Christos CHATZIS

Lead the Data Chapter at Kaizen Gaming (50 engineers), building a high-performing, future-ready team.

Drive upskilling initiatives, and participation in major industry events (e.g., LDX3) to close capability gaps.

Organize datathons to foster innovation, experimentation, and adoption of emerging technologies.

Advocate for Developer Experience (DX) within the tribe, addressing key pain points and enabling high-performing engineering teams.

Oversee the Data Platform team (20 engineers), delivering a scalable, cost-aware, and efficient platform using FinOps principles.

Manage strategic relationships with technology partners (e.g., Databricks) to ensure alignment with internal roadmaps and long-term scalability.

Lead Kaizen Gaming’s tech blog and external visibility initiatives (e.g., Databricks AI Summit SF, CA), promoting the team’s work and demonstrating the value and impact of engineering efforts.

Set clear performance goals, track OKRs, and ensure engineering excellence across platform and data operations.

Hire and spawn a new team of 8 data engineers, expanding capabilities and scaling the organization.

Foster a culture of continuous learning, growth, and engagement through mentoring, career development, and retention initiatives.

Support talent development at all levels, prioritizing well-being and creating an environment where people thrive and grow with the business.

Lead the adoption of Dagster as the organization’s orchestration platform, improving reliability, observability, and operational confidence while driving a cultural shift from reactive firefighting to proactive platform operations.

Directed the rollout of a real-time analytics architecture powered by RisingWave, enabling sub-second insights and ultra-low-latency (<100ms) processing for critical business use cases.

Champion the introduction of data contracts across teams, establishing proactive quality controls that surfaced schema and data issues before production and significantly reduced downstream operational incidents.

Lead Platform Health and Data Trust initiatives, delivering executive-facing operational cockpits that transformed silent degradation into visible platform signals and shifted data quality from assumed to measurable and trusted.

Guided the development of a configuration-driven ingestion framework, standardizing onboarding patterns and reusable templates that reduced ingestion implementation time by approximately 3× while improving consistency and maintainability.

Established FinOps practices for the data and AI platforms, driving cost accountability, ownership, and visibility through infrastructure optimization, storage reservations, hardware modernization, budget monitoring, and cost transparency dashboards, including spend insights for GenAI/LLM workloads.

Transformed the R&D division in Sri Lanka into a highly efficient site, aligning technical initiatives with corporate strategy.

Prepared executive reports and insights for the CTO, leveraging data-driven analysis from surveys (e.g., GetDX) to guide R&D investments and priorities.

Led comprehensive technical due diligence, defined domain-specific OKRs, and implemented initiatives informed by survey feedback.

Orchestrated a seamless migration from traditional data centers to AWS, enhancing scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency.

Participated in ISO security audits, ensuring compliance and strengthening organizational security posture.

Managed distributed engineering teams across multiple countries, driving collaboration, productivity, and adherence to engineering strategies.

Oversaw product development across global teams, optimizing cross-country workflows, resource allocation, and budget management.

Addressed complex technical challenges with innovative solutions, considering the impact on distributed teams and operational effectiveness.

Fostered professional growth and performance development for engineers across multiple locations, mentoring talent and nurturing high-performing teams.

Monitored industry trends and continuously adapted engineering practices to improve collaboration, communication, and stakeholder alignment across global teams.

Drove architecture design and facilitated technical discussions, ensuring alignment of engineering initiatives with strategic organizational goals.

Collaborated closely with business, product, and operations teams to integrate technical efforts with broader company objectives.

Partnered with engineering leadership and tech leads to advance Orfium’s vision as a leading technology provider in the music industry.

Ensured successful product delivery through code reviews, enforcing quality standards, and promoting engineering best practices.

Led, motivated, and coached engineering teams, fostering a positive, productive, and high-performing team environment.

Actively contributed to the codebase, demonstrating technical leadership and commitment to product quality.

Managed project budgets, including staffing, hiring, training, and certifications, optimizing resource allocation to support team growth and project success.

Oversaw professional development of engineers through regular one-on-one mentorship, guidance, and feedback to nurture individual and team growth.