// CURRENTLY
▸ Building RAG pipelines on Azure AI Foundry ▸ Leading Azure Landing Zone for UAE government ▸ Architecting AKS + Databricks platforms with private networking ▸ Designing Copilot Studio agents for the M365 ecosystem ▸ Productionizing Terraform + Bicep CI/CD on Azure DevOps ▸ Driving FinOps with cost allocation & unit economics ▸ Embedding Microsoft Purview for end-to-end data governance ▸ Building RAG pipelines on Azure AI Foundry ▸ Leading Azure Landing Zone for UAE government ▸ Architecting AKS + Databricks platforms with private networking ▸ Designing Copilot Studio agents for the M365 ecosystem ▸ Productionizing Terraform + Bicep CI/CD on Azure DevOps ▸ Driving FinOps with cost allocation & unit economics ▸ Embedding Microsoft Purview for end-to-end data governance
STATUS: AVAILABLE FOR ENGAGEMENT
// TALENT PROFILE / v2026

Nitheesh N Panicker

Architecting AI, Data & Cloud Solutions — LLMs, Copilot, AI/ML, Data Security & Privacy, Azure, GCP, Big Data, ETL, Governance & Standards (CDMP, DAMA).

Let's work together
experience17+ yrs
roleManager — Data & AI
primaryAzure · GCP · Databricks
basedAbu Dhabi, UAE
statusGolden Visa

Profile Summary

Cloud, Data & AI Architect helping enterprises turn data into a real competitive advantage across Azure, GCP, Databricks, and on-prem. I design and deliver secure, scalable data platforms end-to-end — from ingestion and ETL/ELT pipelines to CI/CD-driven deployments, governance, and AI-ready consumption layers.

Platforms that don't just store data; they power AI, copilots, and decisions that move the business. I've led this work for government and semi-government entities across the GCC, aligned with DAMA/CDMP standards.

What I care about:

  • Building AI-ready data ecosystems — because no AI strategy works without a strong data foundation
  • Designing intelligent agents inside the M365 ecosystem (Copilot Studio, Teams, SharePoint)
  • Leveraging Azure AI Foundry to operationalize LLMs and agents with enterprise-grade security
  • End-to-end delivery with DevOps and CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions)
  • Embedding security and governance from day one, not as an afterthought
  • Bridging business outcomes with modern cloud, AI/ML, and LLM-driven analytics
  • Making complex data architectures simple enough to actually adopt
0
Years in IT
0
GCC Entities Delivered
0
Cloud Platforms
0
Industry Verticals

Core Capabilities — Proficiency

Cloud Architecture

Azure (ALZ, Networking, Security)95%
Google Cloud Platform88%
Hub-Spoke / Private Link / Firewall92%
Microsoft Fabric80%

Security & Governance

Azure Policy / Purview90%
Defender / Sentinel / PIM85%
RBAC / ABAC / Key Vault93%
DAMA / CDMP Data Governance88%

DevOps, IaC & FinOps

Terraform92%
Bicep82%
Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions90%
Cost Management / FinOps85%

Data Engineering

Databricks / PySpark / Delta93%
Azure Data Factory / Airflow90%
BigQuery / Dataproc88%
Hadoop / Hive / Vertica85%

AI, LLMs & Agents

Azure AI Foundry / OpenAI90%
RAG Pipelines / AI Search88%
Copilot Studio / Power Automate85%
LangChain / Databricks Genie80%

Languages & Analytics

Python / PySpark92%
SQL / NoSQL90%
PowerShell / Bash82%
Power BI / Tableau / Streamlit85%

Industries

Government (UAE) Aviation (KSA / India) Banking Real Estate Utilities Airports

Professional Experience — Click to expand

Manager — Data & AI▸

Contango · Full-time · Abu Dhabi, UAE
Jul 2025 — Present

How I help enterprises move fast without breaking things:

