Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
I’m Alex Velasquez, a passionate Software Engineer with over 7 years of experience in IT, ranging from end-user support to software engineering. I moved to Canada to sharpen my developer skills and am currently pursuing a postgraduate program in Full Stack Software Development at Lambton College. Throughout my career, I’ve developed a strong foundation in software engineering and problem-solving. I recently fulfilled my dream of becoming a Software Engineer, where I worked with a Big Data Platform Team, managing and supporting ETL pipelines using Big Data frameworks such as PySpark and Pandas. I’ve also contributed to AWS infrastructure management with Terraform and interacted with services like S3, Glue, Lambda, and Kinesis. I’m particularly excited about Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning—fields brimming with endless opportunities for innovation. I’m driven by challenges and am always motivated to learn and grow. My goal is to leverage my technical skills, proactive attitude, and customer-centric approach to make meaningful contributions to my team and projects.
• Volunteered at various events, contributing to community engagement and support. • Represented student interests by gathering feedback and proposing enhancements to the Student Engagement and Wellbeing Department.
• Engineered object-oriented Python scripts to enhance the Data Quality Framework, leveraging open-source technologies to significantly reduce ETL pipeline recovery time through automation and robust error handling. • Contributed to the development of a Big Data Platform POC, developing code and Unit Tests, showcasing advanced product capabilities to internal stakeholders, driving engagement, and supporting platform adoption. • Enabled enriched data access for analysts and data scientists by sharing a database across AWS accounts, increasing data catalog availability in the AWS Data Lake. • Improved Tableau Dashboard performance by optimizing table partition keys, expediting data exposure and enabling faster reporting for strategic business decisions. • Migrated ingestion processes to AWS, utilizing Jupyter Notebooks, Pyspark, and Pandas frameworks to improve operational efficiency and enable scalable, cloud-based data processing. • Strengthened security by installing Gremlin certificates and agents on EKS EC2 instances to support security testing protocols, ensuring compliance with internal vulnerability policies. Enhanced platform scalability and functionality by designing and updating AWS Glue, Kinesis, Lambda functions, and S3 infrastructure using Terraform, enabling smoother integration of new services and more reliable data processing. • Enabled data scientists to conduct efficient software testing by validating AWS EMR clusters running big data frameworks, facilitating enriched data access for reporting and analytics. • Resolved production issues promptly, applying hot-fixes to AWS Glue table partitions, adding SQL configurations to resolve Spark calendar issues, ensuring uninterrupted data pipeline performance. • Delivered operational support for the Big Data Platform, applying hot-fixes, querying SQL databases, identifying root cause, and proactively resolving upstream data anomalies on edge nodes—enhancing platform reliability and data integrity.
• Monitored, administered, and supported critical applications developed in Python, using Grafana and other monitoring tools, to ensure seamless functionality and availability. • Utilized Python methods within loops to analyze and retrieve detailed insights on application failures, streamlining troubleshooting. • Managed UNIX servers for diagnosing network issues and permission errors, improving server reliability and access control. • Performed regular server health checks to proactively identify and address performance issues. • Collected and analyzed application logs to support troubleshooting and optimize application performance. • Created and updated comprehensive documentation for troubleshooting processes, enhancing knowledge sharing and support efficiency. • Utilized PL/SQL tools for database queries, updates, data imports, and backups, ensuring data accuracy and accessibility.
• Monitored, administered, and supported iVAS solutions, ensuring system stability and functionality by rigorously testing new features and functionalities. • Managed Fusion Server E9000 via both web and console interfaces, optimizing server performance and accessibility. • Conducted regular health checks on servers and storage, proactively identifying issues and collecting application server logs to support efficient troubleshooting. • Queried Oracle databases to perform data retrieval, updates, imports, and backups, ensuring data integrity and availability for mission-critical applications.
• Conducted in-depth analysis of implementation and configuration processes for information technologies, optimizing operational efficiency and resource allocation. • Led the timely and effective updates of software in production environments, ensuring seamless integration and minimal downtime. • Executed comprehensive testing of new software update packages to validate functionality and enhance system performance. • Streamlined processes by updating arrangements and procedures in SharePoint, improving collaboration and information sharing across teams. • Implemented rigorous detection, correction, and prevention strategies for errors in software solutions, enhancing overall system reliability and user satisfaction. • Configured and tested internal APIs to facilitate data exchange and improve application functionality, ensuring compliance with system requirements. • Administered and optimized Windows and Linux operating systems through expert installation, configuration, and troubleshooting, enhancing system performance and user experience. • Managed SQL database operations, including backup and restoration processes, to safeguard data integrity and availability. • Developed and maintained dynamic web pages in SharePoint using HTML and CSS (Wiki), enhancing user engagement and accessibility to critical information. • Configured and fine-tuned Neural Server and Neural Viewer traffic analysis software, improving system monitoring and performance analytics.