Portfolio
Data and AI
I work at the intersection of data engineering, cloud architecture, and applied AI. I help teams modernize data platforms, translate messy technical problems into usable systems, and write about data, food, and technology. My personal philosophy is to be well rounded technically, but also in the humanities.
Technical workEducationContact
Featured technical work
Other than my day to day project work, here are a couple public items I have worked on
AWS APN AMBASSADOR· 2026
AWS APN Ambassador
1 of 358 AWS Ambassadors in the world representing consulting partners in data thought leadership
https://aws.amazon.com/partners/ambassadors/?ams%23interactive-card-vertical%23pattern-data-1736951101.search=quach
Technical Principal· 2022
Moody’s Analytics
Helped oversee the technical team deploying the next generation transactional datalake Apache Hudi for Moody’s analytics to help process large sets of financial data.
https://www.rackspace.com/case-studies/moodys-analytics
aws apn author· 2023
Modernizing Hbase/Solr to Opensearch
Primary author of AWS APN partner blog post detailing how to migrate Hbase, Solr, and Hbase Indexer to Opensearch on AWS.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/best-practices-from-rackspace-for-modernizing-a-legacy-hbase-solr-architecture-using-aws-services/
Editor· 2022
Introduction to Apache Iceberg
Primary editor of the blog post from Chaitanya Varma highlighting the new exciting features of Apache Iceberg on the AWS APN Blog
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/apache-iceberg-an-introduction-from-rackspace-on-running-the-new-open-table-format-on-aws/
technical principal· 2022
Blackline Safety Databricks Implementation
Led an implementation to deploy a transactional data lake for Blackline Safety to help with a Covid contact tracing use case.
https://www.rackspace.com/case-studies/blackline-safety
SAAS STARTUP
Menutail
Created a profitable nutrition facts labeling self service platform written in Ruby on Rails.
https://www.menutail.com/
Public Speaking
2024
AWS re:Invent Recap End of Year Mixer (Dec 16, 2024)
Presenter of a Vancouver Web Service in person meet-up talking about the newest annoucements with a focus on data engineering and data science
https://lu.ma/vm10h3ex
Beyond the Hype: Practical Applications of Generative AI in 2024 (July 11, 2024)
Co-presenter of a Vancouver Web Services person meet-up in person talking about the current AI snapshot, and 7 use cases of Generative AI
https://www.meetup.com/vancouver-amazon-web-services-user-group/events/301924693/
2023
State of Data Engineering 2023 – An End of Year Recap (Dec 12, 2023)
Host and presenter of an Amazon Web Services meet-up talking about the state of data engineering in regards to Open Table Formats (Apache Hudi, Apache Iceberg, and Databricks Deltalake) and an overview of enterprise data patterns.
https://www.meetup.com/vancouver-amazon-web-services-user-group/events/297264845/
Streaming Ahead: Next Generation Architectures for IoT Data and Datalakes (May 11, 2023)
Co-presenter of a Vancouver Amazon Web Service in person meet-up discussing a customer case study where IoT data from building devices was used to assess air quality to create advanced analytics.
Key AWS services discussed included DynamoDB for storage, Timestream for time-series data management, IoT Core for device communication, Amazon EMR for data processing, Amazon Neptune for graph databases, and Apache Hudi for transactional datalakes. The presentation focused on the technical capabilities of these services and their integration for managing and analyzing large volumes of data.
https://www.meetup.com/vancouver-amazon-web-services-user-group/events/293025317/
2021
Building Your Modern Data Strategy with AWS Analytics (2021) – Co Presenter
Co-presenter with AWS on a talk on modern data strategy and a highlight of business use cases. Free registration required to watch the talk.
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/17680/517055
Food & Side Projects
PODCAST
Return To Soil Podcast
Return to Soil Food Podcast (6 episodes, 2015-2017)
I created a 6 episode series interviewing food producers ranging from farmers, grain farmers, and chocolate makers.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/return-to-soil/id1017204222
2014· AUTHOR
The El Monte Potluck Cookbook
Primary author of a collection of recipes of Vietnamese Vegetarian food.
https://www.amazon.com/El-Monte-Potluck-Vietnamese-Vegetarian/dp/1494801361z
Contact
Contact
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