Latest news with #Lambda
Associated Press
07-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Aligned and Lambda Partner to Power Next-Generation AI Infrastructure
DALLAS, May 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aligned Data Centers, a leading technology infrastructure company offering innovative, sustainable and adaptive Scale Data Centers and Build-to-Scale solutions for global hyperscale and enterprise customers, today announced a partnership with Lambda, the AI Developer Cloud, to provide customers with data center infrastructure and an AI cloud platform ready to sustainably accelerate their AI growth. Lambda will occupy Aligned's newest Dallas-Fort Worth area facility, DFW-04, which will be designed to be a liquid-cooled data center capable of supporting the highest-density Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). 'We're proud to partner with Lambda to support the buildout of its GPU cloud infrastructure, accelerated by NVIDIA, for AI deployments, which is transforming how AI developers innovate and businesses utilizing AI models operate,' states Andrew Schaap, CEO of Aligned. 'Particularly in Dallas, where demand for AI computation space has spiked interest in a growing market, combining a GPU cloud built specifically for AI workloads with an AI-ready data center designed with liquid cooling technologies capable of supporting the highest-density environments will be a game changer.' Aligned is at the forefront of building and operating adaptive data centers that future-proof IT infrastructure and provide seamless flexibility for transitions between a variety of deployments ranging from enterprise applications, to cloud, and high-density AI implementation. The company's ultra-scalable and flexible Adaptive Modular Infrastructure (AMI) and innovative air, liquid, and hybrid cooling solutions future-proof IT deployments, mitigate IT obsolescence, and maximize asset lifespan. While committing to sustainability as a core pillar of its customer-focused business strategy, the company has been an industry leader in advancing data center energy efficiency and cooling technologies for more than a decade, including its patented and award-winning Delta3™ air-cooled system. Aligned's patent-pending DeltaFlow™ liquid cooling system delivers unparalleled performance for AI innovation, supporting virtually any density and GPU cloud requirement. The company's scalable, sustainable infrastructure is enabling next-generation AI workloads. Aligned's partnership with Lambda exemplifies its dedication to leading AI service providers. Lambda's AI Developer Cloud is trusted by world-renowned AI engineers and industry pioneers who have shaped modern artificial intelligence. The organization's customers include some of the most successful and best-known technology companies, trillion-dollar capitalization enterprises, academic and research institutions in the world, as well as AI startups. The partnership with Aligned will see Lambda's AI Cloud platform integrated into the company's new DFW-04 data center, which is currently under construction in Plano, Texas. A determinative factor of this alliance is that Aligned's seamless and adaptive infrastructure for next-gen AI will easily support infrastructure accelerated by NVIDIA Blackwell and NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra, as well as the future generations of AI platforms. 'With its unrelenting focus on driving disruptive innovation in data center design, energy efficiency and cooling, Aligned is the ideal partner to help Lambda build large, flexible space that meets the AI demands of today and tomorrow,' comments Lambda VP, Data Center Infrastructure, Ken Patchett. 'Deploying AI at scale is no easy feat, and Aligned's ability to rapidly deliver AI-ready infrastructure, along with its passion for supporting customers with a consistently high-touch, world-class experience, is instrumental to meet the aggressive scale, quality and speed standards Lambda sets for its public and private deployments.' About Aligned Data Centers Aligned Data Centers is a leading technology infrastructure company offering innovative, sustainable, and adaptive Scale Data Centers and Build-to-Scale solutions for global hyperscale and enterprise customers. Our intelligent infrastructure allows densification and vertical growth within the same footprint, enabling customers to scale up without disruption, all while maintaining industry-leading Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). By reducing the energy, water and space needed to operate, our data center solutions, combined with our patented cooling technology, offer businesses a competitive advantage by improving sustainability, reliability, and their bottom line. For more information, visit and connect with us on X, LinkedIn and Facebook. About Lambda Lambda was founded in 2012 by AI engineers with published research at the top machine learning conferences in the world. Our GPU cloud and on-prem hardware enables AI developers to easily, securely and affordably build, test and deploy AI products at scale. Lambda's mission is to accelerate human progress with ubiquitous and affordable access to computation. One person, one GPU. Press and Analyst Inquiries Jennifer Handshew for Aligned Data Centers [email protected] +1 (917) 359-8838 Press Contact for Lambda [email protected] A photo accompanying this announcement is available at A video accompanying this announcement is available at
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Cuomo was a same-sex marriage champion. He's not courting LGBTQ+ votes now.
