Sara Kay

Data engineer and infrastructure builder based in Boston, MA. CMU MSBA '26. AWS certified. Published across finance, family science, survey methodology, and AI. Building things at the intersection of data systems, AI tooling, and whatever problem is most interesting right now.

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building anime databases · learning japanese · firing up the laser cutter · presenting at conferences · working on data pipelines · writing Data Gremlin newsletter · judging scholarships · building anime databases · learning japanese · firing up the laser cutter · presenting at conferences · working on data pipelines · writing Data Gremlin newsletter · judging scholarships ·

ABOUT

Sara Kay is a Site Reliability Engineer II at IBM (HashiCorp unit), focused on data systems and infrastructure reliability. She conducts research, presents at academic conferences, and specializes in making data systems resilient. Beyond her technical work, she creates custom fabricated products for charity events, mentors students in data and programming, and contributes to communities through volunteer work. Her work spans infrastructure engineering, academic research, maker culture, and community service.
AWS Data Engineer AWS Cloud Practitioner
Dartmouth College
BA Computer Science + Quantitative Social Science
Graduated with Honors Academic Citation of Merit TuckLAB Finalist First-Year Emerging Leader
graduated with honors and a very specific brain
Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper School)
MS Business Analytics, May 2026
University Honors
graduated with university honors (top QPA!)
Data & Analysis
Python SQL PySpark Databricks PostgreSQL dbt Pandas NumPy Scikit-learn Tableau data pipelines
Programming
JavaScript React Java R
Infrastructure
Terraform Kubernetes AWS Datadog Docker observability
AI & Machine Learning
LangChain RAG pipelines agentic AI PyTorch neural networks clustering embeddings Streamlit Ollama NLP
Research
survey methodology behavioral science data visualization academic publishing Google Analytics
Making
Glowforge Silhouette Cameo sublimation printing button maker Adobe Illustrator

PROJECTS

Ask the Oracle / Anime Analyst

LLM-powered natural language query system over 25k+ anime entries. Built on PostgreSQL with a local ReAct SQL agent and Streamlit frontend. CMU capstone project. Presented at Anime Boston 2026.

Hamster Wheels

17-agent agentic AI system for personal life management built in Craft using Claude MCP. Each agent owns a distinct life domain — task triage, career positioning, finance, events, and more.

Panda's Workshop

Maker operation producing laser-cut items, sublimation prints, acrylic charms, and button sets. Focused on charity gaming marathon prize donations (GDQ, Frost Fatales) and convention freebies. Philanthropy-focused, not a storefront.

see all projects →

WRITING

The Luffy Moment

Founding manifesto. Layoff, permission, dream-chasing, nihilism as fuel. The why of all of this.

I Gave My Life to 16 Hamsters

The system introduction. Yes, all of them have names.

read the full archive →

APPEARANCES

AAFCS 2026 — Kentucky

"Your Data Story: Low-Tech Strategies for Making Data Meaningful" — 30-40 min workshop

Anime Boston 2026

"Main Character Energy" + "Living in the Database" panels (presented April 2026)

see all talks →