Gali Katz’s journey at Taboola spans an impressive seven years. During this time, she has progressed from a Senior Software Engineer to an Algorithm Engineer while pursuing a PhD in Cognitive Science and being an active tech mentor within the community. Her role at Taboola is deeply intertwined with cutting-edge technology and innovation, starting with Taboola’s Metrics framework, Anomaly Detection service, localization with Large Language Models (LLMs), and Semantic Similarity. To learn more about Gali’s blended experiences in tech and innovation, I sat down with her to learn about her accomplishments and how her passion for tech has extended beyond Taboola.
Gali on her proudest moments at Taboola
As a Taboolar, I can confidently say that this ecosystem fosters personal growth. Here, you can develop your career path, participate in many initiatives, and make a difference. Your voice is valued, and everything is managed with great transparency.
Reflecting on her reasons for initially joining and growing her career at Taboola, Gali highlights the warm and welcoming environment. “I joined Taboola because of the warm and welcoming people, seeing it as a place where I could be myself and make a difference,” she shares. The opportunities for growth in areas like Architecture, Data Science, and Public Speaking have been critical factors in her decision to stay and thrive at Taboola.
Gali shares how she embraces unfamiliar technologies and strives to find solutions to problems along the way. She takes great pride in her contributions to building several major pipelines from scratch, including Taboola’s Metrics framework, the Taboola Anomaly Detection service, and the Taboola LLMs pipeline. Each of these projects presented her with diverse and challenging tasks, continually pushing the achievable limits. When working on end-to-end projects, she navigated many challenges and resolved issues that emerged, all while collaborating with various teams. Additionally, she greatly emphasizes fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility for her projects, ensuring they are clearly articulated for others to understand.
How Taboola has empowered Gali’s career development
When asked what sets Taboola apart in the industry, Gali emphasizes the company’s commitment to empowering its employees. “Taboola’s strength lies in empowering those who are proactive and interested,” she explains. This supportive culture means that if you identify a potentially valuable path for the company, you will receive the resources and access to the knowledge needed to pursue it.
Gali has experienced this firsthand. After five years in the Infrastructure group, she transitioned to the Algorithm department, becoming a Machine Learning Engineer. This shift opened up new opportunities in data science, particularly in Generative AI. It allowed her to pursue her passion and explore new areas such as fine-tuning LLMs, reducing embedding dimensionality, and evaluating the quality of semantic embeddings, further developing her skills.
In her words, being part of Taboola means being in an environment that fosters personal growth and values every voice. “As a Taboolar, I can say that this ecosystem fosters personal growth. Here, you can develop your career path, be part of many initiatives, and make a difference,” she concludes.
Making an impact at Taboola and beyond
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Beyond her technical contributions at Taboola, Gali is deeply involved in mentorship and public speaking. She has participated in the Starship Program with Ben-Gurion University three times, where she mentors undergraduates in developing data science projects and co-authors technical blog posts with them. “I have faith in this program as it introduces students to the industry and expedites their job search. It’s my way to do some good,” Gali reflects.
Gali also enjoys public speaking and has participated in numerous meetups and conferences. She enjoys sharing her knowledge and discussing her projects with a broader audience. This passion for mentorship and knowledge sharing extends to her daily work at Taboola, where she actively mentors, teaches and publishes technical content.
Her advice to anyone looking to join Taboola is simple yet profound: dare to take on challenges and pursue your passions. “The best advice I received was to always dare. Choose the path, even if it seems difficult, and set high expectations for yourself,” she says. This mindset has been instrumental in her journey and is something she believes can help others succeed as well.
Gali’s story is a testament to the empowering and inclusive culture at Taboola, where innovation and personal development go hand in hand.
To learn more about why we are consistently ranked as a great place to work, check out the Taboola Life blog and visit our careers page. Discover your moment with us! #TaboolaLife