Open to opportunities

Alee Syed

@aleesyed

Senior-to-principal data engineer delivering scalable cloud data platforms and end-to-end ETL/ELT for real-time analytics.

United States

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a role where I can lead cloud-native data platform work—owning scalable ETL/ELT, real-time pipelines, and strong governance/security—while partnering cross-functionally to modernize legacy systems and improve performance, reliability, and cost.

I’m a Senior Data Engineer and Principal Data Engineer with 9+ years designing and delivering scalable, high-performance data solutions across Healthcare, Financial Services, and enterprise environments. I focus on data architecture and building robust end-to-end ETL/ELT pipelines that reliably support analytics, reporting, and real-time processing.

In my recent role as Principal Data Engineer (Tecton, 12/2021–Present), I lead cloud-native data architecture using Databricks, Snowflake, Apache Spark, and Apache Kafka for high-volume, high-velocity workloads. I establish engineering standards and governance frameworks—implementing data quality checks, lineage tracking, and security controls—to help teams meet regulatory compliance.

I also modernize legacy on-premise systems to cloud-based architectures, improving scalability, reducing latency, and lowering infrastructure costs through performance tuning and workload management. Previously, at Scion Staffing and ProCogia, I built and automated scalable batch/streaming ETL/ELT with Apache Airflow, Apache NiFi, Spark, and SQL/Python, while partnering with stakeholders to turn business needs into maintainable data products.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Principal Data Engineer

Current

Tecton

Dec 2021 - Present (4 years 6 months)

Led the design and implementation of cloud-native data architectures for enterprise analytics and real-time processing using Databricks, Snowflake, Spark, and Kafka. Established data engineering standards and governance frameworks, and modernized legacy systems to improve scalability, reduce latency, and optimize processing costs.

Databricks Snowflake Apache Spark Apache Kafka Cloud Data Architecture Data Governance ETL ELT Performance Tuning Cost Optimization

Senior Data Engineer

Scion Staffing

Mar 2018 - Nov 2021 (3 years 8 months)

Designed and maintained scalable ETL/ELT pipelines using Apache Airflow, Apache NiFi, and Apache Spark across AWS and Azure. Built batch and near real-time streaming pipelines with Kafka and Spark Structured Streaming, and automated workflow monitoring and data quality using Prometheus/Grafana and Great Expectations.

Apache Airflow Apache NiFi Apache Spark Apache Kafka Spark Structured Streaming Snowflake Databricks REST APIs Great Expectations Grafana

Data Engineer

ProCogia

Jan 2016 - Feb 2018 (2 years 1 month)

Developed and maintained data pipelines to extract, transform, and load data into data warehouses using SQL and Python. Built dashboards in Tableau and Power BI, performed data validation and transformation, and optimized relational database schemas and queries in MySQL and PostgreSQL to improve reporting performance.