about
I'm Malak. I work at the point where a model becomes a product: figuring out what it can do, proving it with evals, and putting it in front of the people who need it. Right now that's Quine at Microsoft Research, where the users are scientists and the stakes are experiments that take weeks to run.
I started as an engineer. At PointClickCare and Uber I shipped production code, which is still how I read a design doc: what breaks, who gets paged, how long it takes to load. At Microsoft AI I moved into product and spent almost 2 years on Recall and Copilot, two features that taught me how much of AI product work is earning trust on the first run.
I studied Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, with minors in management science and computing. Since 2020 I've also been teaching kids to code with BridgeTO, which has made me better at explaining things than anything else I've done.
I'm based in Seattle. The fastest way to reach me is malakali542@gmail.com, and I'm also on LinkedIn.
things i'm into
- evals that predict what users will feel [work]
- agents that ask before they act [work]
- arabic dialects and the models that miss them [writing]
- teaching python through music [bridgeto]
built with ai, on the side · my stack
- the quine website [microsoft research]
- tiny voyages [daily geography game]
- skyward [daily trivia game]
- career paths for newcomers to canada [tools]
experience
- 2026 - nowMicrosoft Research · research product manager, QuineCapability roadmap, evals across mid-training and post-training, competitive analysis and strategy for a multimodal world model of biology.
- 2024 - 2026Microsoft AI · product manager, Recall and CopilotRecall onboarding and retail demo, Copilot diagnostics with local code execution, trusted sources and evals for commercial Copilot.
- 2023Enlighted, a Siemens company · product manager internLaunched location-intelligence and asset-tracking tags for a B2B IoT platform, across hardware, software and go-to-market.
- 2022 - 2023Uber · software engineer, UberX ShareRider flows that cut confused cancellations, server-driven UI, and a 40% faster MapStore. New York.
- 2021 - 2022PointClickCare · software engineerProvider portal, a shared UI library, and CI pipelines that run 30% faster.
- educationUniversity of Waterloo · BASc, Systems Design EngineeringMinors in management science and computing.
community
- 2025 - nowAfrican Microsoft Employees · engagement directorProgramming and events for a 900+ member employee resource group.
- 2020 - nowBridgeTO Youth × Amazon · tech director & mentorCurriculum and hackathons that teach Toronto youth to code by remixing music in Python. Marketing lead since 2021.
honors
- 2020Google scholarship to the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC)Google
- 2020Youth leader, Future Skills: A Conversation with President Barack ObamaThe Economic Club of Canada
- 2019Class of 1986 ScholarshipUniversity of Waterloo
- 2019Walied and Deena Soliman All Star ScholarshipThe Muslim Award of Excellence
- 2019Lincoln Alexander Chancellor ScholarshipUniversity of Guelph