DataEngi

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner and managing partner at Smart Fusion Solutions. We help with team augmentation. Our customers and their teams need different types of full-time and remote engineers; we help them find those engineers to work on their projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DataEngi?

They have experience working with data engineering, so they help us with projects in which we need their expertise.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We turn to DataEngi when we need good people with expertise in data. They’ve done a lot of work for us, such as data engineering projects and tasks, data architecture, building data solutions and scale, and looking at the data quality to ensure it’s consistent and according to the requirements.

They’re our partners when our customers need expertise in data. DataEngi helps us with consulting, and they provide us with people that can work in that specific area. Also, they help us with data collection and aggregation, preparing the data for BI tools for third-party data source integrations. 

They mostly use Amazon AWS Redshift, AWS EMR, Apache Spark, Kubernetes, Python, and Scala. They do the data engineering for our customers for e-commerce enterprises and some online gaming platforms. They also do data mining and scraping when needed.

What is the team composition?

My main contact is the CEO, and we’ve been in contact with about 10 people. Five people have been involved in our projects recently, but they have 20–30 people on their team. 

How did you come to work with DataEngi?

It was probably word of mouth. We’d been looking for teams and companies that we could rely on to help our customers. We provided software development, but we didn’t have a deep expertise in data engineering.

We found their team a few years ago. We had a phone call with them and asked them to visit our office to discuss the details.  They were in a different city, but we met some of the team when they visited our office.

We decided that they would be a good choice because there weren’t many teams with experience in Scala, and their expertise was in Scala and Python. Additionally, some of their team taught at the university and had a mathematical background. We started negotiations, onboarded a few members of their team, and gradually increased the number of people.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve invested between $250,000–$300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them for around three years. We began our relationship in February 2018, and it’s ongoing. We have a few projects running at the same time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We started a project with one of their data architects, and they built the platform. The client was happy with the results, so they built a team of 50 people around this initial engineer. They were good at understanding the client’s needs, the data domain, and how everything should work. Moreover, they architected the entire platform and system, which grew into a large e-commerce project with data scraping, analyzing, and more.

Overall, DataEngi has a core team of five experts engaging with the project, and we can build a team around them while they keep consulting.

How did DataEngi perform from a project management standpoint?

They act as a separate standalone unit on the client’s team. Usually, the client’s team has its own project management people.

We typically use Skype, Slack, phone calls, and Telegram for communication. Different projects have different communication channels depending on the team and the client's preference.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re data engineering experts. DataEngi’s team has good expertise in data engineering, the cloud, and backend technology, and we can rely on them. Their engineers are well-educated professionals, and we simply rely on them when we need an expert in data and backend technologies related to Big Data.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have their own niche and specialization, so we can just wish them luck.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If someone needs expertise in Scala, Python, and data engineering, just talk to them. They’ll be helpful.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a health and exercise app. We’re a B2B solution that encourages employees to exercise by converting physical activity into virtual coins that earn them offers through voucher catalogs. The app gathers and stores data from various fitness devices.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DataEngi?

I had to build a new development team and fix several bugs in the app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our app is essentially a data platform, at least as it relates to its architecture. This has created many challenges regarding real-time updates, data management, and distributed systems. Currently, DataEngi is helping us fix bugs in the existing solution, which was created by several different people. We’re maintaining the best parts of the original and rewriting the worst parts. DataEngi is also going t deliver new features.

What is the team composition?

I work with a backend developer and a DevOps engineer. There’s also someone doing Angular.js and React Native development, but they’re working mostly on the interface.

How did you come to work with DataEngi?

We have limited experienced development resources locally, so we had to find a remote team. After finding DataEngi on Upwork, we had several calls with them to see if they’d be the right fit. They appeared to be professional and committed to delivering what they promised. Their experience with distributed systems appealed to us greatly.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $40,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since July 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Straightforward and direct, they’ve had a positive impact on us. Their stability has been a great advantage.

How did DataEngi perform from a project management standpoint?

I manage the project via Slack, email, and Zoom. DataEngi is responsive and always available.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

Because their founders are developers, they understand the work their team is doing. Their depth of talent is also noteworthy. One of the developers was unavailable due to personal reasons and they were replaced by someone with twice as much experience. We greatly appreciated their attitude.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They should market themselves more and better present what they can do for others.