analytics systems supporting institutional planning and student success. Built reporting and analytics workflows using Python, SQL, and Power BI. Developed a clustering-based recommendation engine generating over R2M annually in government subsidy. Trained 76+ staff and students.
7. Machine Learning Research Scientist, IBM Research (Apr 2020 - Nov 2021). ML on the IBM PAIRS Geospatial Platform & COVID-19 analytics. Developed machine learning and geospatial analytics for environmental and climate-risk applications. Built predictive systems with TensorFlow and distributed data platforms. Deployed climate-forecasting models into IBM PAIRS Geoscope platform. Contributed to the Gauteng COVID-19 risk-index dashboard.
8. Senior Data Scientist, Vodacom (Nov 2021 - Mar 2024). ≈R1B annual operational savings · Vodacom Star Award. Led a high-performing team of 10 data scientists/engineers. Architected the Smart Generator Optimisation platform across 15,000+ sites, saving ≈R1 billion. Built streaming pipelines processing 25M+ daily events using Kafka, PySpark, Kubernetes, and a custom PyFlink stream-processing framework.
9. Lead Data Scientist (Acting Head of Data Science), ABSA Insurance (Mar 2024 - Present). Telematics latency reduced to under 24 hours · 230k+ properties flood-risk modeled. Leading the Insurance Data Science capability across underwriting, retention, fraud, telematics, and climate risk. Championed hyperpersonalisation processing 2M+ daily signals. Modernised the telematics platform using Ubunye Engine, reducing latency from 2 months to under 24 hours. Developed geospatial flood-risk models across 230,000+ properties.
10. PhD in Computer Science (In Progress), University of the Witwatersrand (2024 - Present). Researching physics-informed self-supervised learning for SAR-based flood mapping. Research: Physics-informed self-supervised learning for SAR-based flood extent mapping, with applications to insurance risk and data-scarce regions. Focuses on the intersection of remote sensing, self-supervised learning, and computational hydrology.