---
created: "2025-09-18"
lastUpdated: "2025-09-18T05:00:00-04:00"
contextDate: "2025-09-18"
status: "active"
peopleType: colleague
peopleDomain: Business
peopleGroups: work_hierarchy
---

# Jim Thompson

**Role**: Senior Technical Lead - Dev Enclave Team Member
**Company**: [[Freddie Mac]]
**Location**: Washington DC-Baltimore Area
**Relationship**: Part of Freddie Mac's "brain trust" with Troy and Alex
**LinkedIn**: [jimthompson5802](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimthompson5802/)
**Tenure**: 42+ years at Freddie Mac (longest tenure of anyone)

## Professional Background

### **Current Position (2019-Present)**
- **Title**: Senior Technical Lead
- **Focus**: Data science and machine learning workloads in cloud
- **Infrastructure**: Kubernetes and Kubeflow open source software
- **Achievement**: Led development of prototype demonstrating feasibility of model serving over several thousand ML models with sub-second scoring time latency

### **Freddie Mac Career (42+ Years)**
- **Senior Technical Lead**: 2019-Present (6+ years)
- **Technical Architect**: 2007-2019 (12 years)
- **Enterprise Architect**: 2001-2007 (6 years)
- **Total Freddie Mac Experience**: 42+ years (longest tenure of anyone)

## Technical Expertise

### **Core Specialties**
- **Data Science**: Predictive analytics, machine learning
- **Cloud Computing**: AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, Kubeflow
- **Programming**: Python, R, Excel/VBA
- **Enterprise Architecture**: Operations research, discrete event simulation
- **Open Source**: Active contributor to ML frameworks

### **Key Technical Achievements**
- **AWS Data Science Platform**: Defined architecture for initial data science work in AWS
- **ML Pipeline Development**: Designed scikit-learn ML pipeline for Python-based model training
- **Deep Learning Research**: Conducted research into TensorFlow, Theano, and other frameworks
- **Cloud Infrastructure**: Led technical work for data science laboratory in Azure Cloud
- **Hadoop Implementation**: Led architecture work to evaluate and implement Hadoop infrastructure

## Education & Certifications

### **Education**
- **American University**: MA, Mathematics (1983-1987)
- **American University**: BS, Computer Science (1978-1983)

### **Recent Certifications**
- **Hugging Face**: Fundamentals of MCP (July 2025)

## Open Source Contributions

### **Ludwig - Open Source ML Framework (2019-Present)**
- **Role**: Code contributor
- **Key Accomplishments**:
  - Lead developer in integrating TorchVision pretrained image classification models
  - K-Fold Cross Validation function development
  - Assisted in ports to TensorFlow 2 and PyTorch
  - Developed test utility incorporated into many unit tests
  - Various code examples and documentation

### **Ray Tune - Hyperparameter Tuning (2022)**
- **Focus**: Scalable hyperparameter tuning
- **Duration**: April-May 2022

## LinkedIn Activity & Interests

### **Recent Posts & Engagement**
- **GPU Optimization**: Reposts content about GPU acceleration for data workloads
- **AI Agent Testing**: Interested in AI agent evaluation and testing frameworks
- **Machine Learning**: Active in ML community discussions
- **Followers**: 1,164 followers, 500+ connections

### **Technical Interests**
- **Data Science**: Predictive analytics, machine learning
- **Cloud Computing**: AWS, Azure, Kubernetes
- **Open Source**: Active contributor to ML frameworks
- **Enterprise Architecture**: Operations research, simulation modeling

## Relationship Context

### **Dev Enclave Project (Sep 17, 2025)**
- **Context**: Part of "brain trust" team for Dev Enclave framework
- **Team Members**: Mike Ryan, Alex (Alexander Von Hahmann), Jim Thompson, Troy
- **Project Goal**: Building framework for developers to do quick AWS experiments
- **Recognition**: Mike Ryan called the team the "brain trust" at Freddie Mac

### **Professional Network**
- **Mutual Connections**: Melissa Bergeron, Jinesh Koluparambil, and 8 others
- **LinkedIn Network**: 500+ connections, 1,164 followers
- **Industry Presence**: Active in data science and ML communities

## Notes

### **Technical Leadership**
- **Veteran Status**: 42+ years at Freddie Mac - longest tenure of anyone
- **Brain Trust Recognition**: Part of Freddie Mac's technical brain trust
- **Framework Development**: Contributing to developer productivity tools
- **Open Source Advocate**: Active contributor to ML frameworks

### **Project Collaboration**
- **Dev Enclave**: Working on framework for quick AWS experiments
- **Team Integration**: Part of high-level technical discussions with senior leadership
- **Mentorship**: Extensive experience mentoring and guiding technical teams
- **Innovation**: Consistently at the forefront of new technologies and approaches

### **Career Highlights**
- **Pioneer**: Early adopter of cloud computing and ML at Freddie Mac
- **Architect**: Designed and implemented key data science infrastructure
- **Contributor**: Active in open source ML community
- **Leader**: Recognized technical leader with deep institutional knowledge

## Related Projects

- [[🏢 Dev Enclave Project]] - Main collaboration project
- [[🏢 Freddie Mac]] - Company context
- [[Mike Ryan]] - Project leader and boss's boss
- [[Alexander Von Hahmann]] - Team member (Alex)
