Akram Syed

Databricks Admin

Platform Administrator:
Infrastructure Management: Oversee the provisioning, scaling, and management of databricks infrastructure including clusters, storage, and networking resources. Implemented security policies, access controls, and data protection measures to safeguard sensitive data and comply with regulatory requirements. Coordinated integrations with other systems, data sources, and services to enable seamless data workflows. Developed and maintained backup strategies and disaster recovery plans to ensure data resilience and business continuity.

DevOps/IT Operations:
Implemented CI/CD pipelines for deploying databricks notebooks, jobs, and applications across development, testing, and production environments.
Monitoring and Alerting: Set up monitoring tools and dashboards to track platform health, performance metrics, and job status, with automated alerts for critical events or anomalies.
Capacity Planning: Forecast resource requirements and plan capacity expansions or upgrades to meet growing demand and maintain service levels.

Provisioning and Optimization:

Provisioned Databricks Infrastructure using Terraform to manage the underlying infrastructure required for Databricks, such as virtual machines, networking components, and storage resources. This includes setting up virtual networks, subnets, security groups, and other resources needed to deploy Databricks clusters securely.
Orchestrated databricks clusters, where I meticulously tailor configurations to meet the diverse needs of our data practitioners. From choosing the optimal instance types to fine-tuning auto-scaling policies, every decision is aimed at striking the delicate balance between performance and cost efficiency. Regular optimization exercises ensure that resources are utilized judiciously, maximizing the value extracted from our investment in databricks.

Integration and Automation:
To navigate data, seamless integration with external systems. I engineer data pipelines that traverse disparate data sources, orchestrating a symphony of data movement orchestrated by databricks jobs and apache airflow. Automation scripts DevOps principles, streamline infrastructure provisioning and configuration, liberating valuable time for innovation and exploration.

• ADLS migration project with Relativity
• Perform data migrations for Relativity customers from legacy managed disk storage into ADLS
• Troubleshoot issues as they arise during the process and escalate as necessary
• Participate in daily standups
• Achieve business OKRs around amount of data migrated to ADLS
• Follow a pre-defined SOP to create an ADLs repository for data, perform validation checks, execute data copy process, perform DNS cutover, and verify data integrity
• Decommission legacy managed disks
• Work with Dev Teams to provision Infrastructure with IAC using Terraform
• Evangelize best practices in Application Process Development & Monitoring
• Investigate any open issues with thorough follow-up
• Look for opportunities to improve automation
• Understanding of functional and Technical components
• Create custom dashboards using Metrics and other log info
• Create/Monitor Cloud Platform by creating Alert Rules
• Play a pivotal role during application deployments and incorporate Load Testing or performance testing
• Performs Routine Application Maintenance
• Understanding about Cloud Infrastructure and Networking
• Familiarity with Programming languages, Backend system, Databases, Data Storage
• Understanding of serverless components, cost management
• Familiarity with Cloud Governance and Best practices.

