Consulting and freelance
Data platform builds and migrations, machine learning that reaches production, and AI systems that sit on governed data. Happy to take a scoped piece or lead the whole thing.
DatabricksAzureAWSMicrosoft Fabric
Open to freelance, lecturing and talksSweden
Suranga NanayakkaraSystems that run
when everybody's
sleeping.
I started as a software engineer, moved into data engineering, then machine learning, then data science, and now build AI systems. Nine years of following the problem down a layer at a time. I also lecture, speak, and take freelance work.
The route here
Five jobs, really one question.
Every move was the same move: whatever I was building, the interesting problem turned out to be one layer underneath it. That is how a mobile developer ends up doing AI architecture.
2015 to 2018
Software engineering
Mobile and desktop applications for an insurer. Learned to ship, and learned that the data these apps produced was nobody’s job to look after.
2018 to 2020
Data engineering
Moved into the pipelines. ETL, warehousing, and the unglamorous plumbing that decides whether anyone can answer a question.
2020 to 2022
Machine learning
Built and deployed predictive models, including real-time scoring that ran during a live customer conversation.
2022 to 2024
Data science
Led data science verticals. Forecasting, anomaly detection, and cloud migrations at telco and retail scale.
2024 to now
AI development
Retrieval and agent systems on governed data, conversational analytics, and the architecture underneath them.
What I am open to
Four ways we could work together.
Visiting lecturing
Guest lectures and taught modules for university programmes. I have covered artificial intelligence, business intelligence and blockchain, and I enjoy the sessions where students argue back.
AIBusiness intelligenceBlockchainData engineering
Public speaking
Talks on lakehouse architecture, migration off legacy systems, and putting AI somewhere useful. Available for events, and I will travel for a good audience.
KeynotesUser groupsPanelsWorkshops
Corporate training
As a Microsoft Certified Trainer I can deliver the official Azure and data platform curriculum, with the labs and course material that come with it.
MCTAzureFabricHands-on labs
Lecturing
Teaching keeps me honest.
Malmö University
SwedenGuest lecturer
Guest lectures on artificial intelligence: what the techniques actually do, where they fit in a real system, and the difference between a demo and something you can operate.
Artificial intelligence
Cardiff Metropolitan University
United KingdomLecturer
Taught students across artificial intelligence, business intelligence and blockchain, covering both the theory and the engineering practice behind each.
Artificial intelligenceBusiness intelligenceBlockchain
Selected work
Recent assignments.
Clients are described rather than named. If you need specifics for a hiring conversation, ask me directly.
Global home furnishing retailer
CurrentTech Lead, Data Engineering
Supply chain · Dec 2025 to present
Leading the retirement of a legacy Oracle estate and rebuilding the downstream logic on a Databricks lakehouse with a medallion architecture. Reconstructing the Silver layer in Databricks and dbt, writing tested SQL workflows, and reconciling old against new until the business trusts the numbers enough to switch the old system off.
DatabricksUnity CatalogdbtAWSOracle
Global home furnishing retailer
AI Engineer
Transport logistics · May 2025 to Nov 2025
Built a production conversational analytics agent and put it inside Microsoft Teams, so a global organisation could ask questions of transport logistics data without knowing SQL. Designed the Gold layer with materialised views and PySpark pipelines, and tuned answer quality through prompt engineering and semantic modelling.
Databricks GeniePySparkMicrosoft TeamsPrompt engineering
Sweden’s largest wood products manufacturer
Senior Data Engineer
Manufacturing · Dec 2024 to Nov 2025
Data integration and platform modernisation on Microsoft Fabric. Migrated legacy SSIS transformations to materialised lake views, built sustainability fact tables in PySpark, and rebuilt the ERP ingestion with dynamic range partitioning and incremental loading.
Microsoft FabricSSISERPAzure Data Factory
Writing
Worked out the hard way, written down.
2 Sept 2023#aerospike#nosql#python
Aerospike Evaluation on Python SDK
A hands-on evaluation of Aerospike: running the NoSQL database locally in Docker, driving it from the Python SDK, and what the benchmarks showed.
29 May 2022#azure#certification#dp-100
Path to Azure Data scientist associate exam DP-100 in 2022
How I passed the Azure Data Scientist Associate (DP-100) exam: the learning path that worked, the material worth your time, and what it tests.
28 Apr 2022#interview#business-intelligence#microsoft
Microsoft Stack Lead BI engineer interview experience
A write-up of a Lead BI Engineer interview on the Microsoft stack: the questions asked, and where a data scientist's instincts helped or did not.