Junis Abilda’s path to becoming an international expert in artificial intelligence and logistics isn’t a story of luck or a straightforward career advancement, but of an astonishing ability to transform seemingly disparate experiences into a powerful professional strategy. When you begin to explore his biography, you immediately realize it doesn’t fit the standard template of a successful professional, where a smooth road leads from school to a prestigious university, and from there straight to the office of an international corporation. Here, everything is different, and it is precisely this uniqueness that catches your attention. His journey began not with algorithms and neural networks, but with very mundane things: in 2010, he helped manage a mobile services business, working with clients, cash registers, and reports, a job he held for three years. Around the same time, from 2012 to 2013, he managed a small bakery, handling dough, deliveries, and freshness control. What do mobile communications and buns have in common, you ask? But Junis Abilda himself learned the most important lesson then: in any business, you need to count, see the figures for expenses, profits, and losses, because without them, any business will fail. And this experience working with real money and operating costs became a foundation that unexpectedly proved useful later.
Then came 2013, which radically changed his trajectory. He won a grant to study Computer Engineering and Software at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and moved to Almaty, where a completely different life began for him – instead of bakeries and mobile phone stores, he was surrounded by algorithms, databases, and programming languages. But, surprisingly, his entrepreneurial background remained; it helped him understand the purpose of all these technical gizmos. He studied not just for show, but to see how his knowledge could be applied to real-world problems. He combined his studies with work, and 2017 was incredibly intense for him: from January to May, he worked as a data analyst at the national railway company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy – a vast structure with trains, carriages, and millions of numbers, where his job was to make sense of these data sets, find patterns, and prepare reports. From May to June, he then moved to the position of Chief Analyst at ALC COMPANY “SVX ZHAKSYLYK,” and immediately after that, from July 2017 to January 2018, he held the position of Chief Analyst at AKZHOL SERVICE-CENTER LLC—three jobs in one year, with different teams and responsibilities, but the essence remained the same: turning raw numbers into clear management decisions. He recalls this period as challenging but incredibly interesting, because each time he learned something new about how companies operate from the inside.
That same year, 2017, another important event occurred: he received a grant for a master’s program at Satbayev University, which gave him deeper knowledge, research experience, and a new level of responsibility. And then his story took an unexpected turn: in 2017, he received an invitation to the New York English Center and decided to go to the United States to study English – first general English, and then business English, which he mastered until 2019. For him, this was a conscious decision, as he wanted to work internationally, and without language, this is impossible. He learned to speak, write letters, negotiate, and understand professional terminology in logistics and data analysis. And already in 2019, he completed an internship at Alox in Brooklyn as a junior logistics specialist. At first glance, this wasn’t data analysis, but logistics. However, as the expert himself explains, the two are inextricably linked. Logistics is data on cargo, routes, deadlines, and costs, and analysis is needed everywhere. His experience at a railway company, service centers, and other places was specifically in working with numbers, and his added English and understanding of the bakery and mobile store business came together in Brooklyn.
Today, Zhunis Abilda is a globally recognized expert, whose achievements are recognized by prestigious international awards, such as “Best AI Integration in Logistics & Supply Chain Operations” in 2025. His project was highly praised at the AI Summit Winter 2026 by an international jury from over twenty countries for its practical applicability and adaptation of complex algorithms to real-world transport infrastructure challenges. He is also actively developing Kazakhstan’s digital infrastructure, receiving letters of gratitude from the Ministry of Investment and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the national company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy. He also contributes to the development of young professionals by serving as an expert and jury member for student Olympiads at the country’s leading technical universities. When asked about advice for his former self, he answers simply and wisely: don’t be afraid to try different things; every experience will be useful. Even if baking and data analysis seem far removed from each other, they’re actually about the same thing—calculating and decision-making. And this credo—no big words, no “genius” posturing—is simply that of a man who, step by step, seized opportunities as they arose, said “yes,” and did his job, and ultimately ended up where he is today, shaping the future of entire sectors of the economy thanks to his unique perspective, where bread, trains, Brooklyn, and artificial intelligence become links in a single chain.