NEW YORK — Andrew Cuomo counts same-sex marriage among his top accomplishments as governor, but he's not targeting LGBTQ+ voters in his bid for New York City mayor. Cuomo, the front-runner in the Democratic primary, has charted his path to political redemption through Black churchgoers and Jewish centrists for whom public safety and antisemitism are chief concerns. He's taken a Rose Garden approach to campaigning and limited his appearances, which has contributed to cutting out crucial Democratic clubs that help drive LGBTQ+ voters to the polls. Most notably, the former governor skipped a mayoral forum cohosted by the Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC, Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn and other LGBTQ+ clubs in March. And he declined to partake in the clubs' candidate questionnaires and interviews. 'We interpreted it to mean that the LGBTQ community doesn't mean jack shit to him,' said Joe Jourdan, Lambda's president. 'Ignoring Lambda and Stonewall both is about as subtle as an atom bomb.' Aside from Lambda and Stonewall, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club has taken umbrage as well. In recent weeks, all three clubs have voted to keep Cuomo off their slates and are advising New Yorkers against including him at all on their ranked choice ballots this June. They've endorsed more left-leaning candidates, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Comptroller Brad Lander and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani. To be sure, the club leaders weren't Cuomo fans before the endorsement process. They say that he dodges venues where he may face tough questions and that they're assessing him on his full record. They've also accused him of inflating his advocacy for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers and allege he's no ally now as transgender rights are under attack by the Trump administration. 'It's really troubling that he has hired people who worked against trans rights, that he has not engaged with any of the modern LGBTQ issues that matter in 2025 and that he's still relying on a victory from over a decade ago to claim he's standing with our movement,' Stonewall President Gabriel Lewenstein said in an interview, referencing how Cuomo's campaign treasurer worked for an anti-trans group. Cuomo's decision to appeal to a broader swath of Democrats through law-and-order and economic messaging — with little focus on LGBTQ+ rights — reflects a broader shift among establishment Democrats away from culture war issues after last year's election. The former governor appeared to agree with labor leader Sean O'Brien in a recent podcast that focusing on 'social justice' priorities hurt the Democratic Party. Still, advancing gay rights is part of Cuomo's political legacy. He signed the Marriage Equality Act into law in 2011, making New York the largest state at the time to allow gay and lesbian residents to wed — four years before the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. He made combating HIV and AIDS a priority, advanced the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act and signed legislation to ban so-called conversion therapy. Cuomo also backed a law ensuring those who attack gay people can't claim they panicked over the person's sexual identity. 'We need marriage equality in every state in this nation,' Cuomo said in 2011 at an Empire State Pride Agenda gala, urging the rest of the country to follow New York's lead. 'Otherwise, no state really has marriage equality, and we will not rest until it is a reality.' The former governor is seeking a comeback in New York City after resigning in Albany four years ago amid allegations of sexual misconduct. He is seizing an opening left by the politically weakened incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, who was beset by since-dropped federal fraud charges. Cuomo's campaign and its allies say he has built a diverse coalition that includes LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. 'Andrew Cuomo is talking directly to voters. His path to victory doesn't run through activist clubs,' said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish, a Cuomo supporter and fundraiser. 'The community knows what he's done. The community knows they have no greater champion.' Cuomo campaign spokesperson Esther Jensen said the former governor will win LGBTQ+ votes citywide 'because New Yorkers know Andrew Cuomo doesn't just pay lip service to the LGBTQ community issues, he delivers.' His stump speeches to receptive audiences, including labor unions that have endorsed him, do not omit mentions of the Marriage Equality Act, but they don't linger on it either. Instead, he uses themes more broadly appealing to moderate and centrist voters, painting himself as the experienced leader who will wipe away a dystopian landscape of homelessness, shuttered storefronts and random violence. 