Staff Data Engineer

I build data systems
that studios run on.

10+ years building production data infrastructure — from the pipelines behind Disney's theatrical marketing to Foursquare's recommendation engine. I write code that turns raw data into decisions. I also happen to understand people.

Open to EU opportunities
Cornell CS (B.A. + M.Eng.)
English · Korean

// experience

2017 – 2025

Staff Data Engineer

The Walt Disney Company · Studio Technology
  • Led two teams of data engineers as technical lead, working directly with product owners across marketing, consumer analytics, and theatrical
  • Authored 75% of the data pipelines delivering batch-processed production datasets used by the Studio's marketing and theatrical teams — Python and Scala
  • Designed and shipped architectural improvements to legacy systems: introduced Docker, automated CI/CD, modernized deployment workflows
  • Administered AWS Databricks instances and orchestrated multi-instance migration with zero downtime
  • Built up Amundsen (data catalog) using Neo4J, Python, Scala with Helm and Kubernetes — bringing data discoverability to the org
2015 – 2017

Data Infrastructure Engineer

Foursquare Labs · SF / NYC
  • Improved the similar venue finder powering Foursquare's recommendation engine — 7% performance improvement in the US, 3% globally
  • Engineered the backend for personalized notification content based on user behavior patterns
  • Built monitoring tools for the Hadoop cluster and big data pipeline; increased cluster availability by detecting expensive jobs before they consumed shared resources
  • Upgraded legacy log streaming to Kafka 10; productionized the cluster with metrics, partition-skew alerting, and producer error monitoring
  • Optimized HDFS/S3 storage with routine re-compression of old logs

// technical skills

Languages
Python Scala Java SQL
Data & Compute
Spark Hadoop Hive Airflow Scalding
Streaming
Kafka Kafka Streams
Infrastructure
AWS Databricks Docker Kubernetes Helm
Databases
Neo4J HDFS S3
Practices
CI/CD Git Functional Programming

// education

2005 – 2011

B.A. & M.Eng. — Computer Science

Cornell University · Ithaca, NY

// what I bring

🏗️

Production-Scale Pipelines

8 years at Disney building the data pipelines that powered a major studio's marketing, analytics, and theatrical operations. Not toy projects — production systems with real stakeholders.

⚡

Measurable Impact

7% improvement in Foursquare's US recommendations. 75% of Disney Studio's production datasets. I write code that moves business metrics.

🔧

Legacy Modernization

I've taken legacy systems and made them modern — Docker, CI/CD, Kafka upgrades, data cataloging. I don't just build new things; I make old things better.

🤝

Cross-Cultural Communication

Bilingual (English/Korean), raised across cultures, and experienced in working directly with non-technical stakeholders. I translate between engineering and business fluently.

Looking at me for a leadership role?

See my experience leading teams, driving technical vision, and building people-first engineering culture.

→

Let's talk.

Based in LA, open to relocating to Europe. Available for Staff/Senior Data Engineering roles.

hyunjoon.seol@gmail.com
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