Minura Punchihewa

Minura Punchihewa has gained extensive work experience in the field of data engineering and management. Starting in 2016, Minura worked as an intern in management consultancy at KPMG Sri Lanka. In 2018, Minura served as a student ambassador at Unilever and held leadership roles in AIESEC in Sri Lanka, including Team Leader. From 2019 to 2021, Minura worked as a consultant and intern in data management at MAS Holdings, where they developed data capturing web applications, built reports, and implemented machine learning algorithms. In 2021, Minura briefly worked as a data engineer at BlackSwan Technologies. Then, from 2022 to the present, Minura served as a data engineer at OCTAVE - John Keells Group, contributing to data engineering projects. In 2023, Minura joined MindsDB as a Community Maintainer. Additionally, Minura worked as an external research contractor at Massey University from 2020 to 2022.

Minura Punchihewa began their education in 2002 at Royal College Colombo, where they studied physical sciences until 2015. In 2016, they enrolled in the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka and pursued a BSc. in Applied Accounting, which they completed in 2019. From 2017 to 2021, Minura attended the University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka and earned a BSc. Honors in Management and Information Technology, with a focus on computer/information technology administration and management.

In addition to their formal education, Minura has obtained several certifications. These include "Hands On Essentials - Data Engineering" and "Hands On Essentials - Data Warehouse" from Snowflake in January 2023, "AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Exam Prep - OCT 2022" from Udemy in December 2022, "Apache Spark (TM) SQL for Data Analysts" from Coursera in April 2022, and "Learning Linux Command Line" from LinkedIn in April 2022.

They also hold certifications related to AWS (Amazon Web Services), such as "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 6 Auto Scaling and Virtual Network Services," "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 2 Storage Design," "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 4 Compute Services," "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 5 Identity and Access Management," "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 7 Application Deployment," "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 8 Databases," and "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 9 Services and Design Scenarios." These certifications were obtained in January 2022.

Furthermore, Minura has completed "Statistics Foundations: Probability" and "Statistics Foundations: The Basics" from LinkedIn in December 2021, "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 3 Virtual Private Cloud" from LinkedIn in November 2021, "AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02): 1 Cloud Services Overview" from LinkedIn in October 2021, "Docker for Developers" from LinkedIn in October 2021, "Exam Tips: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C02)" from LinkedIn in October 2021, "Linux: Overview and Installation" from LinkedIn in October 2021, and "Advanced SQL for Data Scientists (2017)" from LinkedIn in September 2021.

Overall, Minura Punchihewa has a diverse education history with a foundation in physical sciences and applied accounting, complemented by a focus on management and information technology. They have also acquired numerous certifications, particularly in technical areas such as data engineering, data warehousing, cloud computing (specifically AWS), and statistics.