Roberto Aguilar

Growth Through AI & Agentic Systems, He/Him

@robguilar

About

Hi, I’m Roberto a person on a lifelong pursuit to become the best version of myself through Kaizen principles, to grow into someone I’ll always be proud of.

I’m an AI Engineer driven by simple yet useful principles: continuous improvement, people-first collaboration, and impact measured through customer value. That’s the thread connecting my work today — building reliable AI systems that turn ambiguous problems into tangible business growth.

Since I was young, I’ve always loved learning on my own. At 15, I taught myself how to program video games with Unity, following MonoBehaviour patterns. Interestingly, modern agentic frameworks use similar state and memory management principles as NPCs, which made my transition into AI surprisingly natural.

I grew up in a small town called Ciudad Colón, in Costa Rica, but my career has taken me across the world to work on major initiatives alongside incredibly skilled and educated people I never expected to meet — and sometimes to compete (and even win) against them in hackathons.

Last but not least — I usually practice trail running at dawn, keep learning about neural nets (transformers, etc.), watch la Vecchia Signora games, my favorite Pokémon is Snorlax, and sometimes unwind by playing on my Switch. And a fun fact: I live with a golden holland lop bunny named Jacka, born in January of the Chinese New Year 2023.

Contact

Work Experience

2024 - Present

Senior Data Scientist, Growth Through AI McKinsey & Company

Senior Data Scientist
Nov 2024 - Present

Data Scientist
Aug 2024 - Nov 2024

Joined as the first full-time contributor for McKinsey’s Growth AI team. Building AI systems for lead-acquisition engines with Generative AI, churn models to retain customers, and collaborative-filtering recommenders for cross-sell, along with the distributed pipeline workflows that make them scale. Partnering with Stanford and MIT Partners commercial experts on AI & Sales Growth initiatives. Learn more here.
2024 - 2024

Software Engineer, GenAI Core Tech McKinsey & Company

Feb 2024 - Jul 2024

Contributed to the early developement of Lilli, McKinsey’s GenAI flagship product. Developed core GenAI technologies and infrastructure to support generative AI capabilities across the organization. Learn more here.
2023 - 2024

Data Scientist, CommercialX by QuantumBlack AI McKinsey & Company

Sep 2023 - Jan 2024

Contributed with QuantumBlack AI on CommercialX initiatives, by delivering of a demand-transfer network that drove a significant revenue uplift for an european retailer. Learn more here.
2022 - 2023

Data Engineer / Analyst, Pricing Solutions McKinsey & Company

Data Engineer / Analyst
Mar 2023 - Aug 2023

Junior Data Engineer / Analyst
Mar 2022 - Mar 2023

Started at McKinsey as a Junior Data Engineer and Analyst, building foundational data pipelines and tree-node algorithms for product’s assortment and pricing Periscope’s solutions. Learn more here.
2020 - 2020

Enterprise Data & Analytics Intern Broadcom Inc.

Intern for VMware’s Enterprise Data & Analytics division. Participated in VMware BORATHON 2020 and placed Top‑8 globally, building a Workspace ONE social‑networking extension and real‑time HR dashboard in 48 hours. Learn more here.

Achievements

2025

Global Excellence Program Hackathon | 1st Place Winner McKinsey & Company · Atlanta, GA. USA

Developed an AI Summarization Application to codify evaluator intuition for year‑end reviews. Selected by People’s Org., competing against 40+ McKinsey Principals and Senior Engineers across North America.
2024

Distinctive Performance Recognition | ROYG 2024 Annual Reviews McKinsey & Company · Worldwide

Recognized with the highest score of “Distinctive” in the 2024 annual performance review, due exceptional contributions over a yearly basis, ranking among the top ~10% of Client Service Professionals globally. This underscores exceptional contributions over a yearly basis.
2020

VMware’s Global Hackathon | 8th Place Finisher Broadcom Inc. · Palo Alto, CA. USA

Ranking among the Top-8 finalists for the annual VMware Borathon. Recognized for developing an internal social network to complement the Workspace ONE product.

Volunteering

2024

NVIDIA AI Workbench Beta tester pre - NVIDIA GTC 2024

Contributed to the beta testing of NVIDIA AI Workbench, identifying software issues and providing feedback to improve usability and performance. Learn more here.

Education

2022

B.S.E., Industrial Engineering Tecnológico de Costa Rica · Bachelor of Science

Thesis field - Computer Vision for Quality Control Statistics of Metal Foams (Score: 100/100). Learn more here.

Languages

Fluent

English TOEFL

Full professional proficiency.
Native

Spanish Bilingual

Native or bilingual proficiency.