Syed Ahmed

About Syed Ahmed

I’m a Lead AI/Data Engineer with 15 years across data engineering, architecture, and software engineering—and my focus today is shipping AI into production: systems that are reliable, measurable, and embedded into real workflows.Over the last 12 years, I built data-driven solutions in the cybersecurity domain, where accuracy, trust, and speed matter. That background sharpened what I bring to AI engineering: strong data foundations, disciplined engineering practices, and the ability to turn noisy signals into clear decisions. While cybersecurity has been my most recent specialization, my work is industry-agnostic— I build AI capabilities that help teams move faster and operate smarter.WHAT I BUILD* Applied AI solutions that automate knowledge work and decision-making (including AI agents)* LLM/AI integrations into products and internal tools: APIs, tools/function-calling, orchestration, and workflow automation* Evaluation & reliability: measurable quality, testing strategies, monitoring, and continuous improvement* Data foundations for AI: high-quality pipelines, curated datasets, governance, and performance optimization* End-to-end delivery: scoping, stakeholder alignment, execution, and outcomes* Team leadership: mentoring engineers, raising engineering standards, and building ownership cultureHOW I WORKI combine hands-on engineering with executive-level communication. I’m comfortable translating ambiguous goals into clear technical plans, setting expectations early, and delivering AI systems that are secure, maintainable, and built for real-world constraints (latency, cost, data quality, and risk).If you’re building AI features, agentic workflows, or an AI platform that needs to be production-grade—not a demo—I’d love to connect.

Experience

1. Lead Cybersecurity Data Engineer

   TIAA

   Aug 2024 — Present · Charlotte, NC, US

   Spearheaded the cybersecurity data engineering strategy, improving risk visibility and decision-making by collaborating with stakeholders to define clear project scopes, resulting in accurate & reliable reporting and metrics.• Led the modernization of legacy on-premise SQL Server Data warehouse to an AWS Cloud DataPlatform, resulting in a 65% increase in operational efficiency and a 30% reduction in annual operational costs.• Drove reliability and performance of high-volume data pipelines by improving observability, data quality controls, and cost efficiency across production workflows. For example, saved an average of per month by optimizing a data-intensive Spark SQL data pipeline implemented with AWS Glue.• Designed and built an AI Production Support Agent, reducing team triage time by ~80%, cutting it from~10 hours/week to ~2 hours/week, and improving time-to-recovery.• Provided technical leadership by establishing best practices in design, coding, and deployment through code reviews, mentorship, and lunch & learning sessions.

Education

• Osmania University

  Bachelor of Science, Information Technology

  2004 — 2008

• University of Houston-Clear Lake

  Masters, Computer Science

  2009 — 2011

Skills

• Perl
• Pl/Sql
• Business Intelligence
• Challenge Driven
• Software Development Life Cycle (Sdlc)
• Integration
• Sql
• Asp.net
• Software Project Management
• Business Analysis
• Databases
• Love of Learning
• Javascript
• Big Data
• Hadoop
• Xml
• .net
• Java
• Active Team Player
• T-Sql
• Unix
• Ajax
• Oracle
• Requirements Analysis
• Data Warehousing
• Team-Oriented
• Agile Methodologies
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Software Development
• Python