Leonardo Urena · Lead Data Scientist & AI/ML Engineer

I build AI systems that run in production.

Agentic AI, RAG, LLM evaluation, and ML pipelines on Azure and Databricks. In production for security operations at Stryker since 2023.

Portrait of Leonardo Urena Nikolova
5+ years across production ML, AI research, and data engineeringOpen to Senior AI/ML Engineer and Lead Data Scientist roles, remote or with relocation.
Average SOC investigation time
25 → 6 minAgentic workflow with RAG and an LLM-as-a-Judge stage
Less manual review
55%Classifier trained on 50,000+ labeled reports, at a 96% true-negative rate
Records from 15 sources
200K+Resolved and linked with PySpark entity-resolution pipelines
Identities in 61 countries
110K+Correlated to cut identity review effort by 70%

Production work at Stryker

Four systems running in production.

Since 2023 I have led data science for cybersecurity at Stryker. Each system is described at a non-confidential level, with the outcome first.

Agentic SOC investigation

Average investigation time down 75%, from about 25 minutes to 6.

  1. AlertInvestigation starts
  2. LLM expert agentsPython on Azure Functions, Foundry SDK
  3. Evidence and context
    • Enterprise APIsSecurity and IT systems
    • Retrieval (RAG)Embeddings over procedures
  4. LLM-as-a-JudgeChecks quality before release
  5. AnalystReceives the reviewed analysis
Simplified, non-confidential view of the production architecture.
What it does
A production agentic workflow in which LLM expert agents gather evidence through enterprise APIs and ground their analysis in retrieved procedures and knowledge.
How it is evaluated
A dedicated judge model scores each multi-agent analysis against defined quality criteria before anything is released.
  • Python
  • Foundry SDK
  • Azure Functions
  • RAG
  • Embeddings
  • LLM-as-a-Judge

Phishing report classification

55% less manual review at a 96% true-negative rate.

What it does
Classification models trained on 50,000+ labeled historical reports, built through feature engineering, model comparison, and systematic error analysis.
How it is evaluated
False positives, false negatives, and edge cases reviewed; versions compared in MLflow and validated on benchmark datasets before adoption.
  • Classification
  • Feature engineering
  • MLflow
  • Error analysis

Fine-tuned incident classifier

Quarterly Board-level security reporting from weeks of analyst effort to minutes.

What it does
An LLM fine-tuned on 2,000 to 3,000 analyst-reviewed ServiceNow security incident records maps noisy investigation narratives to MITRE ATT&CK tactics and Cyber Kill Chain stages.
How it is evaluated
Validated on held-out closed incidents, with confusion analyzed across adjacent taxonomy classes before operational use.
  • LLM fine-tuning
  • MITRE ATT&CK
  • Held-out evaluation

Entity resolution and identity analytics

200,000+ records linked across 15 sources. Identity review effort down 70% across 110,000+ identities in 61 countries.

What it does
Python, SQL, PySpark, and Databricks pipelines for normalization, entity mapping, deduplication, and reconciliation across heterogeneous enterprise sources.
What it found
Correlating Active Directory, Workday, ServiceNow, endpoint, and policy data surfaced 1,200+ inconsistencies and exceptions.
  • PySpark
  • Databricks
  • SQL
  • Record linkage
  • Data quality

Interactive labs

Working systems, not screenshots.

Five personal projects, each with a live API. Atlas, Sentinel, and Aegis form one security platform: trusted records, a monitored model, and an investigation that waits for approval. Hermes and Prism hold email triage and search changes to the same bar.

  • Personal projects
  • Synthetic, public-safe data
  • Not employer systems

What this showsData engineering · Entity resolution · Graph modeling · Risk prioritization

  1. Pick a remediation scenario
  2. Watch reachable paths and the top score change
  3. Select a path to trace it on the graph
Remediation scenario

POST/api/graphReady

Reachable critical paths
6of 6 before remediation
Paths removed
0no change
Top path score
36.7%edge-likelihood product
Synthetic security graph8 entities and 9 active relationships. Highlighted path: Internet to Riley Park to FIN-LT-042 to Finance App to Data Warehouse, score 36.7%.exposed service · likelihood 0.82 · control: WAF policyservice credential · likelihood 0.63 · control: secret rotation71%phishing · likelihood 0.71 · control: phishing-resistant MFA91%assigned endpoint · likelihood 0.91 · control: EDR isolationactive session · likelihood 0.74 · control: session revocation66%trusted device · likelihood 0.66 · control: device complianceSSO access · likelihood 0.79 · control: conditional access86%read/write role · likelihood 0.86 · control: least privilegereplication role · likelihood 0.57 · control: network segmentationInternetexternalPublic APIapplicationRiley ParkidentityFIN-LT-042assetIdentity GatewayapplicationFinance AppapplicationData WarehousedataBackup Vaultdata

Ranked critical paths

Select a path to trace it on the graph

+3 more paths in the full lab.

