Ayub Khan

• PetSmart is a leading North American pet retailer with over 1,650 stores in the US and Canada, offering a wide range of pet products, services, and small pets. As a Senior Data Architect at PetSmart, I have led several high-impact initiatives including:

PetSmart AdTech Modernization:

• Spearheaded the design of a privacy-compliant identity resolution framework integrating TransUnion’s UID in our AdTech infrastructure for cookieless, cross-channel attribution and audience activation.
• Architected log-level data ingestion pipelines for :
• REDS (Raw Event Data Streams) from TTD into Snowflake, enabling real-time campaign measurement across impressions, clicks, and conversions.
• GCM (Google Campaign Manager) ingestion, bypassing legacy BigQuery dependencies and enriching our internal analytics stack.
• The above dataset will be used in the Data Clean Rooms attribution and measurement use case for joint campaign performance measurement.
• Played a key role in replacing LiveRamp with a more privacy-compliant IDR solution. We conducted an in-depth RFP with vendors like Neustar, Experian, Habu, and Hightouch, balancing security, activation capabilities, and compatibility with IPOS and DSPs. We selected Neustar and designed a phased roadmap for testing, migration, and full rollout.
• Involved as Data Architect in Retail Media Network (RMN) 2.0 platform evaluation, comparing Moloco, Epsilon, and Criteo across ID resolution, activation capabilities, and AI-based optimization—contributing to vendor selection roadmap.
• Refactored the audience schema to eliminate column bloat by introducing map/struct-based modelling for brand related attributes—enabling scalable, vendor-agnostic audience schemas.
• Authored a comprehensive enterprise-level AdTech architecture documentation, creating an authoritative source for engineering, data science, and marketing stakeholders.
• Developed and implemented data sharing architecture via Databricks Delta Sharing, enabling secure and performant delivery of marketing feeds to external partners and platforms.
• Business Benefits: Enabled precise, privacy-compliant audience targeting and real-time attribution, driving higher ROI on media spend and improved campaign effectiveness across channels.

Customer Data Platform Strategy

• Led the DataTech Blueprinting project as part of the Customer Data Strategy to identify and address gaps in the Customer Data Platform. The initiative focused on overcoming inconsistent brand experiences, poor data capture, and incomplete data ingestion.
• Developed a Customer Data Platform Reference Architecture, mapped business requirements to capability areas, and performed a gap analysis on current customer data management.
• Led the CDP pilot using Hightouch for deterministic audience creation targeting Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) use cases, with future extensibility for programmatic media activation.
• Conducted Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) instrumentation audits to extract meaningful customer interaction signals (e.g., product views, checkout carts), which were used to build anonymous visitor profiles.
• Engineered a method to generate a session-level interaction ID enabling linkage between anonymous behavior and known users post-login or post-purchase.
• Architected the Customer 360 identity stitching logic using rule-based matching on loyalty ID, email, phone, and behavioral signals, and enriched sparse profiles using Acxiom-provided demographic overlays.
• The CDP helped lay the first party data foundation to power AdTech initiatives such as media audience creation, identity resolution, and campaign attribution.
• Business Benefits: Delivered a unified, real-time customer 360 view that powered advanced segmentation, increased personalization, and laid a strong first-party data foundation for all marketing initiatives.

Loyalty 2.0 Program Modernization:

• Served as the lead data architect for Loyalty 2.0, a large-scale transformation impacting over 70 million customers by introducing a tiered loyalty model (Member, Bestie, VVIP) with differentiated benefits and engagement strategies.
• Integrated 150+ loyalty data feeds from Kognitiv into Snowflake via robust ingestion pipelines, and implemented Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD Type 2 and 4) to support accurate historical tracking of tiers, points, and offer eligibility.
• Designed and delivered real-time pub/sub architecture to expose loyalty events such as point accrual, redemptions, and offer activations—enabling dynamic messaging across email, app, and media channels.
• Unified two legacy offer activation paths into a consolidated model using a shared API and common activation schema, streamlining downstream reporting and analytics.
• Created a Lifetime Savings metric to quantify and display the cumulative value delivered to each customer, improving transparency and enabling strategic planning for retention and CRM.
• Performed pre-launch reconciliation of points balance across internal systems and Kognitiv to ensure SOX-compliant financial accuracy and customer trust at rollout.
• Business Benefits: Boosted customer retention and lifetime value through tiered rewards, personalized communications, and real-time loyalty event integration across marketing and service channels.
• Digital Promotions Reporting:
• Designed and implemented a data integration pipeline to retrieve eCart and Product Discounts and Discount Codes from Commerce Tools APIs using Databricks and GCP Pub/Sub.
• Developed DataBricks jobs to write data to the DataLake in JSON format, creating and maintaining both structured and flattened tables.
• Business Benefits: Enabled the business to have a comprehensive reporting dashboard for digital promotions, facilitating informed business decisions.

Data Clean Rooms:

• Enhanced data collaboration with suppliers using Snowflake Data Clean Rooms.
• Conducted a POC exploring Audience Overlap Use Case with and without Identity Resolution (IDR) using hashed emails and phone numbers.
• Explored the integration of TransUnion's Identity Graph for identity matching within the Data Clean Room.
• Business Benefits: Enhanced business insights and optimized campaign strategies through effective data collaboration.

POC to integrate HighTouch with Databricks

• Led a POC to integrate HighTouch with DataBricks for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, achieving a 40% ML-enabled campaign target. Implemented a dedicated SQL Warehouse and Lightning Sync Engine, reducing sync time from 5 hours to 3 hours for 12 million records. Presented findings to stakeholders, securing approval for the DataBricks Connector and accelerating implementation. Enabled a self-service model for generating ML-based audiences. Developed an Implementation Roadmap using the Crawl/Walk/Run/Fly methodology. Provided a comprehensive POV on HighTouch's capabilities, emphasizing its role in data activation and self-service.
• Business Benefits: Enhanced marketing efficiency and reduced data sync time, empowering the marketing team with self-service capabilities.

Data Subject Rights (DSR):

• Played a key advisory role in the cross-functional program to meet the January 2022 compliance deadline across three new U.S. states, including support for “delete”, “correction” “right to appeal” and “opt-out of sharing PII data” provisions.
• Partnered with legal, privacy, and data engineering teams to define the scope of PII (Personally Identifiable Information), ensuring alignment with evolving privacy laws like CCPA, CPRA, and VCDPA.
• Conducted PII discovery across the enterprise DataLake and Snowflake, scanning over 225 tables and 2500+ columns across 5 schemas to identify sensitive fields subject to DSR requests.
• Authored action logic and specifications for Delete, Update, and No-Action responses based on data classification, table readiness (Delta vs unmanaged), and financial/reporting impact.
• Business Benefits: Ensured compliance with evolving privacy laws through scalable DSR automation, reducing legal risk and strengthening customer trust.

• Working as a Cloud Integration Consultant, provided integration support for the Unify program at a leading North American utility. The Unify program focused on migrating on-premise legacy ERP systems to Oracle ERP Cloud. This hybrid cloud architecture included both cloud-based (SaaS and PaaS) and on-premise systems. These systems were integrated using Oracle Integration Cloud, leveraging various integration patterns such as FBDI file-based, real-time, and parking lot. Additionally, Oracle's DBaaS was utilized for complex transformations using PL/SQL scripts.

• As a Cloud Integration Consultant, led the cloud enablement effort for a Business Intelligence solution, rearchitecting the product to utilize the latest technology stacks and migrating the ETL solution to the cloud. This involved running ETL workloads as a Spark Job on an EMR cluster and developing an EMR management interface.
• Designed a secure VPC infrastructure for hosting the ETL solution on AWS, conducted POCs for determining the best AWS architecture for the ETL, and implemented a Spark ETL job using Spark SQL Dataframe APIs.
• Additionally, developed an EMR management interface using AWS Java SDK, enabling dynamic cluster management and scaling. EMR clusters were scaled using EMR Managed scaling and configured with Spot and On demand instances using the EMR Java SDK.

• As a trusted technology advisor to Corporate IT Leadership, I provided strategic planning and implementation guidance, working with various stakeholders to identify needs and recommend best practices.
• Collaborated with vendors on RFIs to explore technology features, prepared roadmaps, business cases, and conducted RFP tendering and evaluations, leading to optimal product and vendor selection.
• As a key member of strategic committees for Blockchain, AI, Big Data, and digital strategies, worked with consultants to ensure solution architecture compliance with the enterprise architecture.
• Led the Blockchain initiative, identifying potential use cases, piloting high-value projects with vendors, and conducting awareness workshops and business case preparations.
• Additionally, served as Deputy Chair of the Corporate Architecture Review Team, governing the enterprise architecture and ensuring new solutions' compliance.
• Spearheaded the BPM strategic initiative, establishing a TIBCO AMX-based BPM platform, and was actively involved in all aspects of the project.

• As an Integration Architect, introduced and institutionalized the Enterprise Application Integration practice at RTA using the TIBCO SOA suite. This award-winning platform became a mission-critical asset. Ensured its business continuity through disaster recovery enablement. Managed all aspects of the platform, including architecture, operations, and vendor contracts.
• Led the Enterprise Identity and Access Management initiative, developing a roadmap to transition RTA to an optimized state of IAM maturity. As a key member of the Corporate Architecture Review Team, Provided application architectural leadership and ensured compliance with RTA's Enterprise Architecture.
• Developed an Application Governance Framework based on best practices to govern business applications, covering all lifecycle phases. Additionally
• Was part of the Mobile Strategy team, creating a strategy for mobile-enabling RTA services, including a Mobile Reference Architecture supported by a Target Operating Model.