0.0 — DATA ENGINEER

Sam·Malik

Building data infrastructure that's honest about what it measures.

I'm a data person wrapping up a B.S. in Informatics (Data Science) at the University of Washington. By day I build data pipelines and dashboards and write the quality checks that keep the numbers honest, mostly in Python and SQL. Off the clock I'm usually deep in a record I'm overthinking, somewhere in a room full of fog at a show, or digging through racks for secondhand grails. This site is both halves in one place: the work, and the taste behind it.

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Seattle · 47.6°N Python SQL Azure Databricks PySpark Synapse RAG / AI Agents
ETL ON AZURE·EXACT·IDEMPOTENT·OBSERVABLE·DATA QUALITY·LINEAGE & GOVERNANCE·AGENTIC RAG·PYTHON·SQL·
§ 0.1   ETHOS

0.1 — HOW I THINK ABOUT THE WORK

Data, technology, and culture are one loop.

I think of data, technology, and culture as one recursive feedback loop, each one constantly rewriting the next. Data engineering is how you step into that loop on purpose.

§ 01 Data § 02 Technology § 03 Culture determines reshapes decides

FIG. 0.1 — DATA → TECHNOLOGY → CULTURE → DATA

DATA → TECHNOLOGY. The data we collect ends up dictating the tools we build to handle it. Around 3400 BCE, Mesopotamian scribes were pressing grain tallies and labor records into clay, and the sheer volume of that accounting is what pushed them to invent cuneiform in the first place. The dataset created the technology.

TECHNOLOGY → CULTURE. Those tools then change how people live and what they treat as real. Double-entry bookkeeping in the 15th century was a data technology, and it helped make modern capitalism thinkable in the first place. The census, from Rome to the Domesday Book to today, turned populations into records, and in doing so it reshaped what it even meant to be a citizen of a state.

CULTURE → DATA. And culture decides what's worth recording at all, which closes the loop and changes what data exists in the first place. A society that decides something matters starts measuring it. A recommendation system turns your behavior into data, trains on it, and nudges the behavior it was measuring. Same loop the scribes started, just running faster.

None of this is new. Datafication is one of the constants of recorded human history. What's new is the speed and the stakes. Building data infrastructure means stepping into that loop, deciding what becomes legible and making sure the record stays honest about what it's actually measuring. That's the part I care about most.

§ 0.2   THE INDEX
§ 0.8   OFF THE CLOCK

0.8 — WHAT I'M LISTENING TO

The music.

My taste sits at two poles: warped, maximal rap on one side and the coldest end of black and drone metal on the other. Here's the all-time list and what I've rated lately, pulled straight from my RateYourMusic.

Favorite artists · all time

01
Death Grips
FAV  The Money Store
02
Sematary
FAV  Rainbow Bridge 3
03
Chief Keef
FAV  Back from the Dead 2
04
Playboi Carti
FAV  Whole Lotta Red
05
Young Thug
FAV  Barter 6
06
Danny Brown
FAV  Atrocity Exhibition
07
Gorgoroth
FAV  Under the Sign of Hell
08
Deathspell Omega
FAV  Paracletus
09
Darkthrone
FAV  A Blaze in the Northern Sky
10
Sunn O)))
FAV  Monoliths & Dimensions
11
Emperor
FAV  Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk
12
Carcass
FAV  Heartwork

Recently rated

  • Lucy Bedroque · Unmusique2025
  • Nine Inch Nails · The Downward Spiral1994
  • Jaja00 · BlackBolshevik2021
  • Clipse · Let God Sort Em Out2025
  • Playboi Carti · Music2025

RATEYOURMUSIC

251 ratings and counting. The full archive of what I've been listening to, scoring, and overthinking lives on my RYM.

View my RYM
§ 0.9   CONCERT LOG

0.9 — ROOMS FULL OF FOG

Concert log.

Some of the best rooms I've stood in. Featured: Sunn O))), Travis Scott, and Carcass.