Chris Shepherd

Chris Shepherd is a Principal Data Engineer at RxBenefits with over 20 years of experience in data engineering and the last decade focused on cloud infrastructure. Throughout his career, he has navigated the evolution of data transformation — from SSIS to dbt — and worked across a wide range of database technologies, including SQL Server (since 2005), PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Snowflake, as well as NoSQL platforms like AWS DocumentDB, MongoDB, and RavenDB. Chris has deep expertise in ETL tooling (Airbyte, Boomi, Fivetran, AWS DMS) and has led numerous large-scale data migrations. He also leverages AWS services like SNS and S3, along with Snowpipe streaming, to build scalable, event-driven data pipelines. His programming toolkit spans Python, C#, JavaScript, SQL, and Jinja, giving him the flexibility to work across the full stack of modern data engineering. He is also committed to strong data governance, documenting and implementing architectural guidelines using tools like Lucidchart and Confluence to keep teams aligned as systems scale. More recently, he has championed the adoption of AI technologies within his data team, helping integrate AI-driven tools into day-to-day workflows and modernizing how the team approaches data engineering. Beyond hands-on engineering, he provides technical leadership across tool selection and vendor negotiations, and drives cost optimization efforts — most notably helping deliver approximately $600,000 in savings last year, an achievement that earned him a spot in his company's Summit Club.