Jacek Łach

Core Strengths

• Rapid root‑cause analysis of complex distributed failures
• Attention to detail & design allowing delivery of systems and features at all scales
• Technical leadership without people‑management overhead; thrives in 4‑8 engineer pods
• Hands‑on coding primarily in Java & Python; picks up new languages and frameworks fast

Selected Achievements

• Distributed index service: led 3‑engineer effort to build a pre‑computed index layer, shrinking typical query time on continuously updating 100TB+ datasets from effectively infinite (24h+ jobs that would often fail) → seconds
• Zero‑maintenance miniservice: designed, implemented, and productionised a standalone Java service in 3 months; ran for 2 years with no code changes beyond automated dependency bumps, eliminating maintenance and on-call load for a critical niche workflow.
• Mystery JVM lockups: resolved repeated full‑cluster freezes without access to heap dumps by crafting and analysing targeted runtime logging; resolving a ~monthly high‑severity user-facing incident.
• Mentorship: mentored junior engineers at Palantir; known for concise design reviews, catching subtle issues in advance, and clear explanations of technical tradeoffs.

Professional Experience

Palantir Technologies — Software Engineer (London) • 2013 – 2023

• Senior engineer contributing independently to multiple teams with focus on data storage and query optimization.
• See Selected Achievements above for example work.

LShift — Software Engineer • 2011 – 2013

• Built bespoke software solutions for finance and startup clients using Java, Clojure, Python.

Education

Imperial College London — M.Eng. Computing (Software Engineering) • 2007 – 2011

Skills Snapshot

Java (expert) • Python (fluent) • Clojure, Kotlin (working) • Distributed systems design • JVM tuning • Git & Gradle internals • Kubernetes/Terraform (exposure) • AWS & GCP basics • Rapid root‑cause debugging

Logistics

Remote‑first or based in Warsaw; comfortable overlapping with US mornings (UTC+2).