# Bolaji BALOGOUN · Data Engineer · Data Architect

> Data Engineer · Data Architect building production data platforms, operational data products, and governed automation.

I am a Data Engineer and Data Architect with a background in statistics and advanced analytics. I bring a decade of experience, including seven-plus years building production data systems.
At Gozem, a multinational super-app, I was its first data hire and progressed from Global Data Analyst to Head of Data and Data Director. My Gozem mandate ended in July 2026. I owned the data function end to end across the platform, products, team, governance, and FinOps, while co-leading AI strategy across five African operating countries, with Singapore as headquarters.
I built and mentored the data team as it grew from 0 to 14+. The Gozem Data Hub served over 650 employees, field agents, and partners. I used contribution documentation and live debugging to help engineers integrate services and work with CI/CD. I contributed to a 42.57% reduction in Google Cloud costs in one quarter while preserving data freshness and integrity.
Beyond Gozem, I co-founded Takwimu LAB, whose UNESCO-supported African-language NLP work earned the AI4D Africa Award. I co-founded iSheero as its Founding Vice-President; the organization advances data science and AI education, community programs and policy engagement in Benin. Through the International Trade Centre, I trained early-stage ECOWAS startups in data management and strategy. I speak French natively and work professionally in English.

Equivalent job titles: Staff Data Engineer · Principal Data Engineer · Senior Data Engineer · Data Platform Engineer · Data Platform Architect · Data Architect · Cloud Data Architect · Data Engineering Manager · Head of Data · Director of Data Engineering · Data Director.
Geographic scope: United States · five African operating countries · Gozem headquarters in Singapore.

## Proof points

- ~5 TB · Batch upserts/day (average)
- 45M · Streaming events/day (average)
- ~300 · Dataform models & Airflow DAGs
- −42.57% · GCP cost in one quarter
- 650+ · Data Hub employees, field agents & partners


## Main pages

- [Full biography](https://www.bolablg.com/bio.md): full background, quantified achievements, and working principles
- [iBola, AI assistant](https://chat.bolablg.com): interactive Q&A about Bolaji's professional background, trained on this site
- [Apps & tools](https://app.bolablg.com)
- [Home](https://www.bolablg.com/)
- [About](https://www.bolablg.com/about/): bio, tech stack, education, credentials, publications, recognition
- [Work](https://www.bolablg.com/work/): production experience, use cases, selected advisory work
- [Writing](https://www.bolablg.com/writing/): notes and essays
- [Contact](https://www.bolablg.com/contact/)

## Experience

- [Data Director](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM · Apr 2025 - Jul 2026 · Owned data platform engineering and internal data products (the Data Hub and 30+ automation tools) and co-led AI strategy across Gozem’s footprint: five African operating countries with Singapore as headquarters.
- [Head of Data](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM · Oct 2022 - Mar 2025 · Owned the data function for Gozem’s Sub-Saharan Africa group: governance, team scaling from 4 to 14+, FinOps, and fintech-grade analytics.
- [Global Data Analyst](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM · Nov 2019 - Sep 2022 · First data hire: built Gozem’s analytics function from the ground up: GCP/BigQuery migration, monitoring automation, fraud-pattern detection, and marketing segmentation.
- [Data Scientist](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/rintio/): RINTIO · Jul 2018 - May 2019 · Built data infrastructure and crop-yield forecasting for Duniya, Rintio’s farmer-facing smart-farming MVP for Beninese farmers.
- [Statistician](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/instad/): INStaD · Sep 2017 - Feb 2018
- [Statistician](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/pantagruel/): Le PANTAGRUEL · Aug 2013 - Oct 2013


