I'm a product-minded Data Engineer with a hacker's mindset crafted over a lifetime of making and breaking things.

Had an unusually early exposure to computers, and have been hooked ever since.

What I do

I help companies build centralized data lakehouses by gathering data from disparate sources (APIs, databases etc), to enable data science & data driven business decisions - without breaking the bank.

This work includes:

• System architecture based on business needs & constriants
• Designing and building systems for data ingestion, processing, storage
• Serving data to other teams through APIs
• Optimizing existing systems for cost and performance

The technical advantage I bring is particularly on 2 fronts:

• Rapid prototyping for initial problem-space exploration
• Building synthetic load simulations (testbenches), to check and prove architectural/systemic feasibility

My solutions generally come with proofs of correctness - reports with hard numbers, not intuitions with feelings.

My edge

Beyond the technical stuff, I am an extremely strong communicator. Am very good at meeting people and figuring out actual requirements, aligning stakeholders etc.

I generally get contacted by other engineers and execs when:

• They are starting out new projects, and don't exactly know where to start and who to call.
• They are in some hairy problem, and need some pointers on how to approach it (cut down noise and arrive at the root cause).

Nature

I truly come alive in the face of unknown - when the problem is open ended/ambiguous, and there is no clear path to solution. 0 to 1.

I'm a fun loving guy, and am easy to work with. Keep things pretty chill within the team.

Am a self-sufficient person and typically don't need oversight and hand-holding. Can manage execution and delivery if needed. Am good at things like setting direction, and talking to stakeholders to set development priorities. A good definition might be "Manager of one".

I care deeply about engineering and take intensive care about things like tech debt, maintainability, on-boarding speed, extensibility, performance etc.

Hire

Want to connect or hire? email me - niraj[at]theniraj[dot]com

I'll suggest that you interview me as if you're dealing with a consultant - simply state your problem, and judge me by how I design the system, and how I build up parts of it.