Abstract
I'm Reza Khanipour, also known as Shahin across internet. As a software enthusiast I enjoy practicing the art of digital creation, crafting abstract entities within computers. During day, I'm a software engineer and data consultant trying to bring some order into the digital chaos within non-tech companies. By night however, I wear my alchemist hat, trying to enhance my craft by bringing my ideas to life. This page is a window into my passions and ongoing adventure.
Find me Online
- Mastodon : Where I tweet since I refuged from Elon's X Some day I'll elaborate more on this particular case. However, until then, I'd invite you to watch this video by Johnny Harris. .
- Github: Where I stack all my creations.
- LinkedIn: Where I share unpopular opinions, enjoy 2nd hand memes and receive funny job offers!
- Old Blog Archive: I've been blogging for quite some time, but not as consistent as I like. Here you can find the old archive of everything I wrote.
Public Projects
The Following is a list of open source projects which I was one of the main contributors:
- Inception: A project scaffolding template based on Nix and Devenv.
- Sparkle: A meta framework for Apache Spark, helping data engineers to focus on solving business problems with highest quality.
- 45r4r (Asrar Arabic, meaning secrets or mystery ): My personal configuration stack based on NixOS, acting as my daily driver.
- docker-stunnel: Stunnel packaged as a docker container, to act as a proxy to encrypt the connection between a client and a server using TLS.
- docker-stealth-openvpn: A personal project to access open internet while I was living in Iran Starting early 2000s, Iran's governement started censoring internet resources, learn more: Internet censorship in Iran . I discontinued this project given I no longer live there, and don't have the opportunity to make sure it works.
- python-negar: an editor for Persian text. It was initially inspired by Virastar, a Ruby based project with the same set of features.
Work Experience
Client #4 at DataChef
- Timeline: Jun 2023 → Jun 2024
- Role: Lead Software Engineer
The client was a multi-national company specialized in distribution of goods. The main challenge we were asked to help with, was the transition process from old ERP system and integration with Salesforce. In this priod I was active in the following areas together with my team:
- Productionizing the integration solution: This was the first region, but responsible for %60 of the total transactions of the company. Led the final steps of the implementation of in-house ERP to Salesforce integration, focusing on system connectivity and end-to-end testing. Managed recovery processes, laying groundwork for long-term sales performance improvement program.
- Design and Implementation of Integration Solution: Based on the learnings from previous ERP integration, I designed, and helped my team in development and deployment of the integration between SAP and Salesforce for the next region, ensuring real-time data delivery and availability in the AWS based data market place. This design and artifacts build around it, were expected to be handed over and utilized within 15 other regions which the client had sales activities.
- Designed the Data Engineering Framework: Developed the first version of the data engineering framework, providing a solid base for the future data projects.
- Automated End-to-End System Integration Test Framework: Created and implemented an automated testing framework to streamline system integration, reduce cost, and expedite product delivery.
- Training and Handover: Conducted a training program for a team of 20 data engineers to handover the project focusing on system integration solutions. The initiative aimed to replicate the success in the other regions and ensure the maintenance of the existing systems.
Client #3 at DataChef
- Timeline: Jul 2022 → Dec 2022
- Role: Lead Software Engineer
The client was an international shipping and courier services provider active in the Benelux area. As the lead software engineer, taking over the role from my predecessor, I was assigned to:
- Assist and guide a team of junior developers to prepare them to become an expert data product team.
- Establish required standards for data mesh readiness by creating the initial data products.
To achieve these goals, I:
- Helped with the design of a data product take-in process, clarifying the responsibilities and expectations of the involved entities.
- Established standard data access patterns to increase flexibility, based on the organization's analytical and operational needs.
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Implemented a data programming model This is where I started working on DataChef's Programming Model for data products. with the following objectives:
- Improve communication between engineers and the business.
- Enhance developer experience by helping them to focus on business logic and provide optimal solutions.
- Serve as a compass for the future design of the data products.
- Designed, built and deployed data products which attracted business and logistic users.
- Planned and participated in the handover process to ensure the main owners of the data products (domains) could maintain them.
