Abhijit Rudrapatna
Verified Expert in Engineering
Data Engineer and Software Developer
Hayward, CA, United States
Toptal member since January 26, 2026
Abhijit is a strategic data and software engineering executive with 20+ years of experience leading digital transformations for Fortune 200 clients. He has a proven ability in delivering measurable business value through data architecture and ML/AI platform implementation. He is also an expert in crisis management, global team leadership, vendor and contract management, infrastructure cost optimization, and driving alignment with senior executives to achieve exceptional business outcomes.
Portfolio
Experience
- Data Management - 20 years
- Data Engineering - 20 years
- Data Governance - 15 years
- Vendor Selection - 12 years
- Contract Management - 8 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 8 years
- Databricks - 5 years
- Machine Learning - 5 years
Preferred Environment
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Data Engineering, Data Governance, Data Management, Databases, Microservices, Data Warehousing, Microsoft Azure, Machine Learning
The most amazing...
...thing I've built is a petabyte-scale NRT streaming platform on AWS, processing 500+ million daily events with sub-50ms latency for product & customer analytics.
Work Experience
Director, Data Platform Engineering
Riot Games
- Built and scaled a petabyte-scale near-real-time (NRT) event streaming platform with Apache Kafka on AWS, handling 500+ million daily events with under 50 milliseconds (sub-50ms) latency for anti-cheat policy enforcement and real-time game analytics.
- Built and operated a distributed data ecosystem hosting 80+ petabytes of data at rest, ingesting 75 terabytes per day with 99.9% uptime across a multi-region AWS deployment, supporting 150+ million global users.
- Managed a data lakehouse platform using Databricks, dbt, and Tableau, with infrastructure-as-code using Terraform, enabling 200+ data scientists and insights analysts to develop ML/AI models and business analytics.
- Partnered with the CISO and implemented an automated data governance framework with policy-as-code, reducing manual audit overhead by 70%. Developed a data catalog and exploration tool using Alation.
- Led a 50-person data-as-a-service organization using SAFe and OKR frameworks, established psychological safety, and drove a 40% boost in team productivity.
- Optimized cloud and software licensing costs through right-sizing, achieving $2+ million annual savings while maintaining performance SLAs.
Director, Data Engineering & Architecture
MGM Resorts
- Crafted a comprehensive 3-year vision and roadmap for migrating on-premises data applications to Microsoft Azure, and developing cloud-native data and ML capabilities, supporting 7,000+ users.
- Led the turnaround of the data and analytics segment within the ERP modernization program, implementing rigorous governance controls and approval gates that secured CTO and CFO alignment and enabled delivery within the revised timeline.
- Led the Agile transformation for a 68-person engineering organization, establishing DevOps practices that improved delivery velocity by 60% and stakeholder satisfaction to 90%.
- Operated petabyte-scale cloud and legacy on-premises data platforms with 99.99% uptime.
- Coached the business insights organization on data governance framework, establishing data stewardship council, and implemented data sensitivity tiers.
Senior Manager, Data Architecture
Environmental Defense Fund
- Architected an open-access, cloud-native, self-service data platform on Google Cloud, processing IoT sensor data from 10,000+ air quality sensors globally, along with JupyterHub for integrated ML.
- Led a diverse global working group of industry experts from 35 organizations to define vision and strategy for an open-access, cloud-native air quality data platform, advancing low-cost sensor technology and democratizing access to air quality data.
- Served as product manager and engineering manager, directing end-to-end architecture and development on GCP, encompassing web applications, APIs, IoT data integration from Google Street View cars, data pipelines, and visualization tools.
Senior Manager, Engineering
TransUnion
- Developed a predictive analytics-driven dynamic pricing product on AWS, reducing ML training data requirements by 95% (5 years to 3 months) and customer onboarding time by 85% (3 weeks to 3 days), completing 70 customer deployments in the first year.
- Led the end-to-end development of a petabyte-scale ML platform for TV Attribution marketing analytics from concept through production scaling–processing 10 terabytes per day—on the Hadoop ecosystem.
- Developed a self-serve cost-optimized data discovery and exploration tool with built-in auto-scaling using Qubole, eliminating engineering dependency for data scientists.
- Established a distributed cross-functional pod structure with teams in the US and India, enhancing for local autonomy and global collaboration, attaining 30% faster feature delivery and zero employee churn over four years while managing 25 engineers.
- Mentored three senior engineers by designing personalized leadership development plans, resulting in their promotion to leadership roles.
Experience
Dynamic Pricing for Live Events
Skills
Tools
Qubole, Tableau, Apache Airflow
Frameworks
Hadoop
Paradigms
Microservices
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Apache Kafka, Databricks, Mapbox, Jupyter Notebook
Storage
Databases
Languages
Python, Snowflake, JavaScript
Other
Data Engineering, Data Governance, Data Management, Data Warehousing, Vendor Selection, Contract Management, Partner Management, Rentrak, Microsoft Azure, Machine Learning, Data Build Tool (dbt), Oracle ERP Cloud
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