Samantha smiling in a cycling helmet by the sea

Welcome · Bem-vindo · Bienvenido 👋

Samantha Cruz

Data engineer · team lead · global speaker

Hi, I'm so glad you're here! I build data platforms, lead a data engineering team, teach Databricks, speak at community events and write about what I learn along the way. Look around, and say hello if something sparks an idea.

  • Based in Barcelona 🇪🇸
  • 8+ years in data
  • PT · EN · ES

About me

I'm from Brazil. I grew up there and studied Naval and Oceanic Engineering at UFRJ in Rio de Janeiro. My career started at sea level: satellite images, ocean temperature and currents, and a research stay at NOAA in Miami. Working with all that data pulled me into analytics, BI and, in the end, data engineering.

On 2024 I moved to Barcelona, where I worked at Glovo, a food delivery app, then I worked as a data engineer at isolutions, teach Databricks, speak at conferences and meetups, and write about what I learn. This site is where it all comes together.

My journey

  1. 2010 – 2012
    Computer technician, with a focus on data processingFederal Technology Center, Brazil. The first step into software and data.
  2. 2012 – 2018
    BSc in Naval and Oceanic EngineeringPolytechnic School of UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro.
  3. 2017 – 2019
    Oceanography research at UFRJResearch intern, then data analyst and research assistant: ocean and satellite data, statistics and scientific reports.
  4. 2020
    Research visitor at NOAA, MiamiHelped build a real-time data transmission pipeline for forecast models and improved how geostrophic velocity of ocean currents is calculated.
  5. 2020
    Business analyst, CADS Digital, São PauloProcess automation and agile delivery for clients on low-code platforms.
  6. 2020 – 2022
    Senior Power BI engineer, APCOABI solutions, an enterprise data architecture and a SQL Server migration for a European parking operator. In 2022 I also finished a graduate degree in Business Intelligence, Big Data and Analytics and taught AI to law graduate students as a visiting professor.
  7. 2022 – 2024
    Data analyst, AB InBevThe Snowflake to Azure Databricks migration, with cost analysis, plus data quality monitoring for 4 billion events a month.
  8. 2024
    Senior analytics engineer, Glovoworking on A/B tests that lifted GMV by 7%. In the same year I started teaching Databricks.
  9. 2025
    Senior data engineer, isolutionsFabric and Azure platforms for enterprise customers, and my first conference and meetup talks in Barcelona, Zurich and Madrid.
  10. 2026
    Data Engineering Team LeadLeading the Data Engineer team at isolutions Barcelona.

Certifications

Microsoft Azure Databricks Data Engineer Associate
Microsoft Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate (DP-600)
Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer Associate (DP-700)
Databricks Generative AI Engineer Associate
Databricks Data Engineer Associate
All credentials and verification links

Education

Graduate degree in Business Intelligence, Big Data and Analytics, Anhanguera University
BSc in Naval and Oceanic Engineering, Polytechnic School of UFRJ

What I do

I like building data platforms that people can trust and that I can explain, from ingestion to the dashboards and models people actually use.

Platforms

Lakehouse architecture

Medallion lakehouses with PySpark and SQL on Fabric and Databricks, batch and streaming, from raw ingestion to curated, analytics-ready layers.

Trust

Quality, lineage and governance

Data quality monitoring, lineage tracking, row-level security and cost control, so downstream data scientists and BI analysts work on a foundation they can defend.

Delivery

CI/CD and infrastructure as code

Azure DevOps and Terraform pipelines, version-controlled deployments across dev, test and prod, automated tests and release gates.

Migration

Snowflake to Azure Databricks

Led the cost analysis of both platforms and the migration, with Azure Data Factory orchestration, ADLS storage and an executive dashboard tracking warehouse spend.

Reliability

Quality monitoring at 4 billion events a month

Built the monitoring system and dashboard, with near real-time Slack alerts when event propagation failed.

Projects

Open-source work you can read and run. Client work stays with the client, so this is where I build in the open.

AI agents · open source

DataEngAgents

A sanitized, reusable template for running AI coding agents against Microsoft Fabric and Azure DevOps, with layered agent context and a dry-run-first safety model.

Earth observation

Satellite imagery analysis

Scripts to acquire and process satellite image data, from my oceanography research background.

Ocean data

THREDDS downloader

Python scripts to download and combine BRAN ocean reanalysis data from THREDDS servers.

Upcoming talks

Where you can catch me next. Past talks, with slides, are on the talks page, and organisers can find my sessions on Sessionize.

All talks and slides

Get in touch

Happy to talk about data strategy, architecture, Fabric or Databricks, speaking, or mentoring.