#209 Effective Data Engineering with Liya Aizenberg, Director of Data Engineering at Away

Building a successful data engineering team involves more than just hiring skilled individuals—it requires fostering a culture of trust, collaboration, and continuous learning. But how do you start from scratch and create a team that not only meets technical demands but also drives business value? What key traits should you look for in your early hires, and how do you ensure your team’s projects align with the company’s goals?

Liya Aizenberg is Director of Data Engineering at Away and a seasoned data leader with over 22 years of experience spearheading innovation in scalable data engineering pipelines and distribution solutions. She has built successful data teams that integrate seamlessly with various business functions, serving as invaluable organizational partners. She focuses on promoting data-driven approaches to empower organizations to make proactive decisions based on timely and organized data, shifting from reactive to proactive business strategies. Additionally, as a passionate advocate for Women in Tech, she actively contributes to fostering diversity and inclusion in the technology industry.

In the episode, Adel and Liya explore the key attributes that forge an effective data engineering team, traits to look for in new hires, what technical skill sets set people up for success in a data engineering team, leveraging knowledge transfer between external experts and internal stakeholders, upskilling and career growth, aligning data engineering initiatives with business goals, measuring the ROI of data projects, working agile in data engineering, balancing innovation and practicality, future trends and much more. 

Links Mentioned in the Show:

• Away Travel
• Connect with Liya on Linkedin
• [Career Track] Data Engineer with Python
• Related Episode: Scaling Data Engineering in Retail with Mo Sabah, SVP of Engineering & Data at Thrive Market
• Sign up to RADAR: AI Edition

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