'He wants Eric Adams voters in Southeast Queens. He's going to every church in Brooklyn that he could get into,' said Allen Roskoff, the gay rights activist who leads the Jim Owles club. 'He knows where he's going to get his votes, and he has other things he wants to say. He wants to give a message that's more law-and-order.' Roskoff said he remembers Cuomo for his 'heroic' push to legalize same-sex marriage but also as the young aide who, while campaigning for his father, Mario Cuomo, was accused of slurring political rival Ed Koch in the 1977 mayoral primary. The former governor and his team have denied he's behind the 'Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo' slogans. Koch went on to endorse Andrew Cuomo for governor in 2010. 'Most of the organized gay community is not with him,' Roskoff said. 'He has the typical Boss Tweed-type gays with him.' Democratic consultant Chris Coffey, who advises the Cuomo campaign, argued otherwise. He lauded the then-governor for building families by ushering in same-sex marriage and making gestational surrogacy possible for same-sex couples. 'He used his political capital to get it done. And it was a really, really, really big deal,' Coffey said. 'The fact is, my husband and I got married because we were able to thanks to Governor Cuomo. There are thousands of gay and lesbian families across the city that have benefited. That is the point of government.' Among Cuomo's highest-profile supporters is Rep. Ritchie Torres, the first gay Afro-Latino elected to Congress. 'Governor Cuomo succeeded where others failed — delivering marriage equality in New York long before it became the law of the land,' Torres told POLITICO. 'His success in advancing LGBTQ equality remains unequaled in New York City.' Cuomo enjoys a sizable lead over his more progressive rivals in public polling. But amid an effort encouraging voters to opt against him — known as DREAM, or 'Don't Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor' — LGBTQ+ political club members are spreading the word that the crowded Democratic field includes allies ready to fight today's fight. They include Adrienne Adams, Lander and Mamdani. 'The leader of New York City should be ready to stand up for all New Yorkers,' Lewenstein of Stonewall said. 'And if you're afraid to do that, it's a problem.'
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Before Hitler took over Germany, Bertie was happy and trans in Berlin
In the run-up to the 2024 election, on cable news shows and at dinner tables, Americans debated a question that terrified various groups of us for various reasons. If Trump won, would he replace our democracy with fascism? Given Republican anti-trans ad spending estimated at $215 million on network television alone ('She's for they/them, he's for you'), trans people had reason to fear that Trump would eviscerate the civil rights they'd earned over the last half-century. Sure enough, Trump immediately signed a slew of anti-trans executive orders collectively described by now-fired EEOC commissioner Jocelyn Samuels as a plan to 'erase the existence of trans people.' Milo Todd, a Lambda literary fellow and creative writing teacher, centers his first novel on an earlier erasure, largely hidden within a bigger story: Hitler's attempt to eradicate the transgender people of 1930s Germany. When the Nazis took power, Berlin was an international gay hub, home to 100 queer bars, 25 queer journals and the Institute for Sexual Science, where the world's first sex reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments were performed by gender activist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Through the eyes and heart of the novel's trans protagonist, Berthold 'Bertie' Durchdenwald, we experience the news of Hitler's takeover, which comes while he's dancing with his girlfriend in a queer Berlin club. The music cut out in the middle of a final, lingering note. 'We interrupt to bring you important news,' the radio said. 'President Hindenburg has just appointed Adolf Hitler as the new chancellor of Germany …' 'Don't they know what this will do to Germany?' Sofie spat. All Bertie felt was cold. Much as Trump immediately set about fulfilling his 'Day 1' campaign promise to 'stop the transgender lunacy' and 'get transgender out of the military.' Hitler immediately labeled transgender people 'sexual degenerates' and sent as many of them as his Brown Shirts could catch to the death camps. The institute was torched by a Nazi student mob, every book in its library burned in Opera Square. 'The world had changed overnight,' Bertie observes. 'The city was already draped in swastikas. Bright red flags hanging, flapping, lolling like dead tongues from every corner shop … Berlin was bleeding from the inside out.' Heightening the contrast between the trans experience pre- and post-Hitler, Todd uses chapters alternating between Bertie's beautiful Berlin life and his eked-out 1940s existence on the farm where he and Sofie hid under aliases throughout the war. Against this tragic setting, the elegance of Todd's prose plants wonder in the reader's mind. 'The asparagus sprang up every spring without fail, an old friend, a capsule of history from when life kept growing, birthed from a better time.' Read more: A shatteringly honest novel of trans identity gets a supremely timely reissue Soon after word of the war's end reaches Bertie and Sofie, Bertie discovers an emaciated young man unconscious in the asparagus patch 'in the dirtied stripes of a camp prisoner.' Noting the black triangle sewed to the man's uniform, the Nazis' label for trans prisoners, Bertie realizes the man must have escaped from nearby Dachau. While feeding and bathing the dazed stranger, Bertie takes a chance. 'I'm a transvestite,' he says. 'Me, too,' says Karl. 'Why were you still in those clothes?' Bertie asked. 'Didn't the Allies liberate the camps weeks ago?' 'I fled when the Allies came.' 'Is it true? They're setting everyone but us free?' 'The only difference I've seen between [the Allies and the Nazis] is their style of murder,' Karl answers. Devastated to learn that the Allies, too, were treating trans people as subhuman, Bertie and Sofie stop waiting to be liberated and start planning their own liberation. Their preparations to emigrate to America include training the innocent Karl to avoid recognition. 'Perhaps when you're rested,' Bertie said, 'I can teach you how to transvert.' 'I am not a man exactly like that.' 'Or you could wear some of my things,' Sofie added gently. Here, Todd has his youngest character summarize the painful central paradox of trans life — in Nazi Germany nearly a century ago, and possibly in tomorrow's America. 'So we have to be who we're not in order to be who we are,' Karl says. Read more: A hilarious, righteous transgender remix of 'The Odyssey' blows up the literary canon As their need to flee grows more urgent — this time, from the Allied soldiers who are arresting queer people while freeing the rest of the country — Bertie must destroy the evidence of their assumed identities. He lights a bonfire and burns the very thing that most disaster survivors grab on their way out the door: the photo albums commemorating the once-carefree life he lived when he could be who he truly was. 'Everything had burned, ever since that night at the Institut,' Bertie reflects as the flames lick at images of his happier self. 'First the twenty thousand books and then the countless people and then the proof that any of it had ever happened at all. It seemed like every last one of the normally sexed was in on it. It hurt his heart.' As their escape ship pulls into New York harbor, Bertie ponders the permanence of his pain. 'A great sadness fell upon him. Deutschland was behind him forever. He had loved his country. But what he loved was what it used to be, what had been lost. The things it could have been … Pride in a country was what it could do for its people, not what it could take away. Yet here they were. And he would need to get used to it.' Exhaustively researched, gorgeously crafted and presciently timed, "The Lilac People" exhumes a buried history that could leave us mourning our lost democracy if we don't learn from, and act on, its tragic lessons. Maran, author of 'The New Old Me' and other books, lives in a Silver Lake bungalow that's even older than she is. Get the latest book news, events and more in your inbox every Saturday. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Before Hitler took over Germany, Bertie was happy and trans in Berlin
In the run-up to the 2024 election, on cable news shows and at dinner tables, Americans debated a question that terrified various groups of us for various reasons. If Trump won, would he replace our democracy with fascism? Given Republican anti-trans ad spending estimated at $215 million on network television alone ('She's for they/them, he's for you'), trans people had reason to fear that Trump would eviscerate the civil rights they'd earned over the last half-century. Sure enough, Trump immediately signed a slew of anti-trans executive orders collectively described by now-fired EEOC commissioner Jocelyn Samuels as a plan to 'erase the existence of trans people.' Milo Todd, a Lambda literary fellow and creative writing teacher, centers his first novel on an earlier erasure, largely hidden within a bigger story: Hitler's attempt to eradicate the transgender people of 1930s Germany. When the Nazis took power, Berlin was an international gay hub, home to 100 queer bars, 25 queer journals and the Institute for Sexual Science, where the world's first sex reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments were performed by gender activist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Through the eyes and heart of the novel's trans protagonist, Berthold 'Bertie' Durchdenwald, we experience the news of Hitler's takeover, which comes while he's dancing with his girlfriend in a queer Berlin club. The music cut out in the middle of a final, lingering note. 