A.J. Hafele

CFA, FRM, CAIA, CPA

Senior Data Engineer

Bio

Finance professional with 15 years of experience building scalable, automated solutions for some of the most prestigious institutions in the world. I continue to grow as a recognized leader amongst my peers, honing a multidisciplinary skill set covering engineering, finance, and project management, and serving as a mentor to fellow colleagues. I am currently focused on agent-driven engineering at work and during my personal time.

Experience

  • Serve as the technical systems lead for the Cloud Learning Services (CLS) Data team
  • Architected a new enterprise-grade data warehouse for CLS
  • Leading a team of extended workforce engineers to deliver results
  • Incorporating AI tooling and automations into organization processes
  • Serve as a mentor in Google's SQL Readability Program
  • Earned the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer certification

Skills

AI Coding Tools

  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • Gemini CLI
  • IDE-Based Tooling (Cursor, Antigravity, VS Code)

Certifications

  • CFA
  • FRM
  • CAIA
  • CPA

Visualization

  • Tableau
  • Power BI
  • Looker
  • Looker Studio
  • Custom-Built Interactive Charts

Platforms

  • Clerk
  • Google Cloud
  • Neon
  • SAP
  • Vercel
  • Bloomberg
  • Plx (Internal to Google)

Finance

  • Financial Accounting
  • Financial Modeling
  • Financial Planning & Analysis

Languages

  • SQL
  • Python

Education

Harvard University Extension School

Undergraduate Computer Science Studies

January 2021Present

  • Completed CS50 (Intensive Intro to CS) for full undergraduate credit
  • Completed MATH16 (Calculus 2) for full undergraduate credit

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Master of Accounting

August 2009June 2010

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

BSBA, Finance Concentration

August 2005June 2009

  • Dean's List, all semesters
  • Graduate with Highest Distinction
  • Top 10% of graduating class

Projects & Teaching

Choose Coffee

Founder and Creator

2026

  • AI-native app that helps consumers find coffees from roasters around the world
  • Backend processes are automated using AI agents
  • Allows users to bookmark and review coffees, roasters, and coffee gear
  • Built with Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI in 4 months

Blueberry Education

Founder and Creator

2017

  • Created a full-length online Microsoft Excel course in 9 months
  • The course was NASBA accredited and provided 40 hours of CPE credits for CPAs
  • Maintained all technical, operational, and administrative duties (no employees)

Teaching Assistantships

Teaching Assistant, Accounting and Financial Analysis II (MBA)

University of Chicago / 2014

Teaching Assistant, Financial Accounting (Undergraduate)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / 2010

Teaching Assistant, Business Computing (Masters of Accounting)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / 2008

Interests

Strength TrainingRunningHealth and NutritionPhotographyCoffee & TeaArtificial IntelligenceSoftware Development