Zdravko Yanakiev
Senior Data Engineer
I deliver production-grade data and AI platforms end-to-end: cloud infrastructure, pipelines, AI integration, and analytics.
Independent Consultant · Remote
B.Sc. Computer Science, TU Dresden · German & English
Core Expertise
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Data Platform Engineering
Greenfield platforms defined entirely as code: multi-environment cloud infrastructure that teams can reproduce, audit, and own.
- Terraform
- Azure
- AWS
- GCP
- Kubernetes
- CI/CD
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Event-Driven Systems
Serverless backend services and streaming pipelines: replacing manual handoffs and batch jobs with systems that react to events as they happen.
- Kafka / Confluent
- Azure Functions
- Container Apps
- Python
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Analytics Engineering
From raw ingestion to analytics-ready models: warehousing and transformation layers with testing and CI built in.
- Snowflake
- dbt
- Databricks
- Spark
- Airflow
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AI Integration & Retrieval
RAG pipelines and retrieval layers that make enterprise data usable by AI systems, with performance measurable from day one.
- Azure OpenAI
- Azure AI Search
- RAG
- Vector search
- Embeddings
Selected Work
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AI Service Desk Platform
Senior Data Engineer · Jun 2026
End-to-end data and AI platform for an enterprise industrial automation company, covering ServiceNow ingestion, RAG-based query answering, intent classification, and performance analytics on Azure.
- Azure OpenAI
- Azure AI Search
- RAG
- Spark
- Delta Lake
- ADF
- Terraform
- ServiceNow
- Python
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Cloud-Native Survey Automation Platform
Lead Engineer · Feb 2026
Greenfield survey automation and analytics platform on Azure, replacing a fragmented spreadsheet process with event-driven Qualtrics integration, automated reporting, and infrastructure as code.
- Terraform
- Azure Functions
- Qualtrics
- dbt
- PostgreSQL
- Flyway
- GitLab CI
Background
Before going independent, I spent three years at Infinite Lambda, a data engineering consultancy, delivering platform builds for enterprise clients across travel, loyalty, retail, and gaming. As Senior Data Engineer I led architectural decision-making in client-facing engagements, built streaming integration platforms at scale, and established reusable engineering patterns adopted across the consultancy.
Earlier work includes ETL pipelines on AWS at Alexander Thamm (Spark, Airflow, Python) and an NLP and semantic search research prototype at Fraunhofer IAIS.
Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate
Engagement
I work in focused engagements with defined scope and full ownership, from architecture to handover. For DACH teams, engagements can run in German.