Sneha Kulkarni joined 7-Eleven as a Data Engineer
From Zero Experience + Career GapