Hiroshi Wayama

Software Engineer. Born in 1983 in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture. Graduated from the Faculty of Science and the Graduate School of Science at Kyoto University, majoring in physics. Joined Canon Inc. in 2009, engaging in semiconductor process development, numerical calculations, simulation technology development, and cloud-based web application development. While working as an employee, participated in image recognition projects using deep learning and data analysis tasks. Resigned in 2019 to become independent.

In 2020, co-founded LegalWin, an application for case management for lawyers. In 2021, sold a business that had been developed since my time as an employee. Currently working as a project manager and engineer on machine learning projects while researching recommender systems as a PhD student in a working professional doctoral program.

Contact

For inquiries, please use this form .

Startups

1. LegalWin

A project co-founded with a lawyer friend. As the technical lead, I am responsible for daily development and operations.

To gain the trust and ensure the comfort of lawyers, I developed all necessary functions for the service, from frontend to backend, infrastructure construction, security, and machine learning models and MLOps foundations.

The service is currently operational and used by many lawyers. Lawyers and paralegals, please register and use the service.

2. Educational Web Application

A project I started alone as a sole proprietor while working as an employee. It is a web application developed to help students study efficiently.

This service was sold to a company in 2021 and is now operated under a different service name. Therefore, no links are provided.

Projects

Here is a list of major projects I have been involved in as a sole proprietor or through a startup I founded.

1. LegalWin (Technical Lead)

The above case management app for lawyers. Development started in 2018, with a beta release in January 2020 and an official launch in May 2020.

Co-founder lawyer Hashimoto implemented the frontend in Ruby on Rails, continuously updating to improve the work efficiency of lawyers and paralegals.

As the technical lead, besides programming, I handled infrastructure and database design to ensure high security and stable server operation at low cost. I also developed machine learning models and their infrastructure for OCR and cloud-based document management features. Currently, I focus on server operations and monitoring to ensure stress-free usage for lawyers.

2. Development of Educational Web Application (Project Manager)

A web application for education that I started developing alone in 2014.

I handled everything from requirements definition to frontend and backend implementation, DB design, and infrastructure construction by myself. It was developed gradually after work hours and on weekends.

It was the first web application that I developed independently as a sole proprietor and earned income from, leaving a memorable experience.

3. Development of Real-Time Recommendation System for E-commerce Sites (Project Manager)

I worked as a project manager and machine learning engineer, handling everything from algorithm development to infrastructure construction for a real-time recommendation system for e-commerce sites.

As the project manager and machine learning engineer, I gained experience in technology selection, requirements definition, budget management, progress management, client negotiation, infrastructure construction, and model development. The technical expertise of the employees I worked with was very high, and I learned a lot from them.

4. Development of Recommendation Algorithm for Video Sites (Machine Learning Engineer)

I developed a recommendation engine for a video site. This was also a contract job as a sole proprietor.

As a machine learning engineer, I proposed and implemented various algorithms based on collaborative filtering and content-based filtering.

I was involved in development and maintenance for a long period, and I am very grateful to the highly skilled employees I worked with.

5. Development of Recommendation Engine for Financial Products in Financial Institutions (Machine Learning Engineer)

I developed algorithms to recommend optimal financial products to customers. This project was also commissioned by the same company as in project 4.

6. Development of Production Line Optimization Algorithm in Manufacturing (Data Scientist)

I developed algorithms to optimize costs and labor in the production lines of a client’s factory. It was a short-term contract of about half a month.

7. Development of Cheat User Detection Algorithm for Games (Data Scientist)

I was responsible for the development of algorithms to detect users violating game terms (repeat cheaters) from the proof-of-concept (PoC) stage. This was also a contract job.

Publications

Peer-reviewed papers on recommender systems written as a working professional PhD student.

  • Hiroshi Wayama and Kazunari Sugiyama: The Effectiveness of Quantum Random Walk Model in Recommender Systems, The 13th International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR 2023), pp. 225-234, Hybrid (Taipei, Taiwan and Online), July 23, 2023. pdf (open access)

  • Hiroshi Wayama and Kazunari Sugiyama: Proposal of a Recommender System Using Quantum Models, Journal of Japanese Database Society, Vol.21-J, Article No.3, March 2023. pdf

Patents

A list of semiconductor and system-related patents written during my time as an employee. The patents below include over 100 documents co-authored, but I was the lead inventor on a dozen or so.

Skills

  • Recommender Systems
  • Information Retrieval
  • System Development
    • AWS
    • GCP
  • Numerical Computation
    • Finite Element Method
    • Physical Simulation

Tools

  • PyTorch
  • SciPy
  • NumPy
  • Pandas
  • React
  • scikit-learn

Languages

  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • C/C++
  • Go

Experience

  • 2019 -
    • Co-founded LegalWin, Machine Learning Engineer
  • 2015 - 2019
    • Worked as a software engineer in a manufacturing company
  • 2009 - 2015
    • Worked as a semiconductor engineer in a manufacturing company

Education

  • 2021 -
    • Yoshikawa & Ma Laboratory, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University (Working Professional Doctoral Program, Recommender Systems)
  • 2007 - 2009
    • Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University (Quantum Optics Laboratory)
  • 2003 - 2007
    • Faculty of Science, Kyoto University (Major: Physics)

Skill Map

Here is a visualization of my experience.

