San Francisco
Two talks at Snowflake Summit 2026.
DATA SUPERHERO
> about
Ved Prakash
Principal Data Engineer · Data Platforms, Data Governance and AI Governance
- Experience
- 15+ years
- Role
- Principal Data Engineer · GitLab
- Recognition
- Data Superhero Council · 1 of 17
- Based in
- Almere, NL
Bio
The short version of a long career
Ved Prakash is a Principal Data Engineer at GitLab, where he leads Project Siphon, the company's real-time change data capture platform. Siphon streams every database change from PostgreSQL through NATS JetStream and Go consumers into Apache Iceberg and Snowflake, across GitLab's SaaS, Self-Managed and Dedicated deployments, and delivers around $1M a year in value. Ved also owns GitLab's AI governance and FinOps: his framework for Snowflake Cortex, with role-level access, daily credit limits and an automated kill switch, prevents more than $100K a month in potential AI overruns and is used by over 500 people.
He runs a cross-functional working council across seven functions and develops principal and staff engineers. Before GitLab, Ved spent eleven years at Infosys in India and the United Kingdom, where he led a team of ten and moved more than 100TB from an on-premise Kognitio MPP warehouse to Snowflake on AWS, one of the first Snowflake adoptions at that client. He is a multi-year Snowflake Data Superhero and one of 17 members of the global Data Superhero Council, a Snowflake Certified Architect and Developer, and a Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer.
He speaks at Snowflake Summit, Berlin Buzzwords and DSC Europe, and writes The DataAI Chronicles, practical guidance on real-time data, Snowflake and FinOps for AI. He lives in Almere, Netherlands.
Career
Where I have worked
2024 – Present/Remote, Netherlands
Principal Data Engineer
GitLab · Enterprise Data Platform · Project Siphon DRI
- Architected and lead Project Siphon, GitLab's real-time CDC platform: 100% change capture, $500K+ annual infrastructure savings, ~3 FTE freed.
- Designed the company-wide Snowflake Cortex governance framework, preventing $100K+/month in potential AI overruns.
- Built a credit-monitoring kill switch for compute and AI spend, adopted by 500+ users.
- Run the Siphon working council across seven functions and develop principal and staff engineers.
2022 – 2024/Remote, Netherlands
Staff Data Engineer
GitLab · Data Platform Team
- Cut the Greenhouse pipeline runtime 62% (6.5 to 2.5 hours) with 59 parallel, failure-isolated tasks.
- Reduced GCP and Snowflake infrastructure cost ~30% (~$80K/year).
- Moved Airflow to Terraform and Helm with Vault, removing all plaintext credentials and automating 90% of routine infrastructure work.
- Led the Snowplow ownership transfer from SRE to Data with 0% data loss.
2021 – 2022/Remote, Netherlands
Senior Data Engineer
GitLab
- Built scalable Airflow/GKE pipelines managed with Terraform and Helm, and dbt workflows with data-quality checks.
- Led Meltano taps for new connectors, improving pipeline delivery timelines ~80%.
2016 – 2021/United Kingdom
Senior Data Engineer and Team Lead
Infosys · Team lead of 10
- Led the migration from on-premise Kognitio MPP to Snowflake on AWS, moving 100TB+.
- Cut GTM product-demo lead time from ~6 months to ~1 week with demos on live customer data in Snowflake.
- Designed an early multi-tenant Snowflake architecture and an RBAC framework mapped to security policy.
2012 – 2016/United Kingdom
Data Engineer
Infosys · Retail analytics (Spaceplanner)
- Core data engineer on a space-planning analytics platform that lifted client store sales 4–6%.
- Built the full ETL in Pentaho Community Edition, saving £200K in licensing.
2010 – 2012/India
Senior Systems Engineer
Infosys
- Ran production databases in a 24/7 environment and automated operations with shell scripting.
Education
Education
Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science
VTU, Belgaum, Karnataka
2005 – 2009
Recognition
Recognition and certifications
Recognition
Snowflake Data Superhero
Snowflake
Multi-year
Certifications
Snowflake Certified Architect
Snowflake
Snowflake Certified Developer
Snowflake
Professional Data Engineer
Google Cloud
Community & writing
Data Superhero Council
Snowflake
1 of 17 on the global council
Author, The DataAI Chronicles
Medium
Conference speaker
Snowflake Summit · Berlin Buzzwords · DSC Europe
Leadership
How I lead
- DRI for Project Siphon from feasibility to production
- Runs a working council across seven functions, aligning roadmaps without formal authority
- Leads and develops principal and staff engineers, with input to mid-year and annual evaluations
- Owns tooling budget evaluation, reporting to Directors and VP
- Previously led a team of 10 at Infosys across Product, Infrastructure and GTM
- Platforms
- Distributed systems and CDCNATS, KafkaApache IcebergSnowflakeClickHousePostgreSQLGCP, AWS
- Governance
- Data governanceIAM and RBACData quality and observabilityAI/LLM cost governance and FinOpsVault
- Leadership
- Cross-org program leadershipDeveloping senior engineersRoadmap and budget planningOperational excellence
- Engineering
- GoPythonSQLPySparkKubernetesHelmTerraformAirflowdbt
Beyond work
Life outside the terminal
I live in Almere with my wife and our two kids. Away from work you'll find me at the gym, taking photos on a Canon EOS 600D, or halfway through a home-improvement project. The map and timeline below show where I've lived, spoken and travelled.
2026
Speaking
2025
Speaking Vienna
DSC DACH.
Speaking Berlin
Berlin Buzzwords.
2024
Speaking Belgrade
DSC Europe.
Speaking Zagreb
DSC Adria.
2023
Speaking Belgrade
DSC Europe.
2021
Lived Almere, Netherlands
Home since 2021.
2012
Lived United Kingdom
Nine years with Infosys, 2012 – 2021.
Earlier
Lived India
Started my career at Infosys.
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