Data Engineer
Smals (ONEM)
Overview
At Smals, I engineered the critical data infrastructure for Belgium's national employment office (ONEM). My core focus was implementing a robust Data Vault architecture to handle complex historical data and automating massive ETL pipelines. I bridged the gap between raw data and actionable insights, delivering both the backend engineering (Airflow/DBT) and frontend reporting (Power BI).
What I Did
- Designed and implemented high-volume ETL pipelines using Apache Airflow and Python
- Modeled complex government data using the Data Vault methodology for historical tracking
- Wrote and optimized complex SQL transformations for large-scale data processing
- Managed data transformation logic with DBT (Data Build Tool)
- Created interactive Power BI dashboards and reports for business stakeholders
Key Achievements
✓ Successfully operationalized the Data Vault model for tracking employment history
✓ Automated daily reporting workflows reducing manual effort by 100%
✓ Optimized critical SQL queries reducing execution time by 40%
✓ Established a reliable Data Quality framework catching 99% of anomalies
What I Learned
The rigor required for managing national-scale government data
Implementing Data Vault for auditability and historical accuracy
Orchestrating complex dependencies in distributed data flows
Translating technical data models into clear business reports
Quick Info
- Period
- 2024 - 2025
- Duration
- 1 year
- Role
- Data Engineer
- Location
- Brussels, Belgium
Skills Developed
Technologies
Type
Work Experience