# Nikita Zakladnyi

> Senior Data Engineer | Python, Scala, Spark, Airflow, Databricks, AWS & Snowflake Expert | Passionate about efficient data-driven solutions

Location: Redwood City, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/nikitazakladnyi

Senior Data Engineer accomplished with 6+ years of experience in designing and developing efficient and scalable solutions. Proven track record of meeting business and technical requirements and exceeding data client expectations. Demonstrated exceptional understanding of designing and implementing ETL processes using Airflow, Python, Scala and Spark. Driven to build great working relationships with clients, technical teams, and senior leadership.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Outlier
Jan 2024 – Present
• Training the next generation of AI large language models (LLM) using RLHF
• Improving model quality by using best practices to validate and optimize Python code generated by LLMs
• Analyzing outputs of models and providing ratings and justifications for alignment with user-generated prompts
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams to shape the future direction of models

### Senior Data Engineer @ Aura
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022
• Led the architecture of key data quality and monitoring frameworks for internal and external data sources and infrastructure including Spark, Glue, MySQL, Snowflake, Airflow, Tableau and third-party vendors
• Mentored engineers and members of cross-functional teams by teaching technical concepts and offering guidance
• Designed the technical interview process and interviewed candidates for data related engineering roles
• Supported the analytics of Aura’s suite of identity protection and security products that helped transform it into a unicorn company

### Data Engineer @ Aura
Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | Redwood City, California, United States
• Developed robust end-to-end batch and real-time streaming pipelines that processed tens of terabytes of daily data orchestrated by Airflow using Python, SQL, Scala, Spark, Databricks, and Snowflake
• Optimized Docker containers for efficient layers that were orchestrated by Kubernetes and integrated with CircleCI
• Fine tuned SQL queries, Spark jobs and clusters for performance gains and reduction in overall costs
• Implemented robust metadata synchronization and data transfer between Snowflake and Databricks
• Migrated from AWS only to Databricks on AWS, Maven to Gradle, Ansible to Terraform, and Zeppelin to Databricks notebooks and integrated Delta Lake
• Developed tools for tracking table-level data lineage and schema evolution in Python and SQL that was key in streamlining the simplification of pipelines and the data model

### Junior Data Engineer @ AnchorFree
Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Redwood City, California, United States
• Rebranded to Pango and acquired by Aura
• Used Spark, Impala, SQL and Python to process data from Kafka and supported VPN products analytics
• Converted jobs scheduled by Jenkins, cron and Zeppelin to Airflow for unified orchestration
• Migrated from an on-premise Hadoop ecosystem to AWS (S3, EMR, Glue) to improve scalability and performance
• Implemented seamless restart of Tableau Server using iptables and port routing rules that allowed for continuous access across the company

### Undergraduate Research Assistant @ University of California, Santa Cruz
Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Santa Cruz, California, United States
• At Vollmers Lab: vollmerslab.soe.ucsc.edu
• Conducted library preparation and utilized bioinformatic approaches for antibody sequencing data to characterize the adaptive immune system
• Constructed data visualizations based on novel sequencing datasets using Python and Matplotlib
• Leveraged bioinformatic tools such as BLAT to align and map sequenced DNA fragments and ran scripts on Rocks cluster for distributed processing


## Education
### Bachelor of Science - BS in Neuroscience
University of California, Santa Cruz


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nikita-zakladnyi

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Source: https://flows.cv/nikitazakladnyi
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/nikitazakladnyi/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-29