Kartik Kumar — Blog https://kartikkumar.info/blog Notes on data engineering, building reliable data pipelines on Databricks and Spark, and shipping Chrome extensions on the side, by Kartik Kumar. en Fri, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Taming data skew in Spark https://kartikkumar.info/note-taming-data-skew-spark https://kartikkumar.info/note-taming-data-skew-spark Fri, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Why one Spark task runs forever while the rest finish in seconds, and how to fix it: spotting skew in the Spark UI, AQE skew joins, salting a hot key, and broadcast joins on Databricks. Building data pipelines that do not break https://kartikkumar.info/note-reliable-data-pipelines https://kartikkumar.info/note-reliable-data-pipelines Mon, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT The habits that keep Databricks and Spark pipelines reliable at scale: idempotency, schema contracts, and failing loudly. Why I build Chrome extensions on the side https://kartikkumar.info/note-building-chrome-extensions https://kartikkumar.info/note-building-chrome-extensions Mon, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT How a data engineer ends up shipping browser extensions, and what the side projects teach me about building for real users.