Darren Ito (DeFreeuw)
Darren is the lead software engineer for RIA. He is a software engineer and data-systems architect with 15 years of experience building decision-support tools for energy trading, Major League Baseball operations, and recorded-music A&R. He began his career at SunGard Energy, configuring and integrating the Aligne trading-and-risk platform for natural-gas desks in North America and Europe. In 2013 he joined the Houston Astros’ analytics department, where he was responsible for all aspects of their MLB draft projection model – consolidating scouting reports, performance data, sensor telemetry, and medical information into a unified model.
Darren most recently finished a successful 7 year stint at Columbia Records where he created, designed, and implemented its first data-driven A&R research platform. He built a Python/Django application that ingested more than thirty public and proprietary data sources via AWS-based ETL pipelines, scored emerging artists, and forecasted streaming growth. The system became core infrastructure for signing and marketing decisions, and he subsequently hired and managed a team to extend the platform.
Darren’s technical toolkit centers on Python, Django, PostgreSQL, and a range of AWS services, including EC2, RDS, S3, SQS, Lambda, and SageMaker. He emphasizes delivery of minimal, production-ready slices that directly answer business questions, followed by iterative automation and scale-up.
Darren has a BA from Rice in Computational and Applied Mathematics and now lives in Tokyo with his wife and son.