## Projects & use cases

- [Gozem AI Strategy knowledge base](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. 49 validated use cases catalogued; 6 in implementation, with near-full top-management adoption of daily AI assistance.
- [Gozem Data Hub: Central data & AI workspace](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. Architected and built the platform, personally coding 17 of its initial 19 microservices; the governed workspace served 650+ employees, field agents, and partners across 5 countries.
- [Application-serving data pipelines](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. Delivered application-ready datasets for internal operational applications, services, and microservices, extending the platform beyond BI outputs.
- [Platform delivery and reliability controls](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. Established repeatable service delivery with health monitoring, recoverable job execution, security gates, staged images, and rollback to prior images.
- [Governed KPI reporting & data-warehouse MCP](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. Business users gained a shared path to KPI reports built from documented metric definitions and canonical warehouse queries.
- [Automated invoice data extraction](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. ~40 hours saved per financing manager per month across thousands of invoices.
- [RAG-powered customer support chatbot](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. Resolvable support requests handled autonomously; complex cases escalated to Zendesk with conversation summaries preserving context.
- [Real-time market monitoring system](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-director/): GOZEM. +10.2% supply rate, +7.4% request-to-completion, +5.4% coverage at the Vodun Days festival peak (~2,000 users).
- [Dataform modernization and BigQuery FinOps](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. Reduced Google Cloud costs by 42.57% in one quarter while maintaining data freshness and integrity expectations.
- [Production orchestration on self-hosted Airflow](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. Replaced cron-based orchestration with a production scheduler supporting dependency-aware execution and operational monitoring.
- [Lower-cost analytical serving with ClickHouse](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. Created a bounded-history serving path for recurring dashboards, reducing direct analytical pressure on BigQuery.
- [Data team capacity expansion](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. 12 hires onboarded end-to-end from 50+ evaluated candidates, with 30/60/90-day ramp milestones.
- [Data science use-case knowledge base](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. 100+ use cases catalogued; top 15 adapted with Gozem-specific feasibility and outcome assessments.
- [Ebanking analytics and reporting infrastructure](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. ~150 incidents surfaced per month; flagged a fraud worth more than 25M XOF; fintech warehouse powering regulatory reporting.
- [Self-service no-code data exploration platform](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. 12+ active manager users; routine query load on the central data team halved.
- [Delivery agent incentive automation](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-head/): GOZEM. Incentive-related ticket volume cut nearly in half; support disputes resolved within 24h.
- [Cloud migration to GCP & BigQuery warehouse](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Migrated tens of terabytes in one quarter without interruption; the BigQuery warehouse and 50+ scheduled pipelines became the analytical foundation.
- [Operational monitoring automation](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Replaced a 2-day manual job with a 5–15 minute automated cycle for operational scenarios.
- [Incentive payment automation](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Reduced a multi-day manual payment process to minutes, with structured logs and dispute trails for finance and support.
- [Fraud patterns database & daily monitoring](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Surfaced collection anomalies the same day they appeared and established groundwork for later ML-based fraud screening.
- [Marketing segmentation & cohort analysis](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Gave Marketing structured rider and driver profiles, cohorts, and campaign signals for targeted analysis.
- [Product and marketing data ingestion](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Centralized product events, experiment data, and advertising performance in BigQuery for recurring product and campaign decisions.
- [Seasonal driver-retention analysis](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Supported an approximately 9% improvement in driver retention through season-aware incentive decisions.
- [Business health monitoring & daily insights](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/gozem-analyst/): GOZEM. Consolidated 20+ KPIs into a daily report used by country managers and top management for operational decisions.
- [Big data platform for precision agriculture](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/rintio/): RINTIO. 
- [Crop yield forecast models](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/rintio/): RINTIO. 
- [Farmer-facing smart-farming web-application MVP](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/rintio/): RINTIO. 
- [Data & AI executive training for Société Générale Maroc](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/rintio/): RINTIO. 
- [R training programme for agency staff](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/instad/): INStaD. 
- [Survey funding data collection at public ministries](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/instad/): INStaD. 
- [Customer satisfaction survey & scoring system](https://www.bolablg.com/experience/pantagruel/): Le PANTAGRUEL. 


## Writing

- [From files to reliable tables: The promise of open table formats](https://blog.bolablg.com/p/open-table-format-from-lake-files-to-reliable-tables) · Oct 2026 · Substack · How Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi... turn raw files into consistent, shareable tables.
- [From insight to action: The rise of Data Product Engineering in scaleups](https://blog.bolablg.com/p/data-product-engineering-from-insight-to-action) · May 2026 · Substack · How operational analytics evolved into internal products at Gozem, and how AI-assisted engineering changed the economics of building them.
- [Beyond standard Google Dataform: Smart templates to save BigQuery costs & Dev time](https://blog.bolablg.com/p/beyond-standard-google-dataform-smart) · Oct 2025 · Substack · An extended all-in-one data modeling framework with Google Cloud Dataform
- [#CAF2025, Gozem x Super Apps: Shaping User Experience or Challenging Data Protection?](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bolablg_cnin-caf2025-gozem-activity-7346194799705669632-nj9z) · Jun 2025 · LinkedIn · Super Apps can drive inclusion while protecting user data when innovation and trust grow together.
- [💼 Salaire Brut vs Net au Bénin 🇧🇯 ](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bolablg_calculette-salaire-b%C3%A9nin-2025-activity-7337795641210769408-8KID) · Jun 2025 · LinkedIn · Un simulateur simple pour comprendre et négocier son salaire au Bénin, du brut au net, en toute clarté.
- [Google Sheets + Python: créer et partager automatiquement des rapports de données](https://blog.bolablg.com/p/google-sheets-python-creer-et-partager) · May 2025 · Substack · Finis les longs process manuels ! Automatise la création, l'édition et le partage de tes fichiers Google Sheets avec Python (ou R)
- [Débuter avec Google Dev: crée un service account pour automatiser tes opérations](https://blog.bolablg.com/p/google-dev-service-account) · May 2025 · Substack · Exemple: Lire automatiquement un google sheets dans un dossier google drive
- [Le parcours m'ayant conduit dans la Data Science...](https://www.facebook.com/reel/1038710197493572) · Aug 2023 · Facebook · La chance n’est souvent que la préparation qui rencontre l’opportunité.
- [Où trouver des données pour une étude nationale ?](https://blog.bolablg.com/p/source-de-donnees-etude-nationale-exemple-benin) · Nov 2021 · Substack · Des pistes de répertoires de données pour une étude à échelle nationale: exemple de la République du Bénin.