• Worked on escalated tasks related to interconnectivity issues and complex cloud-based identity management and user authentication, service interruptions with Virtual Machines (their host nodes) and associated virtual storage (Blobs, Tables, Queues)
• Automated and Controlled IOT devices processes and tasks and made systems more efficient which reduced the need for human intervention.
• Performed data collection and Analysis on IoT devices. Collected vast amounts of data and analyzed to gain insights, improve decision-making, and predict future trends.
• Remotely monitored IoT and managed devices and systems, which is useful in healthcare.
• Moderate and contribute to the support forums (specific to Azure Networking, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Active Directory, Azure Storage) for Microsoft Developers Network including Partners and MVPs
• Provide consulting and cloud architecture for premier customers and internal projects running on Microsoft Azure platform for high availability of services, low operational costs
• Administrating and supporting company's Azure Kubernetes infrastructure, ensuring it is secure, resilient and performance and responsible for complete DevOps activities and coordinating with the development team
• Deployment of Windows products using Tanium
• Working knowledge in deploying CI/CD system using Azure Devops on Kubernetes container environment and for the runtime environment of CI/CD system to build test & deploy utilizing Kubernetes & Docker
• Developed maintained and provided the team with various Azure Devops related tools like deployment tools, staged virtual environments & provisioning scripts
• Used shared image gallery to store the created images and built azure pipelines in Azure Devops to implement all these services in Azure
• Working as Kubernetes Administrator involved in configuration for webapps, Azure App services, Azure Application insights, Azure Application gateway, Azure DNS, Azure traffic manager, App services
• Deployed windows Kubernetes cluster with the Azure Container Service (ACS) from Azure CLI and Utilized Kubernetes and Docker for runtime environment of the CI/CD system to build, test and deploy
• Integrated Ansible with Jenkins to provide automation, continuous integration & Continuous Deployment through Jenkins and wrote Playbooks to automate Ansible servers using YAML scripting
• Implemented Jenkins Workflow and Plugins for repeatable deployments of multi-tier applications, artifacts and services to Docker
• Integrated Docker container orchestration framework using Kubernetes by creating pods, Config Maps, and deployments
• Development of automation of Kubernetes clusters with Ansible, writing playbooks
• Deployed Kubernetes Clusters on cloud/on-premises environments with master/minion architecture and wrote many YAML files to create many services like pods, deployments, auto scaling, load balancers, labels, health checks etc
• Managing the Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) policies, providing access to different Azure resources and developing and improving the workflows that govern access
• Experience in Azure Kubernetes service to produce production-grade Kubernetes that allow enterprises to reliable deploy and run containerized workloads across private and public clouds
• Reporting to the Group Manager for technical escalations, analyze top-issues and top call drivers for the week and provide action plans to streamline processes
• Handle escalated Support tickets till closure for MS Azure IaaS platform
• Exposed to working with various issue severities, engaging specialized teams, close deadlines
• Work closely with the program management / product group for info on new released features
• Interact with principal owners of Microsoft proprietary enterprise products
• Contribute and collaborate with the content development team for official documentation, tech blogs and 'how-to' tutorials
• Design lab sessions for team members to reproduce critical issue
• Organize tech sync calls to be up-to-date on platform updates / emerging technologies
• Part of an internal project to automate the Support process by designing an IVR using artificial intelligence and logical troubleshooting algorithm
• Environment: Microsoft Windows Azure, Windows server 2008/2012/R2, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Visual Studio, Windows PowerShell
• Update existing powershell scripts residing in the repository as per the requirement of the tasks
• Upto date knowledge of change management, ticket creation and execution of Jobs in Tanium
• Extensively worked on validation prior to change occurrence
• Hands on experience with service now, incident resolution, request for change and problem management
• Managing Microsoft Identity Management products (Active Directory, Active Directory Federation Services, and Azure, AD Connect, Office 365) serving as an enterprise-wide directory containing 400k Objects
• Managing Identity Access management of Azure Subscriptions, Azure AD, Azure AD Application Proxy, Azure AD Connect, Azure AD Pass Through Authentication
• Creating and managing application integrations for identify and access management
• Having Experience of Creating conditional Access policies Multifactor authentication (MFA), Resetting MFA and Resolving the MFA issues
• Familiarity in the following areas: single sign-on, enterprise directory architecture and design, directory schema, namespace, replication topology, resource provisioning, role-based access Control, user lifecycle
• Successfully established and tested Azure AD Tenant for production
• Provided technical direction to allow Active Directory on-Prem group to populate users
• Experience in Syncing the Objects Users, Groups, Workstation from active directory to azure active directory
• Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), SAML, web Single Sign-on (SSO), OAuth and related authentication technologies
• Assist in the scripting of AD user and contact object updates using PowerShell to facilitate synchronization to Azure AD
• Having experience with Various PowerShell module (Azure ad, Active Directory and exchange online)
• Having Experience of troubleshooting of user account provisioning between legacy Client directories and CSC active directory and LDAP directories
• Experience Configuring and managing Azure AD Connect, Azure AD Connect health, Microsoft Azure Active Directory
• Actively reviews CIS Benchmarks Provided/presented migration statistics, issues/resolution, and deliverables to leadership, detailing user, group, and physical device success percentages, tracking milestones for what had been migrated or was still in need of migration
• Monitoring the Licenses for Azure Ad issues, resolving the Licenses Issue for Azure AD Users
• Assigning the licenses Group based.
• Enhanced efficiency by providing real-time data and analytics, IoT helped optimize resource use, reduce waste, and improve operational efficiency.
• Improved quality of life in the consumer space, IoT enhanced convenience and quality of life through smart home devices and wearable health monitors.

