Hello, I'm

Dr. Syeda Zainab Akhtar

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8+ years driving innovation in Data & AI across Cloud, Generative AI, Big Data & Blockchain — currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Dr. Syeda Zainab Akhtar
PhD in AI
Cloud Expert

About Me

Background, expertise & what drives me

Dr. Syeda Zainab Akhtar

Dr. Syeda Zainab Akhtar

I am a Data & AI Architect at Cognizant with 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and deploying large-scale intelligent applications across diverse industries. My work sits at the intersection of Generative AI, Cloud architecture, and Big Data engineering.

I hold a PhD in Informatics from Malaysia University of Science & Technology, an MS in Business Intelligence & Analytics from University Technology Malaysia (UTM), and a BS in Computer Engineering from Sir Syed University of Science and Technology. I am also the holder of 10+ international certifications spanning Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Blockchain, along with 100+ MOOCs, Nanodegrees, and technical trainings.

My specialisations include Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Agentic AI, Azure OpenAI, LangChain, Databricks, Apache Spark, and cloud platforms — Microsoft Azure, AWS, and GCP. Outside of work, I enjoy reading, exploring emerging technologies, and playing strategic games.

8+ Years Experience
10+ Certifications
100+ Courses & MOOCs
10+ Industries & Clients
Malaysia Residence Pass – Talent (RP-T)
Download CV

My Skills

Technologies, frameworks and platforms I work with daily

Generative AI & LLMs

OpenAI APIs GPT-4 LangChain LangGraph RAG Hugging Face Agentic AI Azure OpenAI Pinecone

Cloud & ML Platforms

Microsoft Azure AWS GCP Azure ML AWS SageMaker Vertex AI MLflow Azure Data Factory

Big Data & Engineering

Databricks Apache Spark Hadoop Hive Delta Lake Cloudera Kafka MongoDB Cosmos DB

Languages & Frameworks

Python SQL TensorFlow PyTorch Keras FastAPI Docker Kubernetes Terraform

My Journey

Professional experience & academic background

May 2022 – Present

Data & AI Architect

Cognizant · Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Leading end-to-end Data & AI initiatives for enterprise clients across banking, aviation, and energy sectors. Key projects include RAG-based Virtual Agents using Azure OpenAI, Agentic AI HR Assistants, large-scale data migration (Teradata → AWS), and Azure Data Factory ETL pipelines for Malaysian Airlines.

April 2021 – May 2022

Azure Cloud Lead

Accenture · Malaysia

Led Azure cloud architecture and delivery for enterprise clients, designing and implementing scalable cloud solutions across data engineering and AI workloads.

November 2018 – April 2021

Senior Software Developer

ASIT Solutions · Malaysia

Designed and delivered enterprise cloud and data solutions including smart metering for 1M+ IoT devices on Azure, voice-enabled CRM (Project Jarvis), and a 350 TB Teradata-to-Azure data warehouse migration (BI2020).

February 2018 – August 2018

Data Engineer

Logiciel Cube · Malaysia

Built big data pipelines on Hadoop for archiving 50+ TB of emails with ML-based predictions, and a call centre voice analytics system processing petabytes of recordings using TensorFlow and Keras.

Selected Projects

A snapshot of recent enterprise work

RAG-based Virtual Agent

Retrieval-Augmented Generation solution using Azure OpenAI & Azure AI Search integrated with ServiceNow — with RBAC mirroring ServiceNow user permissions.

Azure OpenAI LangChain RAG ServiceNow

AI-Powered HR Assistant

Agentic AI system with multi-agent architecture (Planner, Retriever, Executor) that autonomously handles HR queries, leave applications, and policy lookups.

GPT-4 LangGraph Agentic AI FastAPI

CIMB Data Migration to AWS

End-to-end migration of Teradata data warehouse from on-prem to AWS for CIMB Bank — covering databases, ML models, dashboards, and notebooks.

AWS SageMaker Glue Athena
View All Projects on CV

Get In Touch

Open to collaborations, consulting & research opportunities

Let's Connect

Whether you have a project in mind, want to collaborate on research, or just want to say hello — my inbox is always open!

Location

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia