Paras Sitoula

Technical Lead · Software & Data Engineering — Melbourne, Australia

A data engineer who thinks like a software engineer. 15+ years building streaming and batch platforms that hold up in production — not just pipelines that run, but systems that are tested, observable, and owned by the team. Comfortable leading teams and working across business and engineering to turn complex problems into systems people actually rely on.

📧 paras.sitoula@gmail.com · 📱 +61 414 326 363 · 🔗 linkedin.com/in/psitoula

Core skills

Languages & Frameworks — Scala, Python, Java, C#, Node.js, TypeScript, React

Data Processing & Orchestration — Apache Spark, Spark Streaming, Apache Flink, Apache Kafka, Kafka Streams, Apache Airflow, Databricks Workflows, AWS Step Functions

Cloud & Platform Engineering — AWS Lambda, S3, EMR, Glue, SQS, Bedrock, Terraform, CloudFormation

Data Modelling & Storage — Logical & Physical Data Modelling, Graph Data Modelling, Databricks Delta Lake, AWS Neptune, Neo4j, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB

Observability & DevOps — Grafana, OpsGenie, CloudWatch, Buildkite, GoCD, Incident Management, CI/CD

Systems Design & Leadership — Event-Driven Architecture, Large-Scale Platform Design, Distributed Systems, Technical Leadership, Mentoring

Experience

Technical Lead / Data Engineer — Tabcorp

Nov 2023 – Present

Lead a data engineering team building a real-time AML transaction monitoring platform (Kafka, Scala, Neo4j) at sub-400ms latency. Spearheaded the Neo4j → AWS Neptune migration — re-architecting Cypher to Gremlin and cutting $1.5M/year in cost. Also built Databricks enrichment pipelines, Spark Structured Streaming fraud rules, an AWS Bedrock alert-triage system, and team-wide standards for review, testing, CI/CD and incident response.

Senior Data Engineer — Mantel Group (Contractor at Tabcorp)

Mar 2022 – Nov 2023

Delivered a real-time ATM transaction platform (Kafka Streams, Scala) spanning ingestion, enrichment, settlement, reconciliation and vendor reporting. Built daily AML monitoring on AWS EMR + Step Functions, DLQ-based self-healing pipelines, and a high-throughput NCPF activity-statement system on DynamoDB, S3 and SQS.

Senior Software Engineer — Data — Monash Institute of Railway Technology

Jan 2020 – Feb 2022

Built Spark Streaming pipelines over railway sensor telemetry for track-gauge and geometry-exceedance detection, modelled weld quality with Spark MLlib, and designed Kafka-based passenger-counting and batch drill-down analytics platforms.

Software Engineer — Monash Institute of Railway Technology

Feb 2017 – Jan 2020

Built the Project Administration System integrating SAP and Senomix into consolidated lifecycle reporting, plus cross-platform mobile apps for field engineers and Tableau dashboards for operational safety monitoring.

Earlier experience

Head Teaching Associate, Monash University (2016–2020) — taught postgraduate distributed and big data systems: Spark, Spark Streaming, Kafka, MongoDB.
Software Engineer, Grand Canal Software (2015–2016) — on-site ordering and inventory for builders with ASP.NET MVC, Ionic, SignalR, Firebase.
Senior Developer, Tulips Technologies (2011–2014) — hybrid mobile development with Apache Cordova and PhoneGap.
Senior ASP.NET Developer, Braindigit IT Solutions (2011–2013) — led teams building SageFrame, an in-house open-source CMS.

Education

Master of Information Technology — Monash University, 2014–2016 · First Class Honours (H1)
Bachelor of Computer Information Systems — Pokhara University, 2006–2010 · GPA 3.9 / 4.0

Certifications

Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
Neo4j Certified Professional (2024)
Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional (in progress)

Command Palette