## Other experiences (advisory · community)

- [Data Management Consultant](https://www.bolablg.com/news/itc-consultant/): International Trade Centre - ITC (UN Agency) · 2023
- [Founding Vice-President of iSheero](https://www.bolablg.com/news/isheero/): iSheero · Dec 2021 - Present
- [Chair of Takwimu LAB](https://www.bolablg.com/news/takwimu-lab/): Takwimu LAB · 2019 - 2022
- [Big Data Bootcamp](https://www.bolablg.com/news/big-data-bootcamp/): RINTIO Big Data Bootcamp · Mar - Jun 2018


## Education

- [MSc in Applied Statistics (Distinction)](https://www.bolablg.com/education/msc-statistics/): University of Abomey-Calavi · 2015 - 2018
- [BSc in Statistics and Econometrics](https://www.bolablg.com/education/bsc-statistics/): University of Abomey-Calavi · 2010 - 2013


## Credentials

- [Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Certificate](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/google-professional-data-engineer/): Google Cloud · Nov 2025
- [Stream Processing and Analysis with Apache Spark™](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-stream-processing-analysis-apache-spark/): Databricks Academy · Oct 2026
- [Monitoring and Optimizing Apache Spark Workloads on Databricks](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-monitoring-optimizing-spark-workloads/): Databricks Academy · Oct 2026
- [Developing Applications with Apache Spark™](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-developing-applications-apache-spark/): Databricks Academy · Oct 2026
- [Introduction to Apache Spark 4](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-introduction-apache-spark/): Databricks Academy · Oct 2026
- [DevOps Essentials for Data Engineering](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-devops-essentials-data-engineering/): Databricks Academy · Sep 2026
- [Build Data Pipelines with Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-build-data-pipelines-lakeflow-spark-declarative-pipelines/): Databricks Academy · Sep 2026
- [Deploy Workloads with Lakeflow Jobs](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-deploy-workloads-lakeflow-jobs/): Databricks Academy · Sep 2026
- [Data Ingestion with Lakeflow Connect](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-data-ingestion-lakeflow-connect/): Databricks Academy · Sep 2026
- [Academy Accreditation - Databricks Fundamentals](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/databricks-fundamentals/): Databricks Academy · Sep 2026
- [AWS Data Engineering Foundations Certificate](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/aws-data-engineering-foundations/): AWS Training & Certification · Aug 2026
- [Apache Airflow Hands-on Certificate](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/apache-airflow-udemy/): Udemy · Feb 2024
- [McKinsey.org Forward Program](https://www.bolablg.com/certifications/mckinsey-forward/): McKinsey & Company · Jul 2025


## Publications

- [Participatory Research for Low-resourced Machine Translation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.02516): AfricaNLP Workshop, EACL 2021 · Apr 2021
- [Parallel Text Dataset for Neural Machine Translation (French-Fongbé, French-Ewe)](https://zenodo.org/record/4266935): Zenodo · Nov 2020


## Recognition

- [CAF2025 speaker: Super Apps & Data Protection](https://www.bolablg.com/achievements/caf2025-speaker/): On Gozem’s super-app approach to data protection · 2025
- [WakeUp Champ podcast guest](https://www.bolablg.com/achievements/wakeup-champ-podcast/): On the path from statistics to data science leadership · 2023
- [Zindi Africa Award](https://www.bolablg.com/achievements/zindi-africa-award/): AI4D African Dataset Challenge (Takwimu LAB) · 2020


## Tech stack

- Data platforms & governance: BigQuery · ClickHouse · BigLake · Databricks · Dataplex · Unity Catalog
- Databases & storage: PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Google Cloud Storage · AWS S3 · Delta Lake · Apache Iceberg
- Pipelines & streaming: Airflow · Dataform · Dataflow · Apache NiFi · Lakeflow · Spark · Pub/Sub
- Languages & frameworks: Python · SQL · R · Bash · JavaScript · Scala · React · FastAPI
- Cloud & delivery: Google Cloud · Compute Engine · AWS · AWS EC2 · Cloud Run · Cloud Functions (team delivery oversight) · Docker · Artifact Registry · Git
- Analytics & visualization: Data Studio · Looker · Superset · Metabase · Plotly · Grafana
- AI & automation: Vertex AI (team delivery oversight) · Gemini · Codex · RAG · LangGraph (familiarity) · MCP


## Contact

- Email: hello@bolablg.com
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bolablg
- GitHub: https://github.com/bolablg
- X / Twitter: https://x.com/bolablg
- Blog: https://blog.bolablg.com
- Based in: Little Rock, AR, US (America/Chicago)
- Availability: Open to market.

## Other languages

- Version française: https://www.bolablg.com/fr/llms.txt