'We interrupt to bring you important news,' the radio said. 'President Hindenburg has just appointed Adolf Hitler as the new chancellor of Germany …' 'Don't they know what this will do to Germany?' Sofie spat. All Bertie felt was cold. Much as Trump immediately set about fulfilling his 'Day 1' campaign promise to 'stop the transgender lunacy' and 'get transgender out of the military.' Hitler immediately labeled transgender people 'sexual degenerates' and sent as many of them as his Brown Shirts could catch to the death camps. The institute was torched by a Nazi student mob, every book in its library burned in Opera Square. 'The world had changed overnight,' Bertie observes. 'The city was already draped in swastikas. Bright red flags hanging, flapping, lolling like dead tongues from every corner shop … Berlin was bleeding from the inside out.' Heightening the contrast between the trans experience pre- and post-Hitler, Todd uses chapters alternating between Bertie's beautiful Berlin life and his eked-out 1940s existence on the farm where he and Sofie hid under aliases throughout the war. Against this tragic setting, the elegance of Todd's prose plants wonder in the reader's mind. 'The asparagus sprang up every spring without fail, an old friend, a capsule of history from when life kept growing, birthed from a better time.' Soon after word of the war's end reaches Bertie and Sofie, Bertie discovers an emaciated young man unconscious in the asparagus patch 'in the dirtied stripes of a camp prisoner.' Noting the black triangle sewed to the man's uniform, the Nazis' label for trans prisoners, Bertie realizes the man must have escaped from nearby Dachau. While feeding and bathing the dazed stranger, Bertie takes a chance. 'I'm a transvestite,' he says. 'Me, too,' says Karl. 'Why were you still in those clothes?' Bertie asked. 'Didn't the Allies liberate the camps weeks ago?' 'I fled when the Allies came.' 'Is it true? They're setting everyone but us free?' 'The only difference I've seen between [the Allies and the Nazis] is their style of murder,' Karl answers. Devastated to learn that the Allies, too, were treating trans people as subhuman, Bertie and Sofie stop waiting to be liberated and start planning their own liberation. Their preparations to emigrate to America include training the innocent Karl to avoid recognition. 'Perhaps when you're rested,' Bertie said, 'I can teach you how to transvert.' 'I am not a man exactly like that.' 'Or you could wear some of my things,' Sofie added gently. Here, Todd has his youngest character summarize the painful central paradox of trans life — in Nazi Germany nearly a century ago, and possibly in tomorrow's America. 'So we have to be who we're not in order to be who we are,' Karl says. As their need to flee grows more urgent — this time, from the Allied soldiers who are arresting queer people while freeing the rest of the country — Bertie must destroy the evidence of their assumed identities. He lights a bonfire and burns the very thing that most disaster survivors grab on their way out the door: the photo albums commemorating the once-carefree life he lived when he could be who he truly was. 'Everything had burned, ever since that night at the Institut,' Bertie reflects as the flames lick at images of his happier self. 'First the twenty thousand books and then the countless people and then the proof that any of it had ever happened at all. It seemed like every last one of the normally sexed was in on it. It hurt his heart.' As their escape ship pulls into New York harbor, Bertie ponders the permanence of his pain. 'A great sadness fell upon him. Deutschland was behind him forever. He had loved his country. But what he loved was what it used to be, what had been lost. The things it could have been … Pride in a country was what it could do for its people, not what it could take away. Yet here they were. And he would need to get used to it.' Exhaustively researched, gorgeously crafted and presciently timed, 'The Lilac People' exhumes a buried history that could leave us mourning our lost democracy if we don't learn from, and act on, its tragic lessons. Maran, author of 'The New Old Me' and other books, lives in a Silver Lake bungalow that's even older than she is.
