Looking for a job

Ahmet Kalafat

@ahmetkalafat

Data Solution Architect at LC Waikiki, modernizing an 80 TB Google Cloud data platform and cutting infrastructure costs by 75%.

Turkey

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m open to remote or hybrid roles in the EU and Türkiye, as a principal architect or head of a data function. I’m interested in hands-on architecture work close to the code, especially around streaming, GenAI-enabled data products and FinOps at scale.

At LC Waikiki, I designed and led the migration of an 80 TB enterprise data warehouse from SQL Server and Cloudera to BigQuery. The platform serves thousands of business users, and the migration cut infrastructure costs by about 75%, saved about $550K annually, and made batch workflows about seven times faster.

Today, I set architecture, modeling and quality standards for LC Waikiki’s Google Cloud data platform. I also designed its organization-wide real-time data pattern and contributed to a merchandising and pricing intelligence platform that turned a week of manual research into next-day decisions. I moved from line management back into a hands-on architecture role, working close to the code on streaming, GenAI-enabled data products and FinOps.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Data Solution Architect

Current

LC Waikiki

Sep 2024 - Present (2 years)

Hands-on architecture role for LC Waikiki's Google Cloud data platform (BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Dataform, Cloud Composer, Cloud Run), serving a 1,000+ store, 50+ country retailer plus e-commerce. I own solution design end to end: target architecture, reference implementations, data modelling standards, cost and performance guardrails, and hand-over to the engineering teams. Architecture autho

Data Quality Apache Beam dataform Data Modeling GCP Data Architecture BigQuery Pub Sub Solutions Architect

Senior Data Engineering and Data Architecture Group Manager

LC Waikiki

May 2022 - Aug 2024 (2 years 3 months)

Owned the architecture and delivery of LC Waikiki's enterprise data platform through its migration to Google Cloud, while leading the data organisation (18 engineers, architects and specialists) and a $1M+ platform budget.

• Enterprise DWH migration to BigQuery (2023-2024): moved the 80 TB warehouse off on-prem SQL Server and a 15-node Cloudera cluster onto BigQuery with Dataflow, Dataform and Cl

Big Data Management and Data Architecture Manager

LC Waikiki

Aug 2019 - May 2022 (2 years 9 months)

Owned the big data and data architecture portfolio during the move toward a cloud-ready platform: Cloudera Hadoop cluster, SQL Server enterprise DWH and OLAP layers, with a team of 8-12 engineers serving merchandising, supply chain, finance and marketing analytics.

• ETL offload program: moved 200+ of the heaviest analytical jobs from SQL Server to Cloudera (Spark, Hive, Impala; Airflow orchestra

Data Engineering Team Lead

LC Waikiki

Apr 2017 - Aug 2019 (2 years 4 months)

Set up and led LC Waikiki's first data engineering team, taking the analytical platform from SQL Server + SSIS to a hybrid Hadoop + RDBMS architecture.

• Stood up the production Cloudera CDH cluster (15 nodes) with namespace design, security and resource isolation for merchandising, supply chain, customer 360 and finance.

• Built the company's first multi-source data lake (CRM, ERP, clickstream

Data Architect

LC Waikiki

Sep 2014 - Apr 2017 (2 years 7 months)

Owned LC Waikiki's analytical architecture as the company moved from a single-team BI shop to a multi-team data platform.

• Modernised the enterprise DWH on SQL Server with columnstore indexes: 35x compression and a large step up in query performance. Presented the architecture at SQL Saturday Istanbul 2014.

• Designed the first semantic layer and multidimensional OLAP cubes for merchandising, s

Senior Business Intelligence Developer

LC Waikiki

May 2010 - Sep 2014 (4 years 4 months)

Built LC Waikiki's first enterprise-scale analytical platform on SQL Server.

• Designed and implemented Turkey's first FastTrack Architecture data warehouse (Kimball dimensional modeling, star schema). Published by Microsoft as a customer success story in Turkey and globally.

• Built a reusable, metadata-driven SSIS ETL framework (dependency tracking, restartability, alerting) adopted by 80+ ana

Data Quality Vendor Management ETL Data Pipelines Microsoft Fabric Data Modeling SQL Data Streaming Python Data Architecture Dimensional Modeling Databricks Azure Solutions Architect LLM Power BI C#

Senior Software Developer

Goldas Company

Jan 2005 - May 2010 (5 years 4 months)

Analysis, design and development of the company's multi-language ERP (accounting, treasury, finance, insurance-contract tracking and document tracking) and its e-commerce sites, goldas.com and chipgold.com, on C#, ASP.NET / Ajax and SQL Server.

Data Modeling Java Python Solutions Architect Stakeholder Management

Technical Trainer (Software Development, Databases, Web, Systems)

BilgeAdam Teknoloji

Sep 2000 - Jan 2005 (4 years 4 months)

Delivered individual and corporate training in software development, SQL and databases, web development and Microsoft systems technologies at BilgeAdam's Bakirkoy and Fatih campuses.

Python Solutions Architect