Open to opportunities

Ali Shah

@alishah4

Message

Principal data engineer delivering scalable, governance-driven ETL/ELT and real-time analytics platforms.

United States

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a cloud-first team where I can lead end-to-end ETL/ELT and real-time pipelines, strengthen data governance and compliance, modernize legacy systems, and mentor engineers to deliver dependable analytics at scale.

I’m a Senior/Principal Data Engineer with 9+ years of experience designing and delivering scalable, high-performance data solutions across Healthcare, Financial Services, and enterprise environments. I specialize in data architecture, relational and NoSQL databases, and building robust end-to-end ETL/ELT pipelines.

I’ve led cloud-native data platforms that support analytics, reporting, and real-time processing, using Apache Airflow, Apache NiFi, and Apache Spark along with Databricks and Snowflake. I architect and optimize high-volume data flows with Apache Kafka, ensuring reliability, scalability, and regulatory alignment through data quality checks, lineage tracking, and security controls.

I’m particularly proud of modernizing legacy on-premise systems into cloud-based lakehouse and streaming architectures, reducing latency and improving cost efficiency while enabling real-time analytics and operational dashboards. I also mentor teams through code reviews and technical leadership, and I collaborate closely with executive leadership, product teams, and stakeholders to align data strategy with business outcomes.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Data Engineer

Current

Synthesis

Dec 2021 - Present (4 years 4 months)

Led the design and implementation of scalable, cloud-native data architectures for enterprise analytics and real-time processing using Databricks and cloud platforms. Architected and optimized Snowflake, Spark, and Kafka-based platforms, established data governance and quality controls, and modernized legacy systems to improve scalability and reduce latency.

Databricks Snowflake Apache Spark Apache Kafka AWS Azure Data Governance

Senior Data Engineer

West Monroe

Mar 2018 - Nov 2021 (3 years 8 months)

Designed and delivered scalable ETL/ELT pipelines using Airflow, NiFi, and Spark across AWS and Azure. Built batch and real-time processing workflows with Kafka and Spark Structured Streaming, automated scheduling and monitoring, and improved query performance through SQL tuning and data modeling in Snowflake and Databricks.

Apache Airflow Apache NiFi Apache Spark Apache Kafka Spark Structured Streaming Snowflake Databricks SQL Optimization Great Expectations

Data Engineer

Slalom

Jan 2016 - Feb 2018 (2 years 1 month)

Developed and maintained data pipelines to extract, transform, and load data into data warehouses for reliable analytics availability. Built dashboards and reports with Tableau and Power BI, improved data quality through validation and cleaning, and optimized relational database schemas and queries using MySQL and PostgreSQL.