Transitioning from Data Engineering to Data Science in Big Tech (Sundas Khalid) - KNN Ep. 91

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing @Sundas Khalid . Be sure to check out her YouTube Channel! Sundas is a data science leader and a passionate advocate for diversity in the workplace. Sundas currently works at Google as Sr. Analytical Lead, leading Google Search Engine analytics. Prior to Google, Sundas was at Amazon where she received awards for her work as a data science leader driving large-scale experimentations and data science initiatives. Sundas is the first woman in her family to graduate college, her journey is one of persistence and resilience, and has been featured on Forbes and Google's Data Analytics Professional Certificate on Coursera.

As the first-female in her family to graduate university, she is an advocate of women's education and workforce diversity, and actively participate in diversity, equity & inclusion within and outside of Google. In her free time, she enjoys public speaking and creating educational content on various platforms on data science, career and financial literacy. In 2021, Sundas help women of color negotiate $1.4M in job offers. In this interview we dive into how Sundas made such an incredible career transition from taking some time off through data engineering and eventually into data science.

00:00 Introduction 02:57 How did your data journey begin? 09:22 Navigating in data science with a career gap. 11:22 After internship experience. 15:00 Tips on leveraging internships. 22:04 Transitioning from data engineering to data science. 29:11 Transitioning to a company with a strong culture. 33:00 Benefits of working at a large company. 36:45 Tools that large tech companies use. 40:29 Application process for FAANG companies. 46:33 YouTube journey. 57:56 Final remarks.