March 4, 2020

Beyond The Data: Su Dogra, Lead Data Engineer

By Claire Sasse

Welcome back to our Beyond The Data blog series! This month, we’re highlighting Su Dogra – an early employee at phData and a Lead Data Engineer on our Data Engineering team.

Tell us your name, where you’re from, and a little about you.

My name is Su Dogra. I’m originally from India, but have been living in Minnesota for the past few years. I did my undergrad in computer science and then joined an MBA program. After my MBA, I worked in a management role for nearly 3 years and then switched back to computer science. I completed my MS in Information Technology from the University of St. Thomas. 

Su Dogra Lead Data Engineer

What does "Lead Data Engineer" mean? What do you actually do on any given day?

As a Lead Data Engineer, I work on developing the architecture design and implementing the solution. My work consists of building a robust and scalable data integration pipeline to ingest the data and also help business users with data modeling and analysis. I’m always interested in understanding the customer’s business problem and learning how the data can help to add value to the business. I also work with other data engineers and provide feedback and guidance. I really enjoy working and collaborating with a team.

How long have you been with phData? What past experiences have prepared you for your job at phData?

I started at phData in June 2016. One of the responsibilities in my current role is to communicate with the team, stakeholders, and product owners on a regular basis. It’s a diverse audience on multiple levels of the organization. I’ve learned that communication and mutual understanding of the project expectations are paramount for developing the solution with the team and moving the project forward to achieve deliverables. My previous experience has helped me to gain these soft skills.

How have you seen the company change since you started?

phData has grown a lot since I joined as 11th employee. Now we are over 150 employees with multiple office locations. Many things have changed since I joined. For example, we’ve established more formalized departments and processes. We’ve also been successful in scaling the company’s culture and values as we grow. Our primary goal is still the same: to solve the customer’s data challenges. Overall, I think phData is a fun place to work where smart and innovative people share knowledge with a sense of community. phData offers so many great benefits; the tuition reimbursement benefits has been the most valuable to me because I like to learn about new technologies.
phData Team Photo 2017

Team photo from 2017. A lot has changed since then!

What are the most exciting things you’re working on and how do you see them positively impacting our customers?

I’m working on a project where we’re building pipelines to ingest data from twenty-four countries. Every country has stored data in different formats, so we’re building a customized solution to ingest different formats of data, both historical and incremental. We are also working with language translation APIs and modules. Once the data is ingested, we’ll apply some data modeling and analytics. It will be very first-time that our customer will have access to the data from all of the different countries on one platform.   

What do you do for fun when you’re not working?

When I’m not working, I love to spend time with my husband and my daughter and listen to audiobooks. I also like to take beach vacations; Miami Beach in Florida and Huntington Beach in California are two of my favorite spots! 
Su Dogra Lead Data Engineer

Interested in joining the phData team? Our Data Engineering team is growing and we’re hiring! Check out our job openings or email careers@phdata.io for more information.

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