datumplane

Resume

Last updated 5 min read

Chris Crawford

Crunchy Taco Enjoyer, Data Engineer

crawforc3@pm.me

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Experience

Data Engineer

John Deere (Agriculture/Manufacturing) | Apr 2021 - Current

  • Led migration of ML model serving infrastructure from AWS SageMaker to Databricks, reducing infrastructure costs and operational overhead; established Databricks as the standard deployment target for all new models while incrementally migrating existing endpoints.
  • Designed and developed high-throughput ML inference API handling 2,000+ requests/sec using AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and SageMaker; enabled new recurring revenue streams for precision agriculture products.
  • Codified ML infrastructure deployments using Terraform and GitHub Actions, managing IAM policies, Unity Catalog permissions, and service principal configurations to enable repeatable, auditable production deployments.
  • Overhauled observability for ML inference endpoints after a production outage went unnoticed, refactoring error handling, reconfiguring Datadog dashboards for clearer visibility, and adding real-time alerts to prevent recurrence.
  • Developed reusable GitHub Actions for secure AWS Secrets Manager integration with OIDC authentication, standardizing credential management across the team’s data engineering repositories and enabling adoption by other engineering teams.
  • Designed onboarding project and technical roadmap for an Engineering Development Program mentee, breaking down their first endpoint migration into structured stories covering CI/CD, Terraform, and Databricks deployment patterns.

Awards:

  • 2025 - Quarterly Award: ML inference infrastructure classifying machine state at 150k+ requests/min.
  • 2023 - Quarterly Award: ML API enabling machine state classification for equipment without onboard display technology.
  • 2022 - Quarterly Award: Data pipeline to filter training data potentially regulated by international privacy laws.

Data Engineer

Team Rubicon (Disaster Response Non-profit) | Mar 2019 - Feb 2021

  • Developed analytical pipeline to quantify financial impact of volunteers over 300+ disaster operations; secured $200k donation.
  • Leveraged GIS to map and prioritize disaster relief needs by combining CDC Social Vulnerability Index with operational data.
  • Migrated data analytics platform from Palantir Foundry to Azure; enabled organization-wide access to more data analytics tools.
  • Mentored two junior analysts on Power BI and SQL; doubled data engineering capacity and reduced requests for ad-hoc analyses.

Awards:

Data Analyst, Developer Advocate (contract)

Kaggle (Data Science Competitions) | Jun 2017 - Mar 2019

  • Partnered with the NFL to develop NFL First and Future, a crowd-sourced competition to improve player safety through data science.
  • Created a new competition format with non-profit partners, driving an 8% increase in competition launches in 2018.

Software Engineering Intern

Smashrun (Fitness Analytics) | Sept 2016 - Dec 2016

  • Developed a data pipeline for processing geojson data into map tiles and generating geospatial visualizations of user running activity.

Bioinformatics Engineering Intern

Adaptive Biotechnologies (Biotech) | May 2016 - Sept 2016

  • Developed bioinformatics tool with Python and R to automate chi-square testing of DNA sequencing data for sample independence.
  • Automated statistical reporting and generating scientific publication-ready data visualizations using Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn.

Aircraft Electrical and Environmental Specialist

United States Air Force | Dec 2005 - Dec 2009

  • Trained airmen on aircraft maintenance and safety, achieving 100% success in quality assurance and zero injuries over two years.
  • Maintained electrical and avionics systems on C-130 and MQ-9 aircraft, ensuring mission readiness for fleets valued at over $500M.
  • Participated in Exercise Balikatan, the annual U.S.-Philippines military exercise focused on counterterrorism operations, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief, maintaining aircraft readiness for combined training operations.
  • Supported Operation Christmas Drop, the world’s longest-running humanitarian airdrop mission, maintaining aircraft systems for Pacific Air Forces training operations delivering essential supplies to remote Pacific island communities.
  • Collaborated with Japanese Air Self-Defense Forces on joint maintenance operations, facilitating knowledge exchange and strengthening international partnerships.

Education

Master of Science, Bioinformatics - Northeastern University, Dec 2016

Bachelor of Science, Biology - Pacific Lutheran University, Dec 2013

Associate of Applied Science, Aircraft Maintenance Technology - Community College of the Air Force, May 2008

Interests

  • Autonomous Rover: I am building an autonomous rover to deliver homebrew to my neighbors (blog post)
  • Homebrewing beer: I have been homebrewing beer for over 15 years and I even brewed beer professionally for a couple of years.
  • 3D printing: I use OnShape to create 3D models for the various projects I am working on. I have designed, modeled, and printed tools for homebrewing, biodegradable seed starters, and parts for my autonomous rover (projects)
  • Self-hosting and Homelab: I maintain a 3-node cluster of servers in my basement where I use Proxmox for virtualization and high availability. I host my own servers for Gitea (GitHub alternative), games, VPNs, and various other services.
  • Kaggle: I am a Kaggle Grandmaster and was the world’s first Kaggle Datasets Grandmaster (profile)

Skills

Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Terraform, Docker, Lambda, S3, API Gateway, ECS, ECR, AWS Secrets Manager, Active Directory

Data & Databases: SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, DynamoDB, Data Lake, Delta Lake, Data pipeline, Spark, Scala, Python, Pandas

ML & Analytics: Databricks, SageMaker, MLFlow, Model Serving, Machine Learning

GIS & Geospatial: Esri, ArcGIS, GIS, Shapely

DevOps & Testing: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Drone, CI/CD, Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Deployment Testing, Load Testing, Locust

APIs & Monitoring: REST API, OpenAPI, Swagger, Datadog, Dashboards

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