Meet Sujesh Menon, a valued member of our community! Sujesh is a Senior Data Engineer at Glanbia, Plc. He brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the group, and we are thrilled to have him here.
We presented him with a range of questions, and below, you will find his responses, expressed in his own words -
- Name: Sujesh Menon
- Community nickname: @menotron ⭐
- Pronouns: He/Him
- Company: Glanbia, Plc
- Job Title: Sr. Data Engineer
Can you provide a brief overview of your career journey leading up to your current role?
With a background in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering, I joined Reliance Jio Infocomm as a Graduate Trainee back in 2016 but soon got the opportunity to be part of the newly formed Big Data CoE in the capacity of a Data Engineer and my career pivoted as I fell in love with everything data and analytics. During my stint with Jio, I got to work with one of India’s largest data lake crunching petabyte scale data across a breadth of technologies in the HDP stack and that is where I honed my Data Engineering skills. Still, remember binge reading spark 1.6 documentation.
I later moved to Ireland in 2019 to pursue master's from Trinity College, Dublin focusing on Distributed Computing. Upon graduating I first worked with Zalando, building platform codebase and data pipelines and this was where I was introduced to Databricks and have been a fanboy of the platform ever since.
In my current role with Glanbia Plc, I am responsible for the data engineering function and have been working on some really cool projects leveraging a modern tech stack and helping the business on their digital transformation journey.
What do you enjoy most about your current job or role?
This list could be quite long. But mainly the autonomy and the opportunity to contribute to some really innovative projects including a few GenAI applications. The ability to be an advocate and practitioner of strong data governance principals. I find a sense of satisfaction to be able to leverage my expertise in building data solutions across cross functional teams wearing multiple hats and see the impact of my work in a transparent way.
If you had to describe yourself using three words, what would they be? How do you think your coworkers would describe you?
Ah! time for self-reflection.. I’d like to describe myself as Analytical, Curious and Resilient.
I hope my coworkers describe me as a result oriented and reliable colleague who is approachable and can get things done no matter what.
Have you had any mentors or significant influences in your professional life? If so, could you tell us about them?
I consider myself to be fortunate to have some really good mentors and managers all along my career. Special mention to Nilesh Mahajan, Naresh Chhabria, Rohan Naidu and Mark O'Gara.
Beyond their technical skills, it’s their work ethics, problem solving and management that I value the most. More than the mentoring and support it was their trust and autonomy that has allowed to take up ownership and push myself to grow in my career.
Outside work, the people who have inspired and have had significant influences in my professional life would include Jacek Laskowski, Denny Lee, Maxime Beauchemin, Pierre Villard, Tathagata Das to name a few.
When and why did you first start using Databricks?
Even though I had tried Databricks Community Cloud sometime back in 2019, it was during my stint with Zalando when I first started using it in a prod setup. But more as a compute infra to submit jobs from our Airflow workflows. In my current organization, we use it to the full extend and pretty much leverage all capabilities of the Data Intelligence Platform including ETL, data warehousing, BI and AI.
Are there any Databricks features that you particularly enjoy or find indispensable in your work?
I would have to say Workflows and unity catalog as they have made life so much easy.
With the advent of AI, the need to have a unified governance is paramount and databricks Lakehouse has made it possible to build and deliver projects with strong governance and security while adhering to ML and Data Ops practices.
Lately, I have been playing with the Apps feature that’s in preview and believe it is a game changer.
Is there a Databricks feature you wish existed or would like to see in future updates?
Native connectors to SAP ERP systems under Lakehouse federation would be super nice as I believe both companies are now strategic partners advocating an Open Data Ecosystem.
Secondly, even though I like drowning in system tables, it would be really handy have to have a better visual representation of the telemetry and observability aspect. Something like an admin insights dashboard.
Also, I am super excited to try out the LakeFlow Connect when it becomes available on our account.
When did you join the Databricks Community, and what motivated you to do so?
I have been a member since May, 2023. Initially joined just to stay updated about any events or meetups happening near me. But have found it to be a great place to expand my knowledge. And before I befriended the databricks assistant, I have almost always found solution to a problem I was facing here on the community forum. So, it only seemed fair for me to do the same.
It is rewarding feeling to be able to solve a problem and contribute in the community.
What aspects of the Databricks Community do you find most valuable or enjoyable?
This is one of the most active community I am associated with. The one aspect I find the most valuable is the promptness and multi-faceted approach to a problem as not only the employees but other community members with varying backgrounds and expertise engage in the conversations.
Can’t thank enough to all those people who spare time to answer on the forums and especially the community managers for fostering this space and sharing frequent updates while moderating and ensuring the community grows.
Outside of work, what is your favorite hobby or pastime?
I enjoy tinkering with hobby electronics and pretend to make music on my DAW.
I recently got married so, lately it’s all about spending quality time with my better half and living this phase of life to the fullest.
Where do you envision yourself professionally in the next three years?
From a career progression point of view, I aspire to become the principal engineer with strong expertise in architecting scalable AI solutions for the business. I would also love to be able to mentor and contribute back to OSS.
Social Media Handles
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sujesh-menon-1010/
Thank you for sharing your personal and professional journey with us. We appreciate the opportunity to learn from your experiences @menotron. 🌟
Come, let's embark on a journey celebrating the experiences of our Community members. Make sure to connect with him to learn more about his experience and insights in the data engineering space! Your next source of motivation awaits with just a scroll! 🚀
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