Alex holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from UC San Diego, and has spent over a decade building high-performance, robust data management and processing systems. As an early member of a couple fast-growing startups, he’s had the opportunity to wear a lot of different hats, serving at various times as an individual contributor, tech lead, manager, and executive. He also had a brief stint as a Cloud Economist with the Duckbill Group, helping AWS customers save money on their AWS bills. He's currently a freelance data engineering consultant, helping his clients build, manage, and maintain their data infrastructure. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.