# Yannis Psorakis

![Yannis Psorakis](/resources/cognition/portraits/yannis-psorakis.webp)

Building Cognition  
Cognition  
Greater London, England, United Kingdom

## At Cognition

- Role: Head of Field Engineering EMEA (Engineering)
- Joined: Sep 2025
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Principal Engineer, Thought Machine

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9
- GitHub: https://github.com/ipsorakis
- Website: https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~yannis/

## Notes
- Joined Cognition in Sep 2025 as Head of Field Engineering EMEA, based in London, roughly two months after Cognition acquired Windsurf (July 2025); he came from 11 years at Thought Machine rather than from Windsurf. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Principal Engineer at Thought Machine (Oct 2021-Sep 2025) on 'Large-scale, company-wide technical initiatives; cloud cost optimisation, AI infrastructure, deployment health & production support, engineering hiring'. Combined with his earlier client-deployment work. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Since joining Cognition his GitHub (bio 'Cognition AI') fills with demo-style repos: forks of COBOL/AWS mainframe modernization apps, OWASP Juice Shop, Societe Generale libraries, RealWorld example apps, plus his own fleet-maintenance-logistics and C# ledgerloop repos (Sep 2026). banking and industrial accounts). (https://github.com/ipsorakis)
- Director of Engineering at Thought Machine (Dec 2019-Sep 2021): 'Head of Core platform (Kernel department), led multiple teams on core product development + interfaced with field teams on strategic client roadmap items'. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Thought Machine founding engineer (Dec 2014-Dec 2015), 'Building ML-driven personal finance management applications'. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- His Oxford homepage says he was in the Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition Research Group (Engineering Science), finished his D.Phil in summer 2013, did a fellowship at the Oxford Mathematical Institute, then 'joined (autumn 2014) the startup Thought Machine as a Machine Learning scientist'. (https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~yannis/)
- Technical Lead at Thought Machine (Jan 2017-Oct 2019) for 'Core platform and Treasury systems; data pipelines and streaming -- led client projects+deployments'. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- At Thought Machine as Senior Software Engineer (2016) he worked on the core platform: 'Vault smart contracts, ledger, accounts, treasury systems -- coupled w/ client-side field work'. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Open source: GitHub ipsorakis hosts his D.Phil research code: mRVMs (multiclass relevance vector machines, 24 stars), commDetNMF (overlapping community detection via NMF, 11 stars), GMMevents (gathering-event inference from spatio-temporal data), BOMP (Bayesian one-mode projection), Facebird (great tit social network tools), PatentCodeAnalysis (technology networks, Python). (https://github.com/ipsorakis)
- Research Fellow in Mathematics at the University of Oxford (Sep 2013-Dec 2014): 'Joint work with Prof J. Doyne Farmer on time-series forecasting'. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Public headline says "Building Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Education: D.Phil. in Engineering Science (AI/ML), Oxford (2010-2013); MSc Information Technology, University of Glasgow (2008-2009); B.Eng/M.Eng Production Engineering, Polytechnion Kritis (Technical University of Crete) (2001-2008). (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- ML Engineer / Research visitor at DeepMile Networks, LLC (Washington DC area, Jul-Oct 2012): 'Big graph analytics & scalable Machine Learning in security and psychographics', including scientific proposals to US government agencies. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Previous roles include Principal Engineer at Thought Machine; Director of Engineering at Thought Machine; Technical Lead at Thought Machine; Senior Software Engineer at Thought Machine; Founding engineer at Thought Machine; Research Fellow in Mathematics at University of Oxford; ML Engineer / Research visitor at DeepMile Networks, LLC; Software Engineer at ADMIN Application Development. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Education history includes Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) in Engineering Science, AI / Machine Learning, Oxford University; MSc, Information Technology, University of Glasgow; B. Eng. & M. Eng, Production Engineering, Polytechnion Kritis. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Early career: Software Engineer at ADMIN Application Development in Greece (2004-2006), building logistics software in VB/ASP .NET. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)
- Location is Greater London, England, United Kingdom. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9)

## Experience
- Head of Field Engineering EMEA at Cognition - London Area, United Kingdom (Sep 2025 - Present)
- Principal Engineer at Thought Machine - London Area, United Kingdom (Oct 2021 - Sep 2025): Large-scale, company-wide technical initiatives; cloud cost optimisation, AI infrastructure, deployment health & production support, engineering hiring
- Director of Engineering at Thought Machine - London Area, United Kingdom (Dec 2019 - Sep 2021): Head of Core platform (Kernel department), led multiple teams on core product development + interfaced with field teams on strategic client roadmap items
- Technical Lead at Thought Machine - London Area, United Kingdom (Jan 2017 - Oct 2019): Core platform and Treasury systems; data pipelines and streaming -- led client projects+deployments
- Senior Software Engineer at Thought Machine - London, United Kingdom (Jan 2016 - Dec 2016): Development of core platform; Vault smart contracts, ledger, accounts, treasury systems -- coupled w/ client-side field work
- Founding engineer at Thought Machine - London Area, United Kingdom (Dec 2014 - Dec 2015): Building ML-driven personal finance management applications
- Research Fellow in Mathematics at University of Oxford - Greater Oxford Area (Sep 2013 - Dec 2014): Joint work with Prof J. Doyne Farmer on time-series forecasting
- ML Engineer / Research visitor at DeepMile Networks, LLC - Washington DC-Baltimore Area (Jul 2012 - Oct 2012): Big graph analytics & scalable Machine Learning in security and psychographics. Also contributed to scientific proposals to US government agencies.
- Software Engineer at ADMIN Application Development - Greece (Jan 2004 - Jan 2006): Development of logistics software using VB/ASP .NET, CSS, XML, Access

## Education
- Oxford University - Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) in Engineering Science, AI / Machine Learning - (Jan 2010 - Jan 2013): My research involves the development of Bayesian methodologies for probabilistic inference in spatio-temporal complex networks and tools that help us identify structure in large graph datasets that are dominated by noise and/or missing observations. I have also published in areas of supervised learning (relevance vector machines) and ensemble learning.
- University of Glasgow - MSc, Information Technology - (Jan 2008 - Jan 2009): Research conducted in Mark Girolami's Inference Group on Bayesian classification models, in particular multi-class Relevance Vector Machines. Journal paper published in IEEE Transactions in Neural Networks.
- Polytechnion Kritis - B. Eng. & M. Eng, Production Engineering - (Jan 2001 - Jan 2008): 5-year engineering degree, with 2-year break due to working as a software engineer

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannis-psorakis-43b5bb9
- https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~yannis/
- https://api.github.com/users/ipsorakis/repos?per_page=100&sort=updated
- https://github.com/ipsorakis
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/naderdabit?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAdw8wYBOCvphpbCCxOxln2zWU5hRX6UoKk
- https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~sjrob/Theses/psorakis_thesis.pdf


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/yannis-psorakis · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people