Shahzad Malik — Data Science & AI Engineering Blog https://shahzadmalik.com/blog Practical guides on event tracking, analytics engineering, production ML, LLM/RAG systems, A/B testing, and AI workflow automation by Shahzad Malik, freelance data scientist and AI engineer. en-us Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:32:34 GMT How to hire a freelance data scientist in 2026: rates, red flags, and a working process https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-freelance-data-scientist https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-freelance-data-scientist Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT A buyer's guide to hiring a freelance data scientist: what they cost in 2026, freelancer vs. agency vs. full-time trade-offs, the red flags that predict failed projects, and a hiring process that actually works. CUPED explained: faster A/B tests with variance reduction https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/cuped-ab-testing-explained https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/cuped-ab-testing-explained Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT A practical explanation of CUPED for A/B testing: how variance reduction works, when it helps, and what to watch before trusting the results. Dashboard design for executives: clarity before charts https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/dashboard-design-for-executives https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/dashboard-design-for-executives Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT How to design executive dashboards that leaders actually use: decision framing, metric hierarchy, context, drill-downs, speed, and trust. An AI workflow automation playbook for operations teams https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/ai-workflow-automation-playbook https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/ai-workflow-automation-playbook Thu, 21 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT How to find, scope, and ship reliable AI workflow automations for operations: intake, triage, enrichment, routing, reporting, human review, and observability. Marketing attribution with first-party data https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/marketing-attribution-with-first-party-data https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/marketing-attribution-with-first-party-data Thu, 14 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT How to build practical marketing attribution with first-party events, UTMs, ad platform data, CRM stages, revenue, and transparent assumptions. GA4 + BigQuery: when the raw export is worth it and how to model it https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/ga4-bigquery-export-guide https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/ga4-bigquery-export-guide Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT GA4's BigQuery export gives you raw, unsampled event data — but it's not a free lunch. When the export is worth switching on, what it costs, and how to model the event tables into metrics your team can trust. A dbt analytics engineering checklist for trustworthy metrics https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/dbt-analytics-engineering-checklist https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/dbt-analytics-engineering-checklist Thu, 07 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT A dbt checklist for analytics engineering: sources, staging models, marts, tests, documentation, naming, performance, and dashboard ownership. How to choose a vector database for RAG https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/vector-database-selection-for-rag https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/vector-database-selection-for-rag Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT A practical guide to choosing a vector database for RAG: pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, filtering, hybrid search, scale, and operations. Product analytics metrics that actually matter https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/product-analytics-metrics-that-matter https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/product-analytics-metrics-that-matter Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT How to choose product analytics metrics that support decisions: activation, retention, adoption, conversion, guardrails, and north-star metrics. Server-side tracking explained for analytics and attribution https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/server-side-tracking-explained https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/server-side-tracking-explained Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT What server-side tracking is, when it helps, when it adds unnecessary complexity, and how to design it for cleaner analytics and attribution. How to choose an LLM for production: a practical framework https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/choosing-an-llm-for-production https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/choosing-an-llm-for-production Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Stop choosing models by leaderboard. A practical framework for picking an LLM for production: define the task, build a small eval set, measure quality/latency/cost on your data, and design for swappability. A RAG evaluation checklist for production AI systems https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/rag-evaluation-checklist https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/rag-evaluation-checklist Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT A practical checklist for evaluating RAG systems: retrieval relevance, source coverage, grounded answers, citations, abstention, latency, and feedback loops. LLM evaluation: what to measure before an AI feature ships https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/llm-evaluation-production-guide https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/llm-evaluation-production-guide Thu, 02 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT A production-focused guide to LLM evaluation: golden datasets, groundedness, retrieval quality, refusal behavior, latency, cost, and regression tests. How to reduce LLM hallucinations in production https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/how-to-reduce-llm-hallucinations https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/how-to-reduce-llm-hallucinations Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Practical techniques to reduce LLM hallucinations: retrieval grounding, citations, evaluation harnesses, output guardrails, and knowing when to make the model say 'I don't know'. The 12-point data quality checklist to run before you trust a dashboard https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/data-quality-checklist-before-trusting-a-dashboard https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/data-quality-checklist-before-trusting-a-dashboard Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT A dashboard is only as good as the pipeline behind it. Twelve concrete checks — from event loss and duplicate rows to silent schema drift and definition mismatches — that catch most broken metrics before an executive does. 5 A/B testing mistakes that quietly ruin your results https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/ab-testing-mistakes-to-avoid https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/ab-testing-mistakes-to-avoid Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Peeking, sample-ratio mismatch, underpowered tests, ignored guardrails, and multiple comparisons — the common A/B testing mistakes that lead to confident but wrong decisions. From notebook to production: an MLOps checklist https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/notebook-to-production-mlops-checklist https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/notebook-to-production-mlops-checklist Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT A practical MLOps checklist for shipping machine learning models to production: reproducible training, deployment, monitoring, evaluation, retraining, and cost control. What is RAG? A practical guide to Retrieval-Augmented Generation https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/what-is-rag-retrieval-augmented-generation https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/what-is-rag-retrieval-augmented-generation Tue, 10 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT A plain-English guide to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): what it is, how the pipeline works, where it beats fine-tuning, and how to keep answers grounded and accurate. How to design an event tracking plan that scales https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/how-to-design-an-event-tracking-plan https://shahzadmalik.com/blog/how-to-design-an-event-tracking-plan Thu, 22 Jan 2026 09:00:00 GMT A practical framework for designing an event tracking plan: naming conventions, schema versioning, governance, and validation that keep your analytics clean as you grow.