  • Azure Landing Zones — management groups, hub-and-spoke, VNet peering, Private Link, Azure Firewall, NSGs, UDRs, Cloudflare
  • Policy-as-code via Azure Policy & Microsoft Purview — tagging, allowed SKUs, encryption, region restrictions, governance covering catalog, lineage, RBAC/ABAC
  • Security hardening — Managed Identities, Key Vault, Private Endpoints, Defender for Cloud, Sentinel, PIM/JIT, customer-managed keys
  • FinOps — budgets, cost allocation, rightsizing, autoscaling, reservations, unit-economics dashboards
  • Production-grade RAG pipelines (Azure OpenAI, AI Search, ADLS, Delta) with prompt versioning, grounding, resilient fallbacks
  • AKS + Azure Databricks platforms with private networking, workload identity, autoscaling
  • Enterprise LibreChat UI with branding, access controls, Copilot/SharePoint integration
RAG IN PRODUCTION AZURE LZ DELIVERED FINOPS PROGRAMME
AzureTerraformBicepAKSDatabricksPurviewSentinelOpenAIAI Search

Data Engineering Manager → Senior → Engineer▸

Artefact · Full-time · Dubai, UAE
Nov 2022 — Jul 2025 · 2 yrs 9 mos

Data & AI consulting and implementation across Banking, Utilities, Airports, Real Estate.

  • Built secure data platforms on Azure, GCP & on-prem for 5 GCC entities
  • Delivered Azure + Microsoft Fabric for a Dubai government client; GCP for a Saudi semi-gov entity
  • ETL/ELT pipelines with Airflow, ADF, Terraform, Databricks & Python — 20+ workflows automated
  • Enabled BI/forecasting via Tableau & Power BI; integrated Informatica IDMC; delivered Streamlit dashboards
  • Mentored engineers — improved client satisfaction by ~40%
5 GCC ENTITIES 20+ WORKFLOWS 20% COST CUT 25% EFFICIENCY 40% CSAT BOOST
Data Engineering Manager — Jul 2024 — Jul 2025
Senior Data Engineer — Jul 2023 — Jun 2024
Data Engineer — Nov 2022 — Jun 2023
AzureGCPMicrosoft FabricDatabricksADFAirflowPythonTableauPower BI

Lead Data Science → Team Lead → Senior Dev → Contributor▸

Sabre India · Bengaluru, India
Apr 2012 — Nov 2022 · 10 yrs 8 mos

Market Intelligence (MI) — a data product providing insights for airline planning, sales and revenue decisions.

  • Migrated ETL from Apache Hadoop → ELT on Dataproc & BigQuery (Cloud Composer, GCS, Cloud Functions, Python)
  • Converted Oracle Data Loader shell scripts to MapReduce on Hadoop, processed data into Vertica with auto-restart — 90% less manual work
  • Delivered 13× performance, projected 99.7% report success, drove 30% product usage growth — enabled ML exploration
  • Worked on Airline Revenue Management (Java/Ansible), Ticket Proration (Java/Talend/ELK), Passenger Revenue Accounting (CA Gen/Autosys)
13× FASTER 99.7% SUCCESS 30% USAGE GROWTH 90% LESS MANUAL
Lead Data Science Engineer — Jul 2022 — Nov 2022
Team Lead Software Engineer — Apr 2021 — Aug 2022
Senior Software Developer — Apr 2015 — Apr 2021
Contributor Software Developer — Apr 2012 — Apr 2015
GCPBigQueryDataprocHadoopHiveVerticaPythonJavaTalend

Software Engineer▸

Mphasis · Bangalore, India
Nov 2008 — Mar 2012 · 3 yrs 5 mos

MetaVance® Administration and Finance Application.

  • Requirement analysis, design specifications and technical documentation
  • Built solutions with Fusion Gen, COBOL, JCL, DB2 — controlling batch jobs & data workflows
  • Optimised reports via Report Composer; mentored teams on unit testing & JCL modifications
COBOLJCLDB2Fusion Gen

Quantified Achievements

Filter: All Government Aviation Banking AI & Agents
Azure LZ
Government · UAE · 2025

Azure Landing Zone — UAE Government

▸ GOVERNMENT · UAE

Management Groups, Azure Policy, RBAC, Key Vault. Private Link & exemption workflows. Terraform-automated provisioning with Cost Management governance and anomaly detection.

