Author
Naoufal Ahaytaf
Founder & Lead Data Platform Engineer
About the author
Naoufal designs and builds Azure Databricks platforms for enterprise and public-sector teams — Unity Catalog governance, Terraform and Asset Bundle delivery, and AI workloads that hold up in production.
Articles by Naoufal Ahaytaf
17 articles
AI Engineering 8 min
Databricks AI Runtime GA: Gate the GPU Migration
Plan an AI Runtime pilot with reproducible training, workload-level cost checks, evaluation gates and verified Azure availability before production.
Read articleDatabricks 10 min
Databricks Agent Memory: Starting with a Governed Beta Pilot
Plan a governed Databricks Agent Memory pilot with retention rules, repeat-session evaluation, user-isolation tests and clear deployment promotion gates.
Read articlePlatform Engineering 11 min
Databricks Private Network Gateway: Egress, Not Workspace Access
Plan Azure Databricks Private Network Gateway adoption with flow maps, DNS and routing tests, clear network ownership, and staged rollback gates.
Read articleAI Engineering 13 min
Model Routing Is a Quality-Control Problem, Not a Cost Switch
Build trace-driven model routing with task-level benchmarks, quality gates and cost-per-success measures, without assuming Azure or Databricks integration.
Read articleAI Engineering 13 min
Inference on Azure Databricks: What Drives Cost and Latency
Understand inference cost and latency, measure tokens and capacity, and choose batch, pay-per-token, provisioned or self-hosted serving on Azure Databricks.
Read articleAI Engineering 15 min
YOLO on Databricks: From Kaggle Notebook to Governed Training
Move a YOLO experiment from Kaggle to governed Databricks training with versioned image data, MLflow tracking, GPU checks and controlled model deployment.
Read articlePlatform Engineering 12 min
Databricks Apps OBO: Stop Sharing One Powerful Identity
Design Databricks Apps OBO with separate app and user identities, narrow API scopes, secure token handling and negative tests for governed data access.
Read articleDatabricks 10 min
Databricks Data Contracts: Enforce Before You Publish
Build a Databricks data contract gate with explicit schemas, Delta constraints and DTAP tests, and decide what must pass before a dataset is published.
Read articleDatabricks 10 min
ABAC on Views and Time Travel: Make Policy Tests a Release Gate
Build an automated ABAC deployment gate for views and time travel, with identity checks, tag-change tests and explicit Runtime 19 preview eligibility.
Read articleDatabricks 11 min
Databricks Serverless: A Dependency Reproducibility Playbook
Build a Databricks Serverless dependency contract, test it on target compute, and promote environment changes without relying on inherited packages.
Read articleAI Engineering 11 min
Unity Gateway: Govern Coding Agents as a Platform Service
Govern coding agents with Unity Gateway: approved models and tools, clear authentication boundaries, trace access, spend ownership and EU processing checks.
Read articlePlatform Engineering 8 min
Building RIVM’s Self-Service Data Onboarding Platform
How we approach self-service data onboarding at RIVM: validated configuration, governed access and automated deployment without removing human accountability.
Read articlePlatform Engineering 11 min
Azure Terraform Best Practices We Follow on Every Data Platform Engagement
Practical Azure Terraform guardrails for data platforms: secure remote state, reusable modules, tested networking, scoped identities and reviewed deployments.
Read articleDatabricks 13 min
Deploying Databricks SAT with Declarative Automation Bundles Across DTAP
Deploy Databricks SAT across DTAP with Declarative Automation Bundles, scoped identities, tested upgrades and assessment evidence in Azure DevOps or GitHub.
Read articleDatabricks 7 min
Declarative Automation Bundles: A Practical Guide to CI/CD in Databricks
Use Declarative Automation Bundles to replace ad-hoc Databricks deployment scripts with versioned configuration, explicit targets and tested CI/CD.
Read articleDatabricks 6 min
Databricks 16.0, What Matters for Platform Engineers
Databricks Runtime 16.0 explained: Liquid Clustering GA, Predictive I/O, enhanced Unity Catalog, and what it means for your lakehouse architecture.
Read articleOpen Source 9 min
Open Source: Databricks Lakehouse Terraform Boilerplate: Beyond Generated Code
An opinionated Terraform starting point for Azure Databricks, focused on ownership, tested networking and deployment evidence rather than generated code.
Read article
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