Hwon Ihm
Director Of Product Management – Generative AI (Applicant)
Seoul
Summary
Product & AI leader with 11+ years turning ambiguous problems into scalable, data‑driven products across retail, public sector, and enterprise. Built and shipped multimodal search, recommendations, and LLM applications end‑to‑end (problem discovery → PoC → production), often as both product owner and technical lead. Known for rapid prototyping, rigorous experimentation, and stakeholder alignment. Seeking to lead Coupang’s Generative AI charter to build LLM‑powered creative generation and personalization for Growth Marketing.
Overview
14
14
years of professional experience
3
3
Languages
Work History
CTO / Cofounder
Data Monsters, Inc.
03.2016 - 07.2025
- Product & platform leadership: Closed and delivered 40+ consulting and build–operate projects across defense, healthcare, government, manufacturing, logistics, and retail, serving as both product owner and hands‑on builder.
- Multimodal commerce search (Yoit): Conceived, built, and scaled a fashion visual + text search platform end‑to‑end (LLM/NLP/vision, retrieval, ranking, backend, data pipelines, UX). Reached 310K users in 172 countries; operationalized relevance evaluation and iterative launches.
- LLM adoption : Bulit a personalized RAG‑based fashion‑style chatbot integrated with Yoit that accurately understand user's styling needs
- Executive engagement & enablement: Consulted C‑level and frontline teams to translate ambiguous pain points into structured workflows and scalable platforms; authored technical memos and demo narratives that unlocked budget and renewals.
- Funding & persuasion: Helped secure ₩15B+ in venture funding via live demos and outcome‑focused technical proofs.
Lecturer, CEO Course
Seoul National University
04.2024 - 04.2025
- Trained executives on LLM prompting, prompt engineering, and context engineering, and AI product development. Emphasized hypothesis‑driven roadmaps, guardrails, and measurement.
Advisory Board Member
Korea Data Agency
09.2024 - 02.2025
- Contributed to data utilization policies for emerging LLM technologies. Authored guidance balancing innovation with security & compliance.
- Authored strategic reports balancing innovation with security and compliance.
Instructor
Fast Campus
09.2024 - 12.2024
- Delivered hands‑on courses and executive lectures on LLM applications in consumer and industrial contexts.
CEO
Owlnest, Inc.
04.2014 - 03.2016
- Founded and scaled a data consulting firm; secured projects with Samsung Electronics, Samsung Life, Samsung SDS.
Research Intern
DealsPlus
12.2011 - 02.2012
- Conducted market analysis and strategy development for consumer platforms.
Education
Ph.D. Coursework - Computer Science
KAIST
Daejeon 04.2001 -
Master of Science - Computer Science
KAIST
Daejeon 04.2001 -
Bachelor of Arts - Business Administration
Sogang University
Seoul 04.2001 -
Skills
- Technical: NLP, Vision, LLM/RAG pipelines, Hybrid Search, Data Engineering, Backend/API Development
- AI/LLM: LLM apps & Orchestration, Prompt Engineering, Context Engineering, RAG/hybrid search, Fine‑Tuning & Evaluation, Embeddings, Retrieval Pipelines, Multimodal
- Consulting & Strategy: Problem Structuring, Workflow Design, KPI & ROI Modeling, Stakeholder Engagement, PoC Development
- Communication: Executive Presentations, Cross-functional Collaboration, Training & Enablement
Accomplishments
- Best Solution, NEXT UP STARS Seoul | 2023
- Track Winner, Junction X Hackathon (Naver) | 2020
- Finalist, Video Contest (BAT Korea) | 2010
- The Army Commendation Medal - US Department of Army | 2007
Timeline
Advisory Board Member
Korea Data Agency
09.2024 - 02.2025
Instructor
Fast Campus
09.2024 - 12.2024
Lecturer, CEO Course
Seoul National University
04.2024 - 04.2025
CTO / Cofounder
Data Monsters, Inc.
03.2016 - 07.2025
CEO
Owlnest, Inc.
04.2014 - 03.2016
Research Intern
DealsPlus
12.2011 - 02.2012
Ph.D. Coursework - Computer Science
KAIST
04.2001 -
Master of Science - Computer Science
KAIST
04.2001 -
Bachelor of Arts - Business Administration
Sogang University
04.2001 -