Path score multiplies assumed edge likelihoods to rank paths.

6 reachable critical paths. Top path score 36.7%.

How I work

The complete system, not just the model.

Production quality depends as much on data, evaluation, and delivery as on model choice, so I work across the whole lifecycle.

  1. Data foundation

    Ingestion, normalization, entity resolution, validation, and feature preparation across heterogeneous enterprise sources.

    • Python
    • SQL
    • PySpark
    • Databricks
  2. Modeling

    Classification, deep learning, embeddings, and fine-tuning, with thresholds chosen from error analysis.

    • scikit-learn
    • PyTorch
    • TensorFlow
    • Fine-tuning
  3. Generative AI

    Agentic and multi-agent workflows, tool use, and RAG grounded in trusted procedures.

    • Azure AI Foundry
    • RAG
    • Embeddings
    • LangGraph
  4. Evaluation

    Ground-truth datasets, baselines, benchmarks, LLM-as-a-Judge, and failure-mode analysis.

    • DeepEval
    • LLM-as-a-Judge
    • MLflow
    • Benchmarks
  5. Production

    Serverless services, API integration, CI/CD, and validation against benchmarks before release.

    • Azure Functions
    • REST APIs
    • Git
    • CI/CD

Experience

Research, industrial cybersecurity, then production AI.

A robotics and mechatronics engineer with an emphasis in AI and computer vision. My work connects cybersecurity, data engineering, and machine learning, from research to deployment and monitoring.

  1. Since Oct 2023

    Lead Cybersecurity Data Scientist

    Stryker · Heredia, Costa Rica

    Production AI and data systems for security operations, identity analytics, and incident response, on Azure AI Foundry, Azure Functions, Databricks, and MLflow.

    • Architected a production agentic investigation workflow (RAG, expert agents, enterprise APIs) that cut average SOC investigation time by 75%, from about 25 to 6 minutes, with an LLM-as-a-Judge stage checking outputs before release.
    • Built and evaluated classifiers on 50,000+ labeled historical reports, reducing manual review by 55% at a 96% true-negative rate.
    • Fine-tuned an LLM on 2,000 to 3,000 analyst-reviewed incident records to map cases to MITRE ATT&CK and Cyber Kill Chain stages, taking Board-level security reporting from weeks to minutes; validated on held-out closed incidents.
    • Built entity-resolution pipelines linking 200,000+ records from 15 enterprise sources, and correlated 110,000+ identities across 61 countries, cutting identity-review effort by 70%.
  2. Jun 2022 to Oct 2023

    DCS Cybersecurity Engineer

    Emerson · Escazú, Costa Rica

    Security for distributed control systems at energy-generation customers.

    • Led the design and implementation of a configurable hardening solution spanning operating systems, DCS infrastructure, historians, secure protocols, ACLs, and data-loss prevention.
    • Built automation tools that turned recurring manual procedures into reusable workflows for global production environments.
  3. Jan 2021 to Jan 2022

    Computer Researcher

    Tecnológico de Costa Rica · Cartago, Costa Rica

    Applied deep learning with the University of Costa Rica’s Tumor Chemosensitivity Laboratory.

    • Designed a deep CNN over embedding-based RNA sequence representations for lncRNA-miRNA interaction prediction.
    • Built laboratory-validated ground-truth datasets and used error analysis to guide model iterations.

Deep learning research

89.93% accuracy on lncRNA-miRNA interaction prediction

Sequence embeddings and a deep CNN improved accuracy and AUC by 23.5% over the prior result.

Education
Licentiate in Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering, emphasis in AI & computer visionTecnológico de Costa Rica
Certifications
Deep Learning SpecializationDeepLearning.AI
CompTIA Security+CompTIA
Languages
English (C1)Spanish and Russian, native
Full résumé (PDF)