Description

This curriculum spans the technical and operational rigor of a multi-workshop optimization initiative for large-scale data platforms, comparable to an internal engineering program addressing infrastructure efficiency, data pipeline resilience, and cross-system governance across distributed environments.

Module 1: Infrastructure Assessment and Capacity Planning

Selecting between on-premises Hadoop clusters and cloud-based data lakes based on data gravity and egress cost projections.
Right-sizing compute nodes in a Spark environment to balance memory overhead and parallelization efficiency.
Implementing autoscaling policies in AWS EMR or Azure Databricks based on historical job queue patterns.
Conducting storage tier analysis to determine optimal placement of hot, warm, and cold data across SSD, HDD, and object storage.
Estimating network bandwidth requirements for cross-region data replication in multi-cloud architectures.
Designing fault-tolerant node configurations to minimize job reprocessing after executor failures.
Validating I/O throughput constraints when ingesting high-frequency sensor data from IoT sources.
Planning for hardware refresh cycles in on-prem clusters to avoid performance degradation from aging infrastructure.

Module 2: Data Ingestion Pipeline Optimization

Choosing between batch ingestion and micro-batching based on source system transaction volume and SLA requirements.
Configuring Kafka consumer groups to prevent lag accumulation during downstream processing bottlenecks.
Implementing backpressure handling in Spark Streaming to avoid executor OOM errors during traffic spikes.
Optimizing log shipping agents (e.g., Fluentd, Logstash) for minimal CPU footprint across thousands of edge nodes.
Designing idempotent ingestion logic to handle duplicate messages from unreliable transport layers.
Compressing data payloads in transit using Snappy or Zstandard to reduce network utilization without overloading CPU.
Partitioning incoming streams by tenant or region to enable parallel downstream processing and avoid skew.
Monitoring end-to-end latency from source capture to landing zone using distributed tracing.

Module 3: Storage Format and Schema Design

Selecting Parquet over Avro based on query patterns emphasizing column pruning and predicate pushdown.
Defining partitioning strategies in Delta Lake to prevent excessive small files while maintaining query efficiency.
Implementing schema evolution in Protobuf or Avro to support backward compatibility in long-running pipelines.
Choosing between Z-Order and range partitioning for multi-dimensional queries in large fact tables.
Enabling data skipping indexes in Iceberg tables to reduce scan volume for high-cardinality filters.
Managing schema drift detection in streaming sources using automated schema validation hooks.
Configuring compression codecs per column based on data type and cardinality (e.g., dictionary for low-cardinality strings).
Implementing time-to-live (TTL) policies in object storage with lifecycle rules and version cleanup.

Module 4: Query Engine Tuning and Execution Optimization

Adjusting Spark shuffle partitions based on dataset size and executor memory to avoid spilling to disk.
Configuring broadcast join thresholds to prevent driver memory exhaustion in large-scale joins.
Enabling adaptive query execution (AQE) in Spark 3+ and monitoring dynamic coalescing of shuffle partitions.
Tuning Presto worker memory to balance concurrent query throughput and GC pause times.
Implementing cost-based optimization in Hive by maintaining accurate table statistics.
Selecting appropriate file splitting strategies for ORC and Parquet to maximize parallel read performance.
Controlling speculative execution in YARN to avoid resource thrashing during straggler tasks.
Setting query timeouts and memory limits in Trino to enforce fair resource sharing across teams.

Module 5: Cluster Resource Management and Scheduling

Configuring YARN capacity scheduler queues with guaranteed and maximum memory limits per team.
Implementing hierarchical queuing in Kubernetes for Spark on K8s to isolate production and sandbox workloads.
Setting up node affinity rules to collocate data and compute for on-prem HDFS clusters.
Managing GPU allocation in deep learning pipelines using Kubernetes device plugins and quotas.
Enabling dynamic resource allocation in Spark to scale executors based on pending tasks.
Monitoring container memory overcommitment to prevent node eviction in shared clusters.
Integrating cluster utilization reports with chargeback systems for cost attribution.
Implementing preemption policies in schedulers to ensure SLA compliance for high-priority jobs.

Module 6: Cost Monitoring and Financial Governance

Tagging cloud resources by project, owner, and environment to enable cost allocation reporting.
Setting up billing alerts for unexpected spikes in data processing or storage usage.
Comparing total cost of ownership (TCO) between reserved instances and spot/flexible VMs for batch workloads.
Implementing query cost estimation in BI tools to discourage inefficient ad hoc queries.
Enforcing data retention policies to eliminate orphaned datasets in S3 and ADLS.
Optimizing cross-cloud data transfer costs using regional peering and caching layers.
Using workload forecasting to plan for reserved capacity purchases in cloud data warehouses.
Conducting quarterly cost reviews to decommission underutilized clusters and pipelines.

Module 7: Data Lifecycle and Retention Management

Designing archival workflows from hot storage to cold storage using lifecycle policies in S3 Glacier.
Implementing soft-delete mechanisms with tombstone markers in Delta Lake tables.
Automating data purging workflows to comply with GDPR or CCPA right-to-erasure requests.
Validating data integrity after migration between storage tiers using checksum verification.
Managing metadata retention separately from raw data to support lineage tracking post-deletion.
Configuring incremental vacuum operations to avoid long pauses in active Delta tables.
Documenting data lineage for audit trails when applying retention rules to derived datasets.
Coordinating retention policies across replicated data in disaster recovery environments.

Module 8: Performance Monitoring and Observability

Instrumenting Spark applications with custom metrics for job duration, shuffle spill, and task failure rates.
Setting up alerting on HDFS block utilization to prevent imbalance across DataNodes.
Correlating query latency spikes with cluster-wide resource contention using Prometheus and Grafana.
Implementing structured logging in ingestion jobs to support root cause analysis of failures.
Using distributed tracing to identify bottlenecks in multi-stage ETL workflows.
Monitoring skew in partition sizes to detect data distribution issues early.
Tracking cache hit ratios in Alluxio or Spark caching layers to evaluate performance gains.
Generating synthetic workloads to benchmark cluster performance after configuration changes.

Module 9: Cross-Functional Governance and Compliance

Integrating data classification tags with Apache Ranger policies to enforce access controls.
Implementing audit logging for all data access in sensitive datasets for regulatory compliance.
Coordinating encryption key rotation schedules across HDFS, S3, and database layers.
Validating data masking rules in test environments to prevent PII leakage.
Enforcing data quality checks at ingestion to reduce downstream reprocessing costs.
Documenting data provenance for audit requirements using Apache Atlas or similar tools.
Aligning data retention schedules with legal hold requirements for litigation readiness.
Conducting access reviews for data lake roles to enforce least-privilege principles.