Journey

Timeline

1. Apr 2025 – Present

   EmployerBBI.ai · Data and ICT consultancy · Dubai, UAE

   Principal Data Architect & DevOps Lead

   Lead the technical delivery of Cloudera-based data platforms for government and enterprise clients across the GCC, from sizing and design through build to handover.

   What I did

   • Technical and delivery lead for a government security organisation's data platform programme, which took three evidence-processing use cases into production.
   • Administer Cloudera CDP and Cloudera Machine Learning through Cloudera Manager: cluster health, configuration, security (Kerberos, TLS, Ranger) and upgrades.
   • Build platform automation with Ansible and GitHub Actions, including pre-installation readiness checks, remediation and certificate tooling.
   • Lead pre-sales architecture: platform sizing, growth models and RFP compliance reviews.
   • Validate upgrade and migration runbooks, and lead escalations on client Cloudera and data-warehouse estates.

   • Cloudera CDP
   • CML
   • Spark
   • Hive
   • Oozie
   • NiFi
   • Ansible
   • GitHub Actions

   Client assignments at BBI.ai

   • Client assignment Government security organisation · Client delivery

     Technical and delivery lead for a multi-phase data platform programme, from platform install to three production use cases and handover.

     Turning evidence files into governed, queryable data →Alerting on privileged logins to a cluster manager →

   • Client assignment Government agency · Proof of concept

     Built a raw-to-gold lakehouse proof of concept on Cloudera CDP with PySpark and Hive.

     A raw-to-gold lakehouse proof of concept on Cloudera →

   • Client assignment Government agency · Client delivery

     Wrote the deployment manual and configuration for an open-source Hadoop environment with Kerberos.

     Open-source Hadoop with Kerberos, documented for handover →

   • Client assignment Regulated financial-services client · Client delivery

     Automated pre-installation readiness checks for a Cloudera cluster.

     Automated readiness checks for Cloudera installs →

   • Client assignment Telecom operators · Client delivery and proof of concept

     Cross-hypervisor migration proof of concept; validated upgrade runbooks and led a support escalation.

     A cross-hypervisor migration proof of concept →

   • Client assignment Public-sector, banking and telecom prospects · Pre-sales

     Platform sizing and RFP compliance reviews for proposals.

     Sizing national-scale data platforms →

2. Oct 2022 – Mar 2025

   EmployerEmirates NBD · Banking institution · Dubai, UAE

   Senior Technology Engineer, Big Data & DevOps

   Brought containers and CI/CD to the bank's Cloudera-based advanced-analytics platform.

   What I did

   • Built a framework for running Spark and big-data jobs in Docker/Podman containers on YARN in CDP, and moved server-based workflows onto it.
   • Orchestrated containerised big-data jobs through YARN and Kubernetes.
   • Designed GitHub Actions CI/CD for the big-data estate with SonarQube quality gates, Checkmarx security scans and Nexus artefacts.
   • Implemented on-demand, self-hosted GitHub Actions runners with Podman (container in container).
   • Deployed containerised AI/ML model workflows on the CDP Private Cloud cluster.
   • Led the advanced-analytics team's side of the Hortonworks to Cloudera CDP migration.

   • CDP
   • Docker / Podman
   • YARN
   • Kubernetes
   • GitHub Actions
   • SonarQube
   • Checkmarx
   • Nexus
   • Ansible

   Containers and CI/CD for a bank's analytics platform →

3. May 2018 – Sep 2022

   EmployerReliance Jio · Telecom operator · Mumbai, India

   Big Data DevOps Administrator (Assistant Manager)

   Part of the platform team running the Jio Big Data Lake, one of India's largest on-premises data lakes.

   What I did

   • Helped administer the Jio Big Data Lake. The platform, run by the wider team, had approximately 800 servers and 50 PB of HDFS capacity.
   • Lead contributor to the Hortonworks (HDP) to Cloudera CDP migration, including NameNode federation, Ozone, erasure coding and end-to-end pipeline testing. Recognised with the RIL Samman award.
   • Designed and configured a Kafka setup of around 150 nodes in a single cluster, using config groups and ZooKeeper znodes.
   • Designed the big-data CI/CD toolchain: Git repositories, Jenkins pipelines for Maven/SBT artefacts, Rundeck for deployments, Airflow for workflow management and Nexus for artefact versioning.
   • Implemented CI with Azure DevOps and Jenkins (agents, distributed builds, plug-ins) and CD with Jenkins and Azure DevOps release automation.
   • Supported production Kubernetes clusters and ran Kubernetes proofs of concept.
   • Worked on migrating a three-tier application from on-premises Hadoop to Azure (Synapse, Blob Storage, Azure SQL, Event Hubs).
   • Hardened the platform with Kerberos, LDAP/SSSD, TLS, Ranger and Knox, and monitored it with Check-MK, Grafana, Prometheus and Dr. Elephant.

   • HDP
   • CDP
   • Kafka
   • NiFi
   • Spark
   • Jenkins
   • Airflow
   • Azure DevOps
   • Kubernetes
   • Kerberos

   Migrating one of India's largest data lakes to Cloudera CDP →A Kafka setup of around 150 nodes in a single cluster →Re-platforming a Hadoop application onto Azure →

4. Jun 2015 – May 2018

   EmployerPune-based data technology firm · Data technology firm · Pune, India

   Big Data / Hadoop Administrator

   Where it started: installing, securing and monitoring Hadoop clusters.

   What I did

   • Installed and administered Hortonworks Hadoop clusters.
   • Set up monitoring and alerting for cluster services and documented operational procedures.

   • Hortonworks HDP
   • HDFS
   • YARN
   • Hive
   • Linux