Paweł Żak
Senior Data Engineer
Led 11 engineers – fraud detection for EU carbon-credit trading, org-wide data strategy for global aviation. Previously Amazon: fulfillment analytics behind millions in maintenance savings. Outside of work, I build MyElib, cross-platform SaaS for memory retention.
Selected Professional Experience
Addepto – Big Data & AI
Warsaw (Remote)
Tech Lead, Data Engineering
Feb 2025 – Nov 2025
- Led 11 engineers across two flagship projects; part of 10-person leadership team steering company direction. Owned architecture, hiring, performance reviews, and client relationships.
- Architected fraud detection for EU carbon-credit trading – 15s end-to-end latency on TB-scale XML with sequential validation constraints. Built multi-tenant Databricks platform with strict row/column security for 100+ analysts.
- Led data strategy for global aviation provider (5k+ employees); unified fragmented architecture across autonomous teams. Built first data product – live baggage tracking – securing executive approval to scale org-wide.
Senior Data Engineer
Feb 2024 – Feb 2025
- Built Nix-based CI/CD framework – abstracted pipelines to four commands, making GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Azure DevOps interchangeable. Used by ~40% of company projects.
- Built enterprise Databricks platform template – three automated environments with Terraform, private networking, Unity Catalog governance, DAB, and data contracts.
Data Engineering Consultant (part-time)
Apr 2023 – Feb 2024
- Replaced on-prem SQL Server with BigQuery, DuckDB, dbt, and Terraform, cutting warehouse costs ~70% with zero-downtime migration.
Amazon
Luxembourg (Remote)
Data Engineer
Jun 2022 – Jan 2024
- Defined and owned Cost-per-Asset and Lost Productivity Hours metrics approved by VP and adopted by operations leaders; contributed to millions in annual maintenance savings.
- Cut reporting latency from 24 hours to 15 minutes – CDC (Kafka, Redshift) on TB-scale fulfillment data.
- Killed 1,000-line SQL monoliths in QuickSight, rebuilt as dbt semantic layer – established self-service analytics across Global RME.
Business Intelligence Engineer
Feb 2021 – Jun 2022
- Built serverless data pipelines (Glue, Lambda) for near-real-time conveyor-jam detection, reducing average conveyor downtime by 10%.
Entrepreneurial & Community Experience
MyElib – Knowledge Retention SaaS
Founder
Dec 2025 – Present
- Shipped SaaS to five platforms solo (Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android) – turns e-reader highlights into LLM-powered spaced-repetition flashcards. 30 paying customers.
- Own product end-to-end: idea, roadmap, pricing, customer acquisition, releases, and support.
Data Science Student Research Group
University
President
Nov 2020 – Nov 2024
- Scaled from 20 to 300+ members; hosted 30+ workshops and a local data conference.
- Secured a €30k grant and led a research project with 15 students - the Polish real-estate market recommendation engine.
Education
Gdańsk University of Technology
BEng, Data Engineering
Remote - Gdańsk, Poland
Polish, English (C1)
Technologies
Deep / frequent
Python
Apache Spark
SQL & dbt
Databricks
Kafka/Redpanda/Event Hub
Azure
Terraform
Golang
CI/CD
Bash
Nix
GenAI
Proficient
AWS
GCP
Kubernetes
Redshift
BigQuery
Airflow
DLT
Used on specific projects
ClickHouse
TypeScript/React/Astro
Dagster
Prefect
SvelteKit
Rust
Interests
Robotics
Kitesurfing
Snowboarding
Traveling
Reading
Cooking