Rajiv Shah

About Rajiv Shah

When I was in the military, my nickname was the “why guy.” I never wanted to just execute, I wanted to understand the larger goal and find a better solution. That curiosity pulled me into data science, where I helped create millions in value, earned patents and publications, trained hundreds of data scientists, and worked across industries using everything from interpretable models to deep learning.Over the last several years I’ve focused on early‑stage and high‑growth AI companies, especially customer‑facing roles where product, GTM, and solutions meet. I love working directly with customers, turning their problems into clear product narratives, and helping teams ship innovative, practical AI that actually lands inside the enterprise. I’ve been part of GTM and enablement teams at DataRobot, Snorkel AI, Hugging Face, Snowflake, and now Contextual AI, with a track record of scaling customer growth and technical adoption.I’m at my best in the messy, zero‑to‑one phase: building trust with technical buyers, explaining complex tools in plain language, and helping teams align on what “value” really means. I’m also a strong external communicator with 100+ talks and keynotes, publications across computer science, law, and communications, and a public platform (@rajistics) focused on practical AI.

Experience

1. Agentic Ai Engineer

   OpenHands

   Mar 2026 — Present

   Founding GTM Team

Education

• Harvard Kennedy School

  Fellow, National Center for Digital Government

  2003 — 2004

• University of Illinois College of Law

  J.D., Intellectual Property Law

• University of Nebraska-Lincoln

  B.S., Electrical Engineering

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  Ph.D., Communications

  2004