Ryan is available for hire

Ryan Kowalk

Verified Expert in Engineering

Data Architecture Developer

Location

Los Angeles, CA, United States

Toptal Member Since

January 29, 2019

Ryan is an entrepreneurial data engineer and BI engineer. During his time at Adobe, he worked on every popular back-end stack and built the data mart that 300+ engineers depended on. He also built and developed BI projects that were delivered directly to the CTO.

SQL MySQL MariaDB Tableau ETL Agile PostgreSQL Python Hadoop Spark SQL Microsoft Power BI NumPy Splunk Amazon S3 (AWS S3)TensorFlow SnapLogic

Portfolio

Kowalk Consulting

Splunk, Tableau, MariaDB, MySQL, Spark

Adobe

MariaDB, Hadoop, Python, Spark, Redshift, Microsoft SQL Server

Experience

Data Architecture - 5 years Data Modeling - 5 years ETL - 5 years Tableau - 5 years SQL - 5 years Hadoop - 3 years Python - 3 years Spark SQL - 2 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS

The most amazing...

...thing I've created was the metric used by Adobe to measure their cloud performance against SLA.

Work Experience

Consultant

2014 - 2018

Kowalk Consulting

Implemented a machine learning model for anomaly detection in vehicle repairs.
Consulted on new visualization software for a top analytics platform.
Achieved Splunk Architect certification and nearly achieved professional services certification.
Architected and managed a system build out for a crypto currency intelligence platform.
Managed the hiring of a team of ten engineers.

Technologies: Splunk, Tableau, MariaDB, MySQL, Spark

Data and BI Engineer

2014 - 2017

Adobe

Worked as a DBA for various types of instances (Spark, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL, and Hadoop) holding billions of rows.
Maintained connections to many database platforms including Hadoop (Hive, Impala, Pig), Spark, Sybase IQ, MySQL, RedShift, and Microsoft SQL.
Was intimately involved in each level of the ETL process for creating a central repository from 100+ different sources.
Built out an ETL dependency handler/scheduler similar to Airflow internally.
Trained senior managers, managers, and analysts on Tableau/PowerBI use to promote self-service analytics.
Handled every level of project creation from need finding to delivery and sign off.
Helped in creating an analytical system to measure systems availability across 70,000 servers, currently used as a key bonus KPI for all system managers.
Built, maintained, and updated Tableau/PowerBI/QlikView dashboards for a broad variety of internal clients.
Built statistical/ML models for detecting anomalies across several alerting data streams.

Technologies: MariaDB, Hadoop, Python, Spark, Redshift, Microsoft SQL Server

Experience

Adobe Cloud Availability

I created the metric used by Adobe to measure their cloud performance against SLA. The metric was meant to look at the availability of their full cloud infrastructure across more than 100,000 servers and more than 200,000 VMs. This required involvement at every stage of metric creation, down to schema build outs for data storage.

Microsoft SQL to MariaDB Migration

Here, I performed a migration from Microsoft SQL to MariaDB involving more than 20TB of data along with more than 100 scripts.

MariaDB to Spark Migration

Here, I migrated more than 10 TB of data from MariaDB to Spark, along with 90 TB from Hadoop into an original deployment of Spark.

GoBacon Jerky

I started this company from the ground up—with no knowledge in the area. At the time of my sale of the company, we were in over 100 stores, and I had managed each level of product ideation to supply chain management.

I'm sharing this for one reason—I learn quickly and can implement effectively.

Skills

Languages

SQL, Python

Tools

Tableau, Spark SQL, Splunk, Microsoft Power BI, SnapLogic, Apache Airflow

Paradigms

ETL, Agile

Storage

MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Redshift, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Google Cloud SQL

Other

Analysis, Data Modeling, Data Architecture, Tableau Server, ELT

Frameworks

Hadoop, Spark

Libraries/APIs

NumPy, TensorFlow

Platforms

MacOS

Education

2011 - 2015

Bachelor's Degree in Information Systems

Brigham Young University - Provo, UT, USA

Collaboration That Works

How to Work with Toptal

Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.

Share your needs

Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.

Choose your talent

Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.

Start your risk-free talent trial

Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.

Top talent is in high demand.

Start hiring