Sharath Reddy Polu is an accomplished Advanced Analytics professional with over six years of experience delivering end-to-end data science, machine learning, and analytics solutions across retail, banking, and technology domains. He brings deep expertise in predictive modeling, fraud detection, risk management, and scalable cloud-based analytics pipelines.
Currently, Sharath serves as Manager, Advanced Analytics at Walmart Inc., where he leads seller risk management initiatives. By leveraging BigQuery, Python, and ML algorithms, he developed high-impact fraud detection rules and predictive models to flag non-compliant sellers, achieving multi-million-dollar loss prevention. He also automated catalog health dashboards and reporting workflows, reducing manual effort by 96 hours per month, while building decision tree-based rules with 85% precision to mitigate seller risk.
Previously, as a Senior Data Scientist at Truist Bank, Sharath designed advanced predictive analytics frameworks to support commercial and consumer banking portfolios. He simplified mapping for 150+ critical data elements, built centralized data assets using SAS Viya, SQL, and PySpark, and developed automated ETL processes to ensure data flows to loss forecasting ML models seamlessly. He optimized fraud detection rules, increasing capture rates from 68% to 74% and delivering $2.5M in annual savings. His additional contributions included Zelle claims automation (saving 528 hours/month), login fraud detection, and fixing discrepancies in debit card production rules, which resulted in $5.6M yearly savings.
Earlier, as a Data Scientist Intern at Fondo Atlas, he built XGBoost models for rent forecasting across 800 submarkets and performed feature engineering to reduce predictive model error. At Amazon Development Centre India, he identified fraud patterns preventing over $100K in e-commerce losses. At Accenture, he streamlined global sales reporting, reduced manual analysis by 65%, and developed a chatbot with Microsoft LUIS API, saving $500K in operational costs.
Sharath holds a Master of Science in Business Analytics from the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business (GPA: 3.8/4) and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Osmania University. With proven expertise across Python, PySpark, SQL, BigQuery, SAS, Tableau, and Snowflake, Sharath excels at transforming business challenges into data-driven solutions that reduce risk, optimize operations, and deliver measurable business value.