AzureTerraformPolicyKey VaultPrivate Link
40%
Faster Reporting Turnaround

ETL Workflow Optimization — Medallion

▸ BANKING · FINANCIAL DATA

Built ADF pipelines ingesting financial transactions into bronze-silver-gold layers on Azure Data Lake and Microsoft Fabric. Automated quality checks throughout.

ADFFabricADLSMedallion
99%
Onboarding Time Reduction

Customer Activation — 5 days to 10 min

▸ AVIATION · GCP

Automated customer setup via GCP Cloud Functions, triggered by Cloud Storage uploads to dynamically configure environments.

Cloud FunctionsGCSPython
13×
Faster Data Processing

Market Intelligence Re-Platform

▸ AVIATION · MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Migrated legacy ETL to Apache Spark on GCP Dataproc — distributed parallel execution cut pipeline runtimes from hours to minutes. Drove 30% usage growth.

SparkDataprocBigQueryComposer
RAG
Production Pipelines on Azure

RAG on Azure AI Foundry

▸ AI · LLMS

Production-grade RAG (Azure OpenAI, AI Search, ADLS, Delta) with prompt versioning, grounding, and resilient fallbacks — not just demos.

AI FoundryOpenAIAI SearchDelta
LibreChat
Enterprise Self-Service AI

Branded LibreChat for M365

▸ AI · INTERNAL TOOLING

Enterprise-ready LibreChat UI with branding, access controls and UX — integrated with Copilot/SharePoint workflows for secure self-service.

LibreChatCopilotSharePoint
90%
Manual Intervention Cut

OLTP → OLAP Migration

▸ AVIATION · DATA PLATFORM

Converted Oracle Data Loader shell scripts to MapReduce on Hadoop, processed into Vertica with automated failure restart.

HadoopMapReduceHiveVertica
5
GCC Entities Delivered

Multi-Cloud Platform Programme

▸ GOVERNMENT / SEMI-GOV · GCC

Secure data platforms on Azure, GCP and on-prem for 5 GCC entities — Dubai govt on Azure+Fabric, Saudi semi-govt on GCP, plus banking and utilities.

AzureGCPFabricTerraform

Certifications

CERT
Google Cloud Certified — Professional Cloud Architect
Google Cloud
ACTIVE
CERT
Google Cloud Certified — Professional Data Engineer
Google Cloud
ACTIVE
CERT
CDMP — Certified Data Management Professional
DAMA International
ACTIVE
CERT
Talend Certified Developer
Talend
CERTIFIED
CERT
R Programming · Statistical Inference · Python · Getting and Cleaning Data
Coursera / HackerRank
FOUNDATION

Education

2020-22
M.Tech — Data Science and Engineering
Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS)
M.TECH
2004-08
B.Tech — Computer Science and Engineering
Cochin University of Science and Technology
B.TECH

Awards & Recognition

2022
Blitz 2022 Finalist
Cloud-based interface — onboarding 5 days → 10 mins
FINALIST
2019
Blitz Code Winner 2019
95% reduction in MapReduce job runtimes
WINNER
2016
AirVision Hack Day 2016
ELK-stack what-if analysis for system bottlenecks
HACKDAY
2015
Runner-Up — Global Hackathon (Data & Analytics)
Airline Delay Prediction — R/R Shiny/ML — 100+ teams
RUNNER-UP

Languages

English — Proficient Hindi — Proficient Malayalam — Native

Get in Touch

Open to conversations on data, AI, copilots, agents and the future of enterprise analytics — cloud advisory, architecture engagements, and AI/data platform work across the GCC and remote.

// EMAIL
nitheeshpanicker@gmail.com
// LINKEDIN
linkedin.com/in/nitheesh-panicker
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