India.com
26-04-2025
- Business
- India.com
Transforming Data Landscapes: A Conversation with Raghu Gopa
Raghu Gopa is a seasoned data engineering professional with over 12 years of experience in data warehousing and ETL development. With a Master's in Information Assurance from Wilmington University, Raghu balances rich theoretical knowledge with hands-on experience. Raghu's impressive career has spanned diverse domains where he has showcased his expertise at the highest levels in the design, development, and implementation of cutting-edge data solutions. Q 1: Why data engineering and cloud technologies? A: I am interested in how organizations extract insights from data and make strategic decisions. Then, raw data being transformed into actionable insights for business value fascinated me. During that time, cloud technology was becoming prevalent in managing and processing data. Combined with lower infrastructure costs and being able to build scalable, flexible data solutions processing petabyte-scale information, these were things I wanted to pursue. I'm really excited about creating that synergy between technology and business needs to create solutions that allow organizations to be data-driven. Q2: What methodology would you apply to migrating an on-premise data warehouse to that of a Cloud platform? A: On all fronts, it takes a balancing act of technical and business understanding. I begin with a deep analysis of the current data architecture in terms of mapping dependencies, performance bottlenecks, and business-critical processes. I work out a phased migration plan to minimize disruption while bringing in the maximum benefits from cloud services. The on-premises function is replicated, and AWS services such as Lambda, Step Functions, Glue, and EMR are used to enhance the design of pipelines. One of my most successful projects was creating direct loading from a PySpark framework to Snowflake, increasing data management operational efficiency by 90%. Migration should be viewed more as modernization and optimization of the entire data ecosystem than just a lift-and-shift exercise. Q 3: How do you ensure data quality and governance for a large-scale data project? A: Data quality and governance are 'must-haves' for all successful data projects. I put in place the validation framework at different levels of the data pipeline. For example, I perform thorough data quality checks for things like structure, business rules, and so on, referend checks on constraints. As for governance, I enact data lineage tracking and access control mechanisms, plus audit mechanisms, while ensuring encryption and masking schemes of sensitive info like PII data. One project was able to achieve 100% data accuracy and consistency by effectively integrating our good data quality and governance practices directly into the PySpark framework. I truly believe that one needs to build in quality and governance in the beginning rather than tried on later. Q 4: What challenges have you faced when working with big data technologies, and how did you overcome them? A: One of the biggest challenges has been optimizing performance while managing costs. Big data systems can quickly become inefficient without careful architecture. I've addressed this by implementing partitioning strategies in Hive and Snowflake, push-down computations using Snowpark, and optimizing Spark applications with proper resource allocation. Another significant challenge was integrating real-time and batch processing systems. To solve this, I implemented solutions using Kafka and Spark Streaming, creating a unified data processing framework. By converting streaming data into RDDs and processing them in near real-time, we were able to provide up-to-date insights while maintaining system reliability. The key to overcoming these challenges has been continual learning and experimentation. The big data landscape evolves rapidly, and staying ahead requires a commitment to testing new approaches and refining existing solutions. Q 5: How do you collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure data solutions meet business requirements? A: Effective collaboration begins with establishing a common language between technical and business teams. I serve as a translator, helping business stakeholders articulate their needs in terms that can guide technical implementation while explaining technical constraints in business-relevant terms. Regular communication is essential. I establish structured feedback loops through agile methodologies, including sprint reviews and demonstrations of incremental progress. This helps maintain alignment and allows for course correction when needed. One of my key achievements has been developing Power BI and Tableau dashboards that connect to Snowflake, providing business users with intuitive access to complex data insights. By involving stakeholders in the design process, we ensured the dashboards addressed their actual needs rather than what we assumed they wanted. This approach has consistently resulted in higher user adoption and satisfaction. Q6: What tools and technologies do you find most impactful in your data engineering toolkit? A: Great question; my toolkit has seen constant changes, and many technical solutions have almost always remained in my toolbox. In the AWS ecosystem, Glue for ETL, Lambda for serverless execution, and S3 for cost-effective storage pretty much form the backbone of many solutions I build. For data processing, PySpark would be the most flexible tool, with its scalability and flexible APIs helping me efficiently process both structured and semi-structured data. Snowflake leads innovations in the data warehouse industry by separating compute from storage, allowing scaling of resources dynamically according to workload. Airflow and Control-M are my tools for orchestrating and scheduling pipelines through complex dependencies to guarantee execution. From there, it is on to visualization: Power BI and Tableau convey sophisticated data into operational insights for business users. It's not