• Familiarity in the following areas: single sign-on, enterprise directory architecture and design, directory schema, namespace, replication topology, resource provisioning, role-based access Control, user lifecycle
• Resolved Azure AD issues relating to Office 365 (MMSSPP), Active Directory to Azure AD identity and user permissions
• Develop cloud automation tailored to customer's needs
• Troubleshoot, evaluate, and resolve connectivity issues for applications running on Azure
• Knowledge on testing the application Various methods and Deploy the application in to cloud
• Configured and resolved Azure AD Connect sync issues, Various types of Data issues and Attribute issues
• Gather, review, and validate network requirements, VNETs, and network security groups
• Skilled in researching on new technologies and trends in the respected competencies of Microsoft technology stack; creating operational and engineering documentation customer solutions for storage and backup environment
• Having Experience of Creating and Managing the users and groups in Azure AD
• Deploy, configure and maintain computation on Azure cloud
• Troubleshoot issues and engage with teams and vendors for issue resolutions
• Automate deployment and troubleshoot mechanism for quick service
• Develop and implement new process and provide documentation of it
• Data Protection and maintenance of healthy network using different backup and recovery strategies
• McAfee Patching
• Adding rules to McAfee
• Disaster Recovery for 70,000+ Machines including Servers 2003, server 2008, server 2012 R2, Exchange servers etc
• Hands-on experience in Deployment, requirement gathering, Installation, administration
• Installing the systems through network
• Creating, managing, configuring, maintaining Virtual Machines, DHCP, DNS and Samba Servers
• Troubleshooting issues of Virtual Machines, file system and booting problems
• Data Protection and maintenance of healthy network using different backup and recovery strategies.

• Administering Windows Servers
• Worked on Windows 2003, 2008, 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2
• Windows Server Clustering, Patch Management, troubleshooting and support
• Provision VMware Data store's and configure storage for Virtual Machine
• Worked on Windows […] AD, DNS, DHCP Environment
• Windows […] Cluster administration and service monitoring
• Decreased restore time to less than 50% of prior configuration by implementing backup / restore process
• Directed troubleshooting efforts for high severity issues by engaging with other support teams
• Was responsible for the 24 X 7 data center operations such as rack installation, server configuration, server health monitoring, switch installation etc
• Maintained Windows PKI smart card services and Intermediate Certificate Authority servers to ensure secure login availability
• Assesses incident priority and determines if the priority needs to be adjusted based on additional information
• Excellent understanding of SAN, NAS storage architecture
• Worked on CIS Benchmarks
• Installed & configured Windows 2008 with Active Directory service
• Troubleshooted several errors related to office 365 and office 2016 on day to day basis
• Extensive Remote Access knowledge with BOMGAR
• Administered System Management Server (SMS) and SCCM system for world-wide inventory of PCs and file servers
• Managed deployment of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 to all physical and VDI machines to stay in compliance with software patching
• Used cloning program Clonezilla both editions
• Extensive knowledge and hands on experience on SCCM
• Good hands on experience with Lansweeper.