Braden McKallagat
Somerville,MA
Summary
Senior Data & Platform Engineer with 8+ years designing and scaling cloud-native data systems, ML analytics pipelines, and full-stack solutions across biotech, fintech, software compliance, and healthcare. Proven ability to lead ingestion, compute, and servicing layers on AWS and Azure and reduce latency and scale pipelines. Hands-on expertise with Python, Terraform, Kubernetes, data wrangling, and lakehouse architectures. Skilled in IaC delivery, production ML, and event-driven platforms that enable experimentation, insight, and automation. Targeting: Senior or Staff Data Engineer / Data Platform Engineer / MLOps roles in high-impact data organizations.
Overview
8
8
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Data Engineer
CytoTronics
01.2025 - 10.2025
- Company Overview: Biotech startup enabling automated drug discovery via cell-level analytics
- Designed IoT-to-cloud ingestion platform for FPGA-based non-destructive cell scanners, processing 20 TB/day and reducing data latency from up to 30min to 5min (~80%).
- Built AI/ML-based analysis (scikit-learn, Dask) improving experiment throughput and diversifying signal interpretation for different use cases (Cardiac, Neurology).
- Delivered event-driven GraphQL APIs (FastAPI, Ariadne) with real-time updates via SNS.
- Streamlined infrastructure with Terraform, Pulumi, GitHub Actions, and Flux.
- Deployed monitoring stack with ElasticSearch and Grafana, improving incident response time.
- Tech: Python (Async/FastAPI), GraphQL / Ariadne, PYNQ/FPGA, Dask, SciKit-learn, AWS (EKS, S3, ECS, Batch, Aurora), ReactJS / TypeScript, JupyterHub, Grafana, GitHub Actions, Terraform, Pulumi
Data Engineer
Atticus Technology
07.2023 - 12.2024
- Company Overview: Small startup (3 engineers) SaaS provider for nonprofit donor data enrichment
- Built greenfield pipelines using Azure Databricks and Python microservices to ingest and enrich donor profiles across multiple sources and levels of data quality (ATTOM, DonorSearch, IRS, People Data Labs, New Articles, LinkedIn profiles, etc.).
- Integrated CosmosDB, PostgreSQL, and Container Apps for scalable, low-latency processing.
- Automated CI/CD with Azure DevOps.
- Tech: Python, Azure Databricks, CosmosDB, PostgreSQL, Container Apps, Azure DevOps
Principal Data Engineer
Pairity, Inc (Acquired by Finvi)
12.2018 - 07.2023
- Company Overview: Fintech ML platform for accounts receivable risk analytics
- Led architecture and delivery of ML risk-scoring APIs, scaling to millions of financial records per day.
- Built compliant pipelines with PII masking and observability, ensuring SOC 2 compliance and 99.9% uptime.
- Developed cloud-native microservices and orchestration (AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, Skaffold, GitHub Actions).
- Generated an automated ML model building workflow that significantly reduced Data Science workload and time to customer deployment.
- Tech: Python (Flask, Airflow, Dask, Papermill), AWS (EKS, ECS, Lambda, S3, RDS, Transfer Server, API Gateway), Terraform, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, MongoDB, GitHub Actions
Software Engineer I – Knowledge Base
Black Duck by Synopsys
06.2017 - 12.2018
- Company Overview: Open source software compliance and security platform
- Developed multi-threaded crawlers in Python and Perl to scrape open source license and vulnerability data.
- Improved ingestion pipeline reliability and reduced failure rates through data quality monitoring framework.
- Exposed analytics endpoints via Django and Backbone.js; integrated Highcharts for visualizations.
- Tech: Python, Perl, PostgreSQL, Django, Backbone.js, Highcharts
QA Engineer Intern
University of Vermont Medical Center
01.2017 - 05.2017
- Company Overview: Healthcare IT
- Created Selenium test automation framework integrated with Helix TCM and SharePoint reporting.
- Assisted in device management using XenMobile; liaised with medical staff to streamline workflows.
Software Engineer Intern
DEKA Research & Development
06.2016 - 12.2016
- Company Overview: Medical device R&D
- Built automated testing framework for embedded medical device systems using Python and C++.
- Developed QT-based tooling and enhanced internal documentation and system requirements.
Education
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT12.2017
Skills
- Programming & Frameworks: Python (FastAPI, Flask, Django, AsyncIO, Celery, Pandas/Numpy, SQLAlchemy), Java (Spring, Hibernate), TypeScript / ReactJS, Perl, C
- Data & ML Engineering: Apache Spark, Dask, Databricks, Airflow, SciKit-learn, SciPy, PySpark, ETL/ELT, Delta Lake, Parquet, Data Modeling
- Data Infrastructure & Messaging: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, CosmosDB, Aurora RDS, S3, Kafka, RabbitMQ, SNS, gRPC, GraphQL, ElasticSearch
- Cloud & IaC: AWS (EKS, ECS, Lambda, Batch, S3, Aurora, CloudWatch), Azure (Databricks, Container Apps, Data Factory), Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, Flux, Kustomize, Pulumi
- DevOps & Tooling: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Bash, Linux/Unix, Mender IoT, JupyterHub
- Observability & Monitoring: CloudWatch, ElasticSearch, Grafana, Prometheus, Custom Dashboards, Logging & Alerting Pipelines
Languages
English
Native or Bilingual
German
Elementary
Timeline
Senior Data Engineer
CytoTronics
01.2025 - 10.2025
Data Engineer
Atticus Technology
07.2023 - 12.2024
Principal Data Engineer
Pairity, Inc (Acquired by Finvi)
12.2018 - 07.2023
Software Engineer I – Knowledge Base
Black Duck by Synopsys
06.2017 - 12.2018
QA Engineer Intern
University of Vermont Medical Center
01.2017 - 05.2017
Software Engineer Intern
DEKA Research & Development
06.2016 - 12.2016
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
University of Vermont