Client #2 at DataChef
- Timeline: Jan 2022 → Jun 2022
- Role: Lead Data Engineer
The client was a multi-national vehicle wholesaler startup, initiated within a parent company specialized in automobile leasing and fleet management. The following is a hand pick of my contributions as the lead data engineer for the data mesh initiatives:
- Designing a process to onboard new domains and data sources to ease the collaboration between different teams.
- Facilitating knowledge transfer through documentation, and on-site training The startup was sold and we became responsible to train a newly recruited team to maintain the project. .
- Design and implementation of a new development framework This is where I initially started to form the idea of the Sparkle project. for the data mesh project, with the goal of reducing the complexity of the original infrastructure and reducing the hiring barrier caused by various technologies required for the project The majority of the data mesh infrastructure inside the company was developed using Scala, which regardless of the obvious benefits proved to introduce new challenges like difficulty in hiring new developers. This is an special barrier given the fact the company wasn't known as a tech company, and unable to attract seasoned Scala developers. .
- Helping to define practical strategies to merge the existing technologies with the new parent company. Each company had a strong data team, and our goal was to design a process for integrating the best technologies and products each side could offer.
Client #1 at DataChef
- Timeline: Feb 2020 → Jan 2022
- Role: Data Engineer
The client here is the same as Client #2, and where I gradually grew into a lead role. As one of the first members of the team with the goal of creating a modern data architecture based on data mesh practices, I was active on:
- Designing and building business applications, from business logic implementation, to pipeline orchestration and CI/CD requirements.
- Contributing to the carve-out process from the initial parent company. I was mainly responsible for ensuring the data mesh team, has all services which initially were provided by the parent company.
- Contributing to the recommendation system project to find the best bidding strategy for B2B traders. The Engineering part of my responsibilities included everything from data extraction to sending notifications to the traders.
- Integrating real-time streaming pipelines to generate live reports based on the analytical data.
Client #0 at DataChef: DataChef itself
- Timeline: Feb 2019 → Present
- Role: Senior Software (Data) Engineer
I was recruited as the first employee of the company, with the goal of transitioning into a data engineer. Since becoming a data product company was one of the DataChef's initial goals, and learning we can help our clients better using products and services based on those, I had the opportunity to work on some interesting internal projects, notably:
- WordMentor: an application to perform style transfer mutation on text, helping users to adapt the writing style of their favorite writers.
- Night's Watch: This governer application integrates Google's and Facebook's marketing services to enable marketing teams to have full control over their data quality at scale.
- RaceGraph: A data visualization web application able to generate bar chart race visualization on user input data and allow them to customize the output. The exciting challenge of this application was implementation of a serverless architecture for all of the components including a video rendering mechanism to output the result.
- BRAINS: An LLM powered AI agent, enabling operational teams with high quality online incident support.
Backend Developer at Realtybloc
- Timeline: Jul 2018 → Jan 2019
This project required liberation of data provided by a thirdparty RETS Real Estate Transaction Standard. More information can be found here. service. The idea was to use this information to source data within many other websites supported by Realtybloc.
To delivery this I developed a high-performance GraphQL API designed to serve 500+ realtor websites with real-time property data. Implemented multi-stage crawling and caching strategies to optimize data retrieval and storage. Engineered a robust security system to manage data access based on client authorization levels, ensuring data integrity and confidentiality.
Fullstack Engineer at Zabanshenas
Timeline: Jan 2018 → Mar 2019
Zabanshenas was an startup helping its clients to learn new language based on the modern resources available across internet.
I helped them by engineering a comprehensive translation management system using Django and React, seamlessly integrated with Discourse for robust user authentication and access control. This versatile platform empowered the internal team to efficiently manage and localize diverse media types, including:
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Text content
The system streamlined the translation workflow, enhancing productivity and ensuring consistent quality across all content types.
Freelance Web Developer
Timeline: Feb 2014 → Nov 2017
During this period I was active in different startups and small projects namely:
- Appforall: A mobile application market place active in Iran.
- AppStore.ir: Another mobile application market place targetting iOS users active in Iran.
- FooF: A dating startup application focused on being funny.