After graduating from university, I started my career as a semiconductor development engineer in a manufacturing company. Later, I moved to the system development department and worked as a software engineer until I became independent in 2019.

My real-life conclusion is that effort rarely pays off, but without the efforts of the past, it would have been impossible to live independently. I am satisfied with the current job’s fulfillment, joy, and income, so in that sense, some efforts might have been rewarded.

With about 40 years of life left, I am excited to see how things will change in the future. I update this once a year.

skill map

- 2003

From high school until graduation, I spent most of my time playing mahjong. There was even a time when I seriously considered making a living from it. I remember playing 24-hour endurance mahjong over New Year’s Eve and coming out of the mahjong parlor after an all-night session to find it snowing and thinking it was a white Christmas with my friends. I wasn’t thinking about the future at all during this period, which was the second most enjoyable time of my life. However, I decided to study science in university since I was good at physics and math.

2003 - 2009 (Undergraduate to Master’s Course)

During my student years, I studied physics and math in the Faculty of Science. At the same time, I started studying programming on my own, learning C, C++, and C#. Around my third year of university, I became interested in Linux servers and set up a home server, creating my first website, which was about tourist spots in Kyoto. I coded the HTML and CSS from scratch using sakura editor.

This was when I first learned about domains, HTTP servers, mail servers, and file servers, the foundation of the internet. I also encountered Linux for the first time, learning SSH and VIM operations during this period. I also diligently learned Linux commands.

Although it didn’t contribute to

my credits, I remember typing on the keyboard late into the night. Without this experience, I wouldn’t be working independently today, so you never know what will be useful in life. Although I’ve only lived for 38 years, I truly believe this.

Besides the website I created at home, I studied classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, relativity, quantum information, quantum optics, linear algebra, algebra, and calculus as a physics student. Recently, I had the opportunity to look at my transcript, and I found that my grades in physics courses were quite good. At that time, attendance didn’t matter at all, so I might have gotten good grades because I scored well on tests.

Even today, when I read papers on machine learning and other information sciences, I can understand them down to the level of mathematical equations, thanks to the efforts I made back then.

2009 - 2015 (Employee - Device Development)

After completing my master’s course, I got a job at a manufacturing company. I was initially assigned to the semiconductor device development department. I gained valuable experience in numerical calculations through development, design, and simulation tasks. I deepened my knowledge of the Poisson equation, Boltzmann equation, diffusion equation, finite element method, linear algebra, etc., and accumulated extensive experience in computational physics. I even designed CAD and mask patterns, although I probably won’t touch them again.

I also learned the basics of business, such as using Excel, creating presentation materials with PowerPoint, writing patents, etc., which are essential for working as an engineer.

I am very grateful to the senior (later supervisor) who assigned these tasks to me. It was truly a blessing.

2015 - 2019 (Employee - System Development)

After that, I was transferred to the system development department. My experience in web application operation and programming was appreciated. I had the opportunity to lead the project and gain experience in full-scratch development of web services deployed worldwide. Having only self-taught experience in system development until then, it was refreshing and educational to develop a system with a large team.

Although there were inefficient parts in a large company, it might be inevitable in an environment where a single system failure is unacceptable. This was another significant experience.

During this time, I learned professional operations of VIM and terminals from a colleague. I had been customizing tools to make them more user-friendly, but I realized there were people better than me. The world is vast. That colleague had extensive practical experience and a wealth of knowledge in systems, and I learned a lot from him. Without working with him, my current work efficiency would have been much lower.

2019 - Present (Independence)

I became independent when my system development work at the company settled down.

I am currently involved in machine learning model development, business system development using GCP and AWS, and more. Personally, I am very interested in recommender systems. I also started reviewing quantum information, which I studied in my student days, riding the wave of excitement about quantum computing.

Machine learning model development and system development require not only knowledge of machine learning but also an understanding of the entire system, including mathematics, computers, and the latest cloud technologies.

2021 - Present (Working Professional Doctoral Program)

Since the fall of 2021, I have been researching recommender systems as a working professional doctoral student. I have participated in several projects to develop recommender systems as part of my work. As I progressed in development, I read more academic papers and wanted to learn more about recommender systems.

Initially, I was hesitant about taking the entrance exam due to age, but Professor Yoshikawa (then a professor at Kyoto University, now the Dean of Osaka Seikei University) encouraged me by saying, “Age doesn’t matter if you have the motivation,” which made me decide to take the exam.

I had not taken information science courses before, but I had studied computer science, computer architecture, and algorithms on my own while working as a semiconductor developer and system developer. This experience allowed me to clear the basic subjects with minimal study. I also successfully answered questions on specialized subjects, thanks to reading many papers on recommender systems. Overall, I only know the result of “passing,” but for someone with a background in physics, I think it was a satisfactory performance.

Currently, I am diligently writing papers on recommender systems under the guidance of Professor Sugiyama (now a professor at Osaka Seikei University). Although my days are busy with work, writing papers, and raising children, I am satisfied with my fulfilling life.

Summary

Looking back, all the skills I have acquired since my student days,

  • Physics
  • Mathematics
  • Programming
  • Linux server development
  • Numerical computation
  • System development

are all useful in my current work. At the time, I didn’t choose these skills with a particular purpose in mind, but I am glad I continued to work hard at each stage of my life. The only experience that hasn’t been useful yet is my knowledge of mahjong, which might be useful in old age.