Jason Paladini

Principal Data Engineer

About

I design, operate, and evolve enterprise data platforms while keeping production systems stable. My work spans traditional databases, ETL systems, reporting servers, and modern lakehouse technologies. I understand how these systems behave under load, how failures propagate, and how to introduce change incrementally without breaking trust in the data.

I'm also deeply embedded in the business. I work directly with business teams daily—delivering ad-hoc analyses, building data products that drive decisions, and serving as a subject matter expert on many of our core systems. This lets me guide platform modernization with real context: I know what the data means, what questions people are trying to answer, and how to build systems that help analysts deliver insights at scale.

Experience

Principal Data Engineer

2017 - Present

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey

Key technical contributor to the organization's first major transition from data-center–hosted platforms to cloud-based lakehouse architectures. Hands-on implementation across Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, and Snowflake while ensuring existing reporting pipelines remain reliable. Provide the technical foundation and operational support for a 25-person analytics team—building dbt models, Fabric warehouse tables, semantic models, governance entries, and catalog integrations so they can deliver reporting at scale.

Corporal

2005 - 2010

US Marine Corps · Marine Aircraft Logistics Squadron 16

Led supply chain operations for Marine aviation. Managed a 25-person team, 12,000+ line items, and multiple satellite inventories supporting aircraft readiness.

Platforms & Tools

Cloud Lakehouse

Microsoft Fabric (Lakehouse, Pipelines, PySpark, Direct Lake), Databricks (Lakeflow, dbt, Streamlit), Snowflake (dbt, Streamlit, Snowpark)

Traditional Systems

SQL Server, DB2, SSIS

Reporting Platforms

Tableau Server, Power BI

Governance & Documentation

Alation, Microsoft Purview, Confluence

Languages & Practices

SQL, Python, dbt, Azure DevOps, version control, CI/CD

Automation & AI

Power Automate, Copilot Studio

What I Do

  • Own all data products in my domain—models, transforms, semantic layers, and governance entries
  • Review and approve all analyst contributions through CI/CD pipelines and PR checks
  • Set and enforce best practices for a team of analysts shipping to production
  • Build production RAG systems on governed enterprise data with real access controls
  • Modernize ingestion and platform architecture without breaking what's already running

Education

Stony Brook University

2012 - 2016

Computational Modeling, Bioinformatics, Mathematical Biology

Contact