Open to opportunities

Alee Syed

@aleesyed

Principal Data Engineer building scalable cloud data platforms and end-to-end ETL/ELT pipelines for real-time analytics.

United States

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a team where I can lead data architecture and modernization—owning secure governance, performance tuning, and streaming ETL/ELT—while mentoring engineers to deliver scalable, compliant analytics platforms.

I’m a Principal Data Engineer with 9+ years of experience designing and delivering scalable, high-performance data solutions across Healthcare, Financial Services, and enterprise environments. I lead cloud-native data architectures that support analytics, reporting, and real-time processing with strong governance and compliance.

In my current role, I architect and optimize large-scale platforms using Databricks, Snowflake, Apache Spark, and Apache Kafka. I establish data engineering standards, implement data quality checks, lineage tracking, and security controls, and drive modernization by migrating legacy on-premise systems to cloud-based architectures.

I’m also experienced building robust end-to-end ETL/ELT pipelines with Apache Airflow, Apache NiFi, and Spark, integrating batch and streaming workflows using Kafka and Spark Structured Streaming. I enjoy partnering with cross-functional teams, performing performance tuning and cost optimization, and mentoring engineers to deliver reliable, maintainable data products.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Principal Data Engineer

Current

Tecton

Dec 2021 - Present (4 years 7 months)

Led design and implementation of scalable, cloud-native data architectures using Databricks, Snowflake, Spark, and Kafka to support enterprise analytics and real-time processing. Established data engineering standards and governance (quality checks, lineage tracking, security controls) while modernizing legacy systems to improve scalability and reduce latency.

Databricks Snowflake Apache Spark Apache Kafka Data Governance Data Lineage Query Optimization Cloud Migration Cost Optimization

Senior Data Engineer

Scion Staffing

Mar 2018 - Nov 2021 (3 years 8 months)

Designed and maintained scalable ETL/ELT pipelines with Apache Airflow, Apache NiFi, and Apache Spark across AWS and Azure for batch and near real-time analytics. Integrated REST APIs and structured/unstructured sources, built streaming pipelines with Kafka and Spark Structured Streaming, and improved performance via SQL tuning and workload optimization.

Apache Airflow Apache NiFi Apache Spark Snowflake Apache Kafka Spark Structured Streaming SQL Tuning REST APIs

Data Engineer

Procogia

Jan 2016 - Feb 2018 (2 years 1 month)

Built and maintained SQL/Python data pipelines to extract, transform, and load data into data warehouses to ensure reliable, timely analytics. Developed dashboards in Tableau and Power BI, performed data cleaning and validation, and optimized relational schemas/queries in MySQL and PostgreSQL to improve performance and reporting usability.