James Blackwell

Portfolio

Senior Data Engineer at Ember

Profile 🌍

I’m a python software engineer with experience in data science, data engineering and platform architecture mainly in the water and energy industry. I like building things related to data and hate doing things manually! But I also like doing things the right way, using best practices and the right tool for the job.

I am passionate about the environment and other societal issues, and I’m motivated to use my skills in the most valuable way to contribute towards these causes.

I am also an active contributor to the CADA network.

Skills 💻

  • Python
  • SQL
    • duckdb fan 🦆
    • worked with bigquery, duckdb, mysql, sqlite
  • Cloud platforms
    • Google Cloud - designed and created a full data platform at Ember using GCP (bigquery, cloud run, datastore, gcs)
    • AWS - designed a duckdb database using parquet files stored on s3
    • Azure platform - Azure Data Engineer Associate certification
    • Databricks
  • CI/CD
    • github actions
    • docker

Experience 🗒

Ember

2023-present

  • Senior Data Engineer (2024-present)
    • Project managing the migration from our legacy codebase to the dagster platform (2025)
      • Planning, managing team resource, reviewing
    • Line managing front-end developer and AI intern (2024-present)
      • Supporting their development and providing guidance or steering to their projects
        • Provided data and feedback on the Electricity Data Explorer
        • Project managed the development of a PDF AI data extraction tool, shifting focus depending on results, feedback and feasibility.
    • Running an organisation-wide pilot program of AI tooling. (2025)
    • Contributing towards organisation AI strategy. (2025)
  • Data Engineer (2023-2024)
    • Designed, developed and maintain/iterate on a data orchestration platform in dagster (2023-present)
      • Inlcudes bespoke testing, validation, connections and existing integrations
      • Overcoming technical blockers and providing solutions
      • Running production data pipelines on schedules / sensors since early 2024 allowing collection
      • Extensive collection of metadata to allow improved data cataloguing
      • Implemented best practices across the team with uv, ruff, git practices and unit testing.
      • Consistent compute environment improves robustness and the dagster platform provides excellent ovsesrvability
      • Onboarding team onto dagster and implementing feedback to improve developer experience on platform and processing of datasets at a rate and scale that was previously infeasible.
      • Used opportunity to move database to bigquery to help future-proof and enable reporting of finer-grain datasets
    • Suggested, designed and developed an API for our public datasets (2024)
    • Managed the development, databases, deployment, CICD, monitoring (performance and errors)

Aiimi

2019-2023

  • Senior Data Engineer (2021-2023)
    • Platform Migration - Utilities
      • Migration of ETL pipelines from the old on-premise data warehouse to a bespoke databricks-based cloud platform.
      • Developed a testing framework to improve data quality that became part of the platform.
      • Implemented a module to create a relational data model in Analysis Services using the bespoke data catalogue.
    • Carbon Reporting - Internal
      • Lead initiative and developed methodology to estimate carbon emissions from Azure usage
      • Gained approval from CEO to run a week-long well-resourced hack to implement calculations into our internal product
  • Data Consultant (2019-2021)
    • COVID Workforce Management - Utilities
    • Zero Emissions Hack (winner) - Utilities
    • Utility Demand Modelling - Utilities
    • Asset Condition Modelling - Utilities
    • Document Classification - Aiimi Labs R&D

Outside of my day-to-day role, I was also involved with:

  • ‘Data community’ leader - developing resources and creating a space for data consultants to connect and share ideas, lessons learned and best practices
  • Career shifting mentor - mentored a scrum master to transition to data engineering by helping to focus their training and develop their skills
  • Apprentice mentor - mentoring an 18 year old data science apprentice, helping them transition from school into work

Havas Media Group

2018-2019

  • Junior Data Scientist
    • Web-scraping analytics
    • Automated the interpretation of an econometric model
    • Developed an R-Shiny app for conducting econometric analysis.

Education 🎓

Professional Certifications

2024

2021

University of Warwick

2014-2017

  • BSc Mathematics, Operational Research, Statistics & Economics (2:1)

Aylesbury Grammar School

2007-2014

  • 4x A-Levels (A*A*A*A)
  • 11x GCSE (A*-B)

Hobbies 🥅

Hobby programming

I enjoy doing some hobby programming, too, and I love the open-source philosophy. As well as my contribution to the dagster open-source ecosystem, I have a couple of other projects on pypi. My main project at the moment is ipydata, an intuitive tool to load / operate on datasets within databases or blob storage within notebooks or ipython sessions.

I have dabbled in Rust and JavaScript and would welcome any opportunities to work with some non-python technologies / frameworks.

When I’ve had a bit more time, I’ve also created a smart mirror in python, set up email notifications whenever @BrentfordFC (COYB!) tweet about tickets going on sale, and optimised the Formula 1 calendar to reduce its emissions. Again, feel free to take a look at them on my github page.

I’m also a fan of the Linux desktop, currently sporting the latest EndeavourOS release.

Floorball

At university I picked up a strange sounding sport when I decided that £600+ for a set of ice hockey gear was too much for a first year student. Cast your mind back to the plastic hockey sticks and balls that you played with in junior school and imagine that someone made this into a real sport - dramatic video explanation for anyone who’s interested. It’s not that popular in the UK (and let’s face it, the name doesn’t help), but has a great following in north and central Europe. The plus-side of playing a sport that no-one in your country has heard of, is that the pool of players for the national team is very small. So as a result, I’ve been lucky enough to represent Great Britain in 14 matches, scoring 4 goals in this time, but I think my team GB days are behind me now.

Links 🔗