// Data Platform & MLOps Engineering
DataReaper is the data platform and MLOps engineering studio of Lyle Henkeman. 17 years turning messy data estates into clean, governed, push-button platforms that data scientists actually want to use, and that still work in 3 to 5 years.
// What we do
From raw ingestion to governance and monitoring. DataReaper combines software craftsmanship, data engineering and platform thinking so your data scientists and analysts move fast on a foundation that holds.
Secure, cost-efficient data lakes and lakehouses on AWS, Databricks and Snowflake, ready for analytics and ML at scale.
Reproducible experiments and push-button deployments of ML workloads. Modern CI/CD on GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps, with automated testing baked in.
Cloud-native first: Terraform, AWS CDK, containers and Kubernetes to create secure, scalable, repeatable environments across teams and regions.
Unity Catalog and fine-grained access, secrets management, monitoring and resilient IaC workflows that survive real distributed-system failures.
// Track record
Engagements led by DataReaper's founder, Lyle Henkeman, across energy, media, semiconductors, fintech and retail: architecting data lakes, meshes and warehouses, and steering infra-as-code initiatives for secure, scalable ecosystems.
Lead MLOps and data platform strategy for ENGIE B2C NL across the SPM and B2C data teams. Leading a cross-cloud migration of production Delta tables from Azure Databricks to AWS Unity Catalog, preserving full table history via AWS DataSync, plus shadow-run validation and cutover for the PredictNL/FlexNL forecasting platforms. Built a 3-layer CI/CD platform (GitHub runners, templates, consumer repos) standardized on Terraform, cutting deployment time ~40%, and hardened dbt CI/CD on Azure Container Apps ephemeral runners, cutting manual ops ~60%.
Led 8+ engineers modernizing the data lake and MLOps ecosystem. Introduced Terraform automation (~40% faster deploys) and CI/CD for Databricks, dbt and Snowflake, cutting manual ops ~60%.
Designed and implemented a data mesh platform on DevOps principles, and led the migration from Amazon EMR to EMR Serverless.
Implemented infrastructure-as-code for a data lake and warehouse supporting data science and ML workloads.
Developed data pipeline solutions and IaC implementations, mentoring the team to ensure delivery quality.
Led, mentored and guided data engineering, data science and analytics teams, aligning technical solutions with business objectives.
Dual role as DevOps/Platform Engineer for the data science and ML team, and Site Reliability Engineer for the platform team.
Architected, developed and implemented a data lake for R&D data from the ground up, mentoring the team along the way.
Built an on-premises data lake for enterprise data initiatives and implemented CI/CD pipelines to streamline deployment.
// Stack
A deep, cloud-native toolkit built over 17 years. The core DataReaper keeps coming back to: AWS and Azure, Databricks, Terraform, Snowflake and Python/Spark.
// In their words
Lyle did a marvelous job setting up modern CI/CD and infrastructure for our Data Warehouse. He knows what he is doing and communicates very clearly about his work and progress.
— Theo Gerrits, System Architect, Essent
Lyle brought strong knowledge in Cloud, Infrastructure as Code, Automation and CI/CD. He played a key role in improving our cloud setup and strengthening our Terraform-based infrastructure.
— Mian Eemaan Tayyab, Data Engineer, Essent
I was impressed by Lyle's advanced AWS knowledge and strong work ethic. He helped the team with Airflow, Spark, AWS Glue, AWS architecture and GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
— Menno Liefstingh, Cloud/MLOps Engineer
Lyle was our Lead Data Engineer and was responsible for most of the data platform. He improved platform stability by introducing strong software engineering practices.
— Jeffrey Luppes, Senior AI/ML Engineer
DataReaper takes on data platform, MLOps and platform engineering work in the Netherlands, Dubai or remote. Tell us what you are building.