About
5+ years building with data and software (since 2021), including production data engineering at scale since 2024.
Senior Data Engineer at Kifiya Financial Technology in Addis Ababa, running lakehouse, CDC and warehouse platforms for digital lending since 2024. I take data work from architecture and governance to production pipelines and analytics. AI engineering is my second discipline.
I work where data engineering meets the people who depend on it: partner systems that only hand over dumps, analysts who need one table instead of sixteen joins, and models that must read the same features in training and in production. I like designs that fail loudly, contracts that live next to the code they protect, and writing down why a decision was made.
Outside work I research Amharic language technology: how small language models degrade when quantized for consumer hardware, and how to read Ethiopic script reliably from images and PDFs.
Skills, by how they are evidenced
In production means I run it at work today. In projects means I built with it in a public repository or prototype. Learning means exactly that.
Orchestration and pipelines
In production
- Apache Airflow
- dbt
- Mage AI
- Apache Spark (PySpark)
- PyIceberg
- ETL and ELT pipeline design
In projects
- Airbyte
Lakehouse and storage
In production
- Apache Iceberg
- Medallion architecture
- Amazon S3 and Parquet
- Trino
- Apache Polaris catalog
- Athena and the Glue Data Catalog
Streaming and CDC
In production
- Change data capture
- Debezium
- Apache Kafka
- OLake
- AWS DMS
In projects
- Redpanda
Learning
- Apache Flink
Warehousing and modelling
In production
- Amazon Redshift
- PostgreSQL
- Aurora PostgreSQL
- ClickHouse
- Dimensional modelling
- BigQuery
- Apache Superset
- Redis
- MongoDB
In projects
- MySQL
Learning
- Snowflake
Cloud and platform
In production
- AWS data platform (S3, EKS, EMR Serverless, Lambda, EventBridge, Secrets Manager, IAM and IRSA)
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- GitLab CI/CD
- Linux
In projects
- GitHub Actions
Learning
- Terraform
AI and ML engineering
In production
- Feast feature store
- FastAPI
- LangChain
- CrewAI
- Retrieval-augmented generation
- ChromaDB
- Keycloak
In projects
- LangGraph
- Qdrant
- Embeddings for Ethiopian languages
- LoRA and QLoRA fine-tuning
- Model quantization
- Hugging Face Transformers
- Ollama
- OCR for Ethiopic script
- scikit-learn and XGBoost
- TensorFlow and PyTorch
Observability and governance
In production
- Data contracts and quality gates
- OpenLineage and Marquez
- OpenMetadata
- Apache Ranger
- Prometheus and Grafana
- Pipeline alerting and on-call hygiene
Languages
In production
- Python
- SQL
- Bash
In projects
- TypeScript and JavaScript
- Kotlin and Java (Android)
Education
10 Academy
Kifiya AI Mastery Training Program (KAIM): data engineering and machine learning intensive
Jun 2024 to Aug 2024. Completed with distinction.
Wolaita Sodo University
BSc, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sep 2018 to Jul 2023. GPA 3.69/4.0. Led the Google Developer Student Clubs chapter in the final year.
Community and teaching
Google Developer Student Clubs Lead
Wolaita Sodo University, Aug 2022 to Jul 2023
Led the university chapter of Google Developer Student Clubs and ran hands-on workshops on machine learning, web and mobile development. Google recognized the year with a letter of commendation.
Google Crowdsource Influencer
Google Crowdsource, Sep 2022 to present
Contribute and validate training data for Google's AI products through Google Crowdsource, as part of its Influencer community.
Internal machine learning lectures
Kifiya Financial Technology (internal), Apr 2026 to Apr 2026
Gave internal lectures on gradient-boosted trees (XGBoost) to colleagues on the data teams.
Data-science to data-engineering handoff template
Kifiya Financial Technology (internal), May 2026 to present
Wrote the template data scientists use to hand feature-engineering work over to data engineering, so each feature arrives with its definition and source logic written down before it goes into the ML feature store. It has been revised several times since the first version.
Credentials
Data engineering
- Associate Data Engineer in Snowflake (career track) DataCamp, Jul 2026
- Associate Data Engineer in SQL (career track) DataCamp, Jul 2026
- Associate Data Engineer in Databricks (career track) DataCamp, 2026
- Intermediate SQL DataCamp, Jul 2026
- Apache Airflow Essential Training LinkedIn Learning, Feb 2026
- Data Engineering Pipeline Management with Apache Airflow LinkedIn Learning, Feb 2026
- PySpark Essential Training: Introduction to Building Data Pipelines LinkedIn Learning, Feb 2026
- Advanced NoSQL for Data Science LinkedIn Learning, Feb 2026
- Problem-Solving Strategies for Data Engineers LinkedIn Learning, Feb 2026
- Designing Highly Scalable and Highly Available SQL Databases LinkedIn Learning, Jan 2026
- Data Engineering Foundations LinkedIn Learning, Jan 2026
- Introduction to Amazon Redshift: Data Management Essentials LinkedIn Learning, Jan 2026
- Learning Apache Airflow LinkedIn Learning, Jan 2026
- Advanced SQL Project: Design and Manage a Database LinkedIn Learning, Jan 2026
- Introduction to Airflow in Python DataCamp, Nov 2025
- Fundamentals of Text Data Manipulation CodeSignal, Sep 2025
- Data Analysis Fundamentals Udacity, Jul 2024
AI
- Agentic AI Design Patterns for GenAI and Predictive AI LinkedIn Learning, Jan 2026
- Claude Code in Action Anthropic, Jul 2025
- AWS Educate Machine Learning Foundations Amazon Web Services, Jun 2025
- Introducing Generative AI with AWS Udacity, Jun 2025
Software
- Collaboration Principles and Process LinkedIn Learning, Feb 2026
- Tech Career Skills: Effective Technical Communication LinkedIn Learning, Feb 2026
- Enterprise Architecture in Practice LinkedIn Learning, Jan 2026
Community
- Inclusive Open Source Community Orientation (LFC102) The Linux Foundation, Aug 2026
Recommendations
I've had the pleasure of working closely with Matiwos, a Data Engineer at Kifiya, and his growth has been exceptional. He learns new technologies with impressive speed, consistently applies them effectively, and brings sharp problem-solving skills to every task. His focus, professionalism, and ability to deliver high-quality results make him stand out. Matiwos is an outstanding data engineer with tremendous potential, and I highly recommend him.
I've had the pleasure of working with Matiwos and want to commend him for his exceptional work on our team. He demonstrated outstanding technical proficiency in managing and optimizing data pipelines, ensuring data integrity, and implementing efficient solutions that significantly improved our data processing capabilities. Matiwos is quick to take action, consistently responding to challenges and tasks with enthusiasm and a solutions-oriented mindset. His ability to communicate effectively coupled with strong problem-solving skills, made him an invaluable asset. I am confident that he will bring the same dedication and expertise to any future role.