CGI Hadoop Lead: From Fresher to Sole India-Side Delivery Owner

Raj joined CGI as an Associate Software Engineer and was placed on a technology and analytics data warehouse project that used Hadoop for big data ingestion and processing. He had no prior Hadoop experience and did not come from a computer science background.

The project involved migrating data from multiple sources into a Hadoop-based warehouse, building on top of Teradata and Informatica pipelines, and generating analytics reports from the ingested data. Raj started at the basics, learning HQL and the Hadoop ecosystem from scratch while contributing to the project alongside senior team members.

As his proficiency grew, he began taking on more of the Hadoop-specific work independently. CGI sponsored him through a postgraduate program in Big Data Analytics, which accelerated his technical depth. By the time he left the project, he was the only resource in India managing all Hadoop-related activities across the data warehouse, leading junior engineers who had joined the team.

The data warehouse project had multiple technical streams, but Raj owned the Hadoop stream entirely. His growth from fresher to lead on a live enterprise delivery project, in a domain he entered with no background, established the pattern of learning velocity and ownership that carried through his subsequent roles.