Data & AI Engineer · Toronto, Canada

Ashok
Tak

Building resilient data platforms and intelligent AI systems. Currently at Lumenalta as Senior Data & GenAI Engineer — architecting data lakehouses and RAG-powered applications across finance, agriculture, energy and e-commerce. 2× Databricks Certified.

6 min read

How AI Agents Will Disrupt Classical ETL and Data Engineering

For two decades, data engineering has followed roughly the same playbook. The rise of autonomous AI agents doesn't just optimize this workflow — it makes much of it structurally obsolete.

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2024 — Now

Lumenalta

formerly Clevertech

Senior Data Engineer · Mar 2024 — Present

Architected and developed data lakehouses for companies in finance, agriculture, energy and e-commerce using cloud partners, Databricks and open-source data stack.

Generative AI Engineer · May 2024 — Apr 2025

Built RAG-enabled GenAI applications automating knowledge-based enterprise workflows. Developed context retrieval systems, skills and tool use in an enterprise chatbot.

Python Spark Kafka Delta Lake Iceberg LangChain LangGraph pgVector AWS GCP Databricks
LA
2023 — 2024

Learn AI Daily

Toronto, ON

Machine Learning Engineer · Oct 2023 — Mar 2024

Created a Generative AI application for a personalized tutoring start-up. Built the backend using open-source GenAI stack.

LangChain llama-index Python GenAI
2021 — 2024

Scotiabank

Toronto, Canada

Data & Machine Learning Engineer · May 2022 — Feb 2024

Built Data Profiling and Data Quality Engines as part of Enterprise Governance Initiatives. Developed ML-based approaches to detect data issues in production pipelines.

Software Engineer, Data Engineering · Jun 2021 — May 2022

Enterprise Data Lake (EDL) enhancement team in Global Technology Solutions.

PySpark Hadoop / Hive Python SQL Machine Learning
2018 — 2021

University of Toronto

Research & Teaching

Machine Learning Researcher · Sep 2018 — Dec 2020

Cyber-Physical Security and Smart Grid Security under Prof. Deepa Kundur. Developed ML models for fault detection and explored adversarial attacks on LSTM-based classifiers.

Teaching Assistant · Jan 2019 — Apr 2021

Computer Networks (ECE 361), Programming Fundamentals (ECE 244), Probability & Statistics (ECE 286), Computer Fundamentals (APS 105).

Deep Learning TensorFlow Keras LSTM Adversarial ML Python
2016 — 2018

Tata Steel

Jamshedpur, India

Project Manager, Utilities · Jul 2017 — Jul 2018

Led a team of 22 electrical engineers and technicians at the power station to achieve reliability through digital improvements and automation.

Management Trainee · Jul 2016 — Jun 2017

Load Dispatch Center — designed and evaluated U/F settings for load shedding schemes for power network stability (Grid Islanding contingencies).

Power Systems Automation Team Leadership
2015

Carnegie Mellon University

Kigali, Rwanda

Summer Research Assistant · May — Jul 2015

Designed a smart microgrid testbed integrating renewable energy sources for developing countries. Modelled IEC 61850 communication for Solar Home Systems and developed advanced DC protection schemes.

MASc

University of Toronto

Master of Applied Science · Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research focus on applied machine learning to power infrastructure protection and security. Thesis on adversarial machine learning applied to LSTM-based smart grid classifiers.

BTech

IIT Roorkee

Bachelor of Technology · Electrical Engineering · Indian Institute of Technology

Gold Medalist · Merit-Cum-Means Scholarship · Summer Undergraduate Research Award · Best Paper Certificate

Data Engineering

Databricks Apache Spark Kafka Delta Lake Apache Iceberg Apache Airflow Hadoop / Hive dbt SQL ETL / ELT

GenAI & ML

LangChain LangGraph LangSmith RAG pgVector LLMs TensorFlow Keras Deep Learning

Cloud & Platforms

AWS GCP Azure Databricks Python PySpark Docker

Certifications

Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional
Deep Learning Specialization — Sequence Models · deeplearning.ai
Deep Learning Specialization — Neural Networks & Deep Learning
Deep Learning Specialization — Structuring Machine Learning Projects

Design of a generic microgrid testbed with novel control and smart technologies

Carnegie Mellon University · Smart Grid Research

Design and simulation of communication architecture for differential protection in IEC 61850 based substations

Substation Automation · IEC 61850 Protection

A Review of New Trends in Power Systems: Microgrids for Rural Electrification and DC Microgrids

Power Systems Review · Renewable Energy

Wireless power grid: Leapfrogging in power infrastructure of developing countries

Energy Access · Developing Countries

MASc Thesis

Adversarial Machine Learning on LSTM-based Smart Grid Fault Classifiers

View on UofT TSpace