Radha Duraisamy has been working in Information Technology for 15 years, and now she is a data engineer at an incredible assignment within the renewable energy industry. Today, we talked with Radha about her role at DNV Norway and her data engineering experience at the current assignment.
Tell us about yourself and your professional background.
I have a master’s degree in computer applications from India, which focuses on various programming languages, mathematics, statistics, data structures, and software engineering. My interest in computers developed when I worked as an intern programmer after my UG and intrigued me to pursue a master’s degree in computers.
I learned the Norwegian language and Azure technologies while a career break as I moved from India to Norway with my family. Norway NAV supported me in learning Azure technologies at Glasspaper, Oslo. My continuous learning and efforts helped to get great experiences and more profound skills.
Why did you decide to become a data engineer?
Since I worked predominantly in the finance domain, I had opportunities to work on disparity data and always have a thirst to bring insights on data and have a sense of understanding.
I have extensive experience in SAS – Statistical Analysis Software, relational and hierarchical databases, and scheduling pipelines, so I know how to extract and transform data. This keen interest in developing and orchestrating pipelines and working on a legacy system for many years led me to data engineering. I realized that Python and Azure would be the right choice to support my passion, and I quickly adapted to industry needs. So now, I am working on Python, PySpark, and various Azure technologies.
I was happy when Sigma Technology was looking for a person with my expertise, and I am glad to be part of the Sigma team.
What is your current assignment?
I am super excited about my current assignment at DNV, Norway. The energy domain is new to me, and it is more exciting to learn a new business.
Most of my projects are PoC/Pilot projects in the green energy domain. I will talk about one of my PoC projects where I am developing an MVP focusing on integrating data and apps on Azure that can seamlessly communicate with one another, workflow automation, and improving collaboration. Here I extract data from on-premises UI screens and deploy python algorithms into web apps with the help of Docker on Azure. Thereby users don’t need to worry about anything on installation/packaging. Endpoints are given to easily access required information, and user-friendly menus are a great experience for users.
How do you see the evolution of data engineering in your industry?
I foresee data engineering will evolve more on plug-In-based customization. No-code and low-code are gaining traction, and more advanced automation technologies will dominate data platforms. I also see a future in Microsoft product platforms. Microsoft has a wide range of training and free resources to learn. Using available resources and upskilling one to be relevant in the industry would be good.