really about specific tools but whether you can put the right technology combination together to solve a business problem while leaving yourself options for the future. Optimization is the domain of art and a science at the same time. I would begin with a data-driven approach where I fix baselines and identify bottlenecks through profiling and monitoring. This would include reviewing query execution plans, resource utilization, and data flow tracking of the various stages of the pipeline. For Spark programs, optimization of partition sizes, minimizing data shuffling, and tagging executor resources correctly would be important. In database-type setups, we would implement the right indexing strategy, query optimization, and cache mechanisms. One of the trickiest optimizations I've done is actually using Snowpark to push down computations to Snowflake's processing engine to minimize data movement. I also design data models around the expected access patterns-whether it means denormalizing for analytic workloads or leveraging strategic partitioning for faster query response. Performance optimization is a continuum and not an end-in-itself. We set up monitoring solutions to catch early signs of performance degradation so that we can proactively tune rather than troubleshoot reactively. Q 7: Do you have any advice for someone wanting to become a data engineer? A: There are a few basic principles that should be mastered: database design, SQL, and programming. However, the accompanying technologies will change from time to time and the value of these core skills will remain. Learn the concepts such as data modeling, ETL, and data quality before stepping into the big data frameworks. You must master at least one of the most popular programming languages in data engineering, such as Python or Scala. Get hands-on experience in real projects; you can use open data available online. Be curious and keep expanding your knowledge because the field is growing fast; be ready to spend time exploring new technologies and the latest in the field. Subscribe to industry blogs or communities; you might also consider pursuing certificates like the AWS Solutions Architect. Then, work on communications. The best data engineers connect the dots between the technical implementation and the value for a business by articulating to all stakeholders the complex concepts within an organization in simple terms. Q 8: How will this field be changing in the next years of data engineering? A: In fact, it would be transformational trends regarding an increasingly blended world of traditional data warehouse approaches and data lake approaches integrated in what would now be called hybrid architectures like data lakehouses, which incorporate all that structure, performance of warehouses, and also flexibility, scalability of lakes. Then, there will be several more changes. The space fiber will be smart where much of the superficial routine work will be managed by the smart machines-cum-flies around in data pipeline development, optimization, and maintenance. So, the real change occurring in the lives of data engineers would be shifting their work profile toward higher-valued activities such as architecture design and business enablement. Batch and real-time separation continues to fade away, and a common processing framework is the norm. Added will be the deep embedding of AI/ML capabilities directly within these platforms. This is all meant to enable even further sophisticated analysis and predictions on said data. Last but not least, as they mature in use, and companies become increasingly aware of what really means 'better' data governance, security, and privacy are likely to become even bigger aspects of how they do data engineering. Q 9: What has been your most challenging project, and what did you learn from it? A: Among several difficult projects, one dealing with the AWS migration of a complex on-premise data warehouse while simultaneously modernizing that architecture for real-time analysis has been truly challenging. The system was then supporting key business functions, wherein extended downtimes were to be avoided and dual environments were required to be maintained throughout the migration. We would face many technical challenges involving data type incompatibilities and performance issues with early designs for pipelines. The hardware lease expiration gave us the pressure to add more stress because it effectively squeezed the project timeline. Our successful migration strategies were all methodical: prioritizing critical data flows, building adequate testing frameworks, and observing with fine granularity. We never stopped communicating with stakeholders about what was reasonable and what we did on a timely basis. The overall lesson was how critically important it is to remain resilient and adaptable. Irrespective of how well your planning has gone, something unexpected will definitely come along. Therefore, building architecture that is flexible to modification and a mindset that generates problem-solving solutions is extremely critical. I also took home a lesson about `incremental delivery' i.e., making sure you focus on bringing business value in incremental chunks instead of going for a 'big bang' style migration. This experience taught me that an excellent technical solution is not enough; a crystal-clear stakeholder management strategy is essential, with proper communications and a process for balancing the ideal solution against, often, the practical constraints. About Raghu Gopa Raghu Gopa is a data engineering professional with over 12 years of experience across multiple industries. Holding a Master's In Information Assurance from Wilmington University, he specializes in areas such as data warehousing, ETL process, and cloud migration strategy. Having good knowledge of AWS Services, Hadoop Ecosystem Technologies, and New Data Processing Frameworks, such as Spark, Raghu, an AWS Solutions Architect, combines his technical prowess with business sense to bring about data solutions for organizational success.
