Download PDF

Paweł Żak

Senior Data Engineer

zakpaw36@gmail.com +48 693 937 144 linkedin.com/in/pawel-zakpaw Remote - Gdańsk, Poland

Summary

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.

Skills

Deep: 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

Project-specific: ClickHouse, TypeScript/React/Astro, Dagster, Prefect, SvelteKit, Rust

Education

Gdańsk University of Technology BEng, Data Engineering
Nov 2019 – Feb 2023

Interests

Robotics
Kitesurfing
Snowboarding
Traveling
Reading
Cooking