Jalen Walker

S

CTO at Saffron Data · Data pipelines · SQL, Iceberg

Saffron Data
Washington, DC · ET (UTC-5)
16+ years experience
Rhode Island School of Design
English
Messaging unavailable

Overview

I've spent 20 years on data pipelines - first at Snowflake, now at Saffron Data. Built the experimentation framework 40 product teams use to ship changes safely. Shipped 16 launches on the data platform team without a rollback. Before that: Uber and Spotify. Most at home with Python and Kafka.

Good reasons to reach out
  • Working sessions on Kafka
  • Second opinions on Python decisions
Please don't message about
  • Agency or outsourcing pitches
  • Recruiters for roles outside my stack
  • SEO and link-building offers

Prefers short, specific messages

Skills
IcebergAirflowKafkaPythondbtSnowflakeSQL

Experience

  1. CTO
    Jun 2024 - Present
    Saffron Data · 2 yr 4 mo · Contract · Washington, DC
    • Shipped a rewrite that took build times from 42 minutes to under 4.
    • Mentored 8 engineers through their first promotion.
    • Led the migration of 34 services to Iceberg.
  2. Data Engineer
    Sep 2020 - Jun 2024
    Uber · 3 yr 9 mo · Full-time · Washington, DC
    • Replaced 116 hand-built dashboards with one metrics layer people trust.
    • Taught SQL to 78 non-analysts.
  3. Principal Engineer
    Feb 2017 - Sep 2020
    Spotify · 3 yr 7 mo · Full-time · Washington, DC
    • Led or co-led 23 investments, 8 of them now at Series B or later.
  4. Senior Data Engineer
    Jan 2014 - Feb 2017
    DoorDash · 3 yr 1 mo · Full-time · Washington, DC
    • Built the product analytics models now used in 4 product decisions a quarter.
    • Taught SQL to 179 non-analysts.
  5. Data Engineer
    Jan 2011 - Jan 2014
    Snowflake · 3 yr · Full-time · Washington, DC
    • Wrote the metric definitions the leadership team reviews every week.
    • Replaced 115 hand-built dashboards with one metrics layer people trust.

Projects

Conference talk: lessons from data platform
2025

What went wrong and what worked while scaling data pipelines.

Write-up: data pipelines in practice
2022

A long-form guide to data pipelines for people starting out.

References

No references yet.

Education

  1. Rhode Island School of Design
    BFA, Electronics and Communication
    2001 - 2005

Details

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