Eugene Klyuchnikov | Mukrram Ur Rahman

Principal Data Engineer | Principal Software Engineer
Zalando
Germany

About

Eugene Klyuchnikov is a Principal Data Engineer at Zalando, one of Europe’s largest fashion ecosystems. He specializes in designing large-scale, resilient data platforms and orchestrating massive architectural migrations. Operating at the intersection of socio-technical systems and AI, Eugene focuses on transforming how hundreds of decentralized teams build, validate, and govern data products. He is a strong advocate for “structured freedom” – using smart platforms, data contracts, and AI-assisted workflows to eliminate engineering friction and bridge the gap between technical execution and business reality.Mukrram is a Principal Software Engineer at Zalando Data Foundation and is passionate about building scalable, governed, and business-friendly data platforms. He works at the intersection of data engineering, governance, and AI-driven analytics, helping organisations make trusted data more accessible while maintaining strong control and reliability. His experience spans platform architecture, data standardisation, governance frameworks, and AI-driven innovation, with a consistent focus on turning technical complexity into business value. In his free time, he enjoys solving problems and actively explores AI, both as a technology and as a tool for creating practical, high-impact solutions.
Talk

Eugene Klyuchnikov | Mukrram Ur Rahman | The AI-Powered Exodus: How We Migrated 100 Teams by Decoupling Tech from Truth

AI-assisted Engineering, Decentralized Teams, Data Validation, Large-scale Migration
Migrating data pipelines is hard. Migrating 100 autonomous teams from BigQuery to Databricks while simultaneously switching the underlying tracking datasets under a strict deadline and budget is a logistical nightmare. At Zalando, Eugene Klyuchnikov’s team had to execute this massive “double migration” — technology + data — without halting the business. To manage this, the team formed a central “virtual strike team” and made a critical architectural decision: they completely decoupled the technology shift from business data validation. More importantly, they heavily leveraged AI to do the heavy lifting. In doing so, they discovered a provocative truth: in the AI era, specific coding skills are overrated. Generating validation notebooks or rewriting SQL into PySpark is virtually free. The actual bottleneck is not how to write the code, but aligning 100 teams on what exactly they are validating. In this session, Eugene Klyuchnikov will walk attendees through his team’s exact blueprint. Attendees will learn:How the team separated tech migration from data reconciliation.How the team used AI as a “commodity coder” to instantly generate validation notebooks for decentralized teams.The framework the virtual team used to align 100 independent domains on a single validation strategy, saving both time and budget.