In this podcast episode, we talked with Eddy Zulkifly about From Supply Chain Management to Digital Warehousing and FinOps

About the Speaker: Eddy Zulkifly is a Staff Data Engineer at Kinaxis, building robust data platforms across Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS. With a decade of experience in data, he actively shares his expertise as a Mentor on ADPList and Teaching Assistant at Uplimit. Previously, he was a Senior Data Engineer at Home Depot, specializing in e-commerce and supply chain analytics. Currently pursuing a Master’s in Analytics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Eddy is also passionate about open-source data projects and enjoys watching/exploring the analytics behind the Fantasy Premier League.

In this episode, we dive into the world of data engineering and FinOps with Eddy Zulkifly, Staff Data Engineer at Kinaxis. Eddy shares his unconventional career journey—from optimizing physical warehouses with Excel to building digital data platforms in the cloud.

🕒 TIMECODES 0:00 Eddy’s career journey: From supply chain to data engineering 8:18 Tools & learning: Excel, Docker, and transitioning to data engineering 21:57 Physical vs. digital warehousing: Analogies and key differences 31:40 Introduction to FinOps: Cloud cost optimization and vendor negotiations 40:18 Resources for FinOps: Certifications and the FinOps Foundation 45:12 Standardizing cloud cost reporting across AWS/GCP/Azure 50:04 Eddy’s master’s degree and closing thoughts

🔗 CONNECT WITH EDDY Twitter - https://x.com/eddarief Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddyzulkifly/ Github: https://github.com/eyzyly/eyzyly ADPList: https://adplist.org/mentors/eddy-zulkifly

🔗 CONNECT WITH DataTalksClub Join the community - https://datatalks.club/slack.html Subscribe to our Google calendar to have all our events in your calendar - https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r?cid=ZjhxaWRqbnEwamhzY3A4ODA5azFlZ2hzNjBAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

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We talked about:

00:00 DataTalks.Club intro

02:34 Career journey and transition into MLOps

08:41 Dutch agriculture and its challenges

10:36 The concept of "technical debt" in MLOps

13:37 Trade-offs in MLOps: moving fast vs. doing things right

14:05 Building teams and the role of coordination in MLOps

16:58 Key roles in an MLOps team: evangelists and tech translators

23:01 Role of the MLOps team in an organization

25:19 How MLOps teams assist product teams

27 :56 Standardizing practices in MLOps

32:46 Getting feedback and creating buy-in from data scientists

36:55 The importance of addressing pain points in MLOps

39:06 Best practices and tools for standardizing MLOps processes

42:31 Value of data versioning and reproducibility

44:22 When to start thinking about data versioning

45:10 Importance of data science experience for MLOps

46:06 Skill mix needed in MLOps teams

47:33 Building a diverse MLOps team

48:18 Best practices for implementing MLOps in new teams

49:52 Starting with CI/CD in MLOps

51:21 Key components for a complete MLOps setup

53:08 Role of package registries in MLOps

54:12 Using Docker vs. packages in MLOps

57:56 Examples of MLOps success and failure stories

1:00:54 What MLOps is in simple terms

1:01:58 The complexity of achieving easy deployment, monitoring, and maintenance

Join our Slack: https://datatalks .club/slack.html

We talked about: 

Gloria’s background Working with MATLAB, R, C, Python, and SQL Working at ICE Job hunting after the bootcamp Data engineering vs Data science Using Docker Keeping track of job applications, employers and questions Challenges during the job search and transition Concerns over data privacy Challenges with salary negotiation The importance of career coaching and support Skills learned at Spiced Retrospective on Gloria’s transition to data and advice Top skills that helped Gloria get the job Thoughts on cloud platforms Thoughts on bootcamps and courses Spiced graduation project Standing out in a sea of applicants The cohorts at Spiced Conclusion

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloria-quiceno/ Github: https://github.com/gdq12

MLOps Zoomcamp: https://github.com/DataTalksClub/mlops-zoomcamp

Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Our events: https://datatalks.club/events.html

We talked about:

Andreas’s background Why data engineering is becoming more popular Who to hire first – a data engineer or a data scientist? How can I, as a data scientist, learn to build pipelines? Don’t use too many tools What is a data pipeline and why do we need it? What is ingestion? Can just one person build a data pipeline? Approaches to building data pipelines for data scientists Processing frameworks Common setup for data pipelines — car price prediction Productionizing the model with the help of a data pipeline Scheduling Orchestration Start simple Learning DevOps to implement data pipelines How to choose the right tool Are Hadoop, Docker, Cloud necessary for a first job/internship? Is Hadoop still relevant or necessary? Data engineering academy How to pick up Cloud skills Avoid huge datasets when learning Convincing your employer to do data science How to find Andreas

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-kretz Data engieering cookbook: https://cookbook.learndataengineering.com/ Course: https://learndataengineering.com/

Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Our events: https://datatalks.club/events.html