Meet Victor Figueroa, a data scientist at Populi. When he’s not working with the engineering team to take raw data and build machine learning models that produce the valuable insights customers depend on, you can find Victor traveling and exploring the great outdoors.

Q: What’s your role at Populi, and what does an average day look like for you?

A: I’m a data scientist here at Populi. A typical day for me involves working on our machine learning models, meeting with product stakeholders to help develop new data solutions, and collaborating with our amazing team.

Q: Why did you choose a career in data science?

A: I was drawn to data science and software engineering because I enjoy problem solving. Every day there’s a new, challenging problem to work on. Each of these problems provides an opportunity to learn while diving deep into the data and business logic behind the problem. Additionally, the work is incredibly iterative. Even after a solution is developed, you’re constantly looking at ways to improve it, build upon it and automate the whole process.

Q: What do you think is the most important benefit of the detailed healthcare analytics and insights that Populi provides?

A: I believe that technology can help disrupt the healthcare industry and provide enormous insights into how to better treat patients, find underserved markets and improve preventive medicine. Populi provides insights to our clients and ultimately enables them to better serve their patients, which is one of the many reasons I chose to work here. 

Q: What’s your favorite part of working 100% remote?

A: Having the flexibility to travel and live where you want to. As I’m sure many of us realized during the pandemic, having the freedom to travel is incredibly valuable. I love that I can choose to relocate and visit friends or family without worrying about traveling to a physical office.

Q: What do you do in your free time?

A: I love to spend time out in nature. I try to go camping, hiking and just travel in general as much as I can. I find that traveling is a nice way to unplug and focus on spending time with the people around you, as well as connect with new people you meet along the way. 

Q: What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?

A: There’s this really nice ice cream shop near where I grew up that has peanut butter oreo cookies and cream. It’s the perfect blend of sweet and savory.

Q: If you came back in your next life as an animal, what animal would you be?

A: Some type of bird. I think being able to fly around and explore from the vantage point of a bird would be breathtaking.