Kaxil Naik

Kaxil Naik has a diverse work experience in various organizations and roles. Starting in 2013, Naik worked as an Internet Marketing Manager at BeanMatrix Info Services Private Limited, where they managed and optimized Facebook ads campaigns and implemented SEO strategies. In 2016, Naik served as a Part-Time Marketing/Social Media Assistant at Scuderia Car Parts, curating car images and videos for social media channels. Naik then joined John Lewis Partnership as a Big Data Consultant, designing and managing data lake architecture using Hortonworks HDP and HDF on Google Cloud Platform. From 2016 to 2017, Naik also worked as a Data Engineer at Dstl, where they benchmarked different technologies for geospatial datasets on Google Cloud Platform. Naik continued their data engineering work as a Data Engineer at John Lewis Partnership, building scalable and automated pipelines on GCP.

In 2017, Naik took on the role of a Data Scientist/Engineer at the National Safety Organisation, creating infrastructure on GCP and performing data analysis and visualization. Naik then became a Big Data Consultant at Data Reply UK, specializing in machine learning, big data analytics, and data engineering. During this time, Naik worked on projects involving geospatial datasets, dynamic data pipelines, and Apache Airflow. In 2018, Naik joined Quantexa as a DevOps Data Engineer, playing an integral role in creating a cloud-agnostic platform for a fintech company and automating Spark-based ETL pipelines using Apache Airflow.

Naik has also made significant contributions to the Apache Software Foundation, starting in 2018. As a Member of the Apache Software Foundation, Naik served as an Apache Airflow PMC Member & Committer, contributing to the development and release management of Airflow. Additionally, Naik became an Apache Kibble Committer in 2021.

Most recently, Naik joined Astronomer in 2019, initially working as a Senior Data Engineer. Naik then progressed to roles such as Manager - Airflow Engineering, Director of Airflow Engineering, and currently serves as the Senior Director of Engineering.

Kaxil Naik completed their education with a Master of Science (MSc) in Data Science & Analytics from Royal Holloway, University of London, from 2015 to 2017. Before that, they pursued a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Electrical Engineering from Gujarat Technological University, from 2009 to 2013. Additionally, they obtained several certifications such as Associate Cloud Engineer from Google in June 2018, Google Certified Professional - Data Engineer from Google Cloud Certified in October 2017, Neo4j Certified Professional from Neo4j in 2017, and Developer Certification for Apache Spark from O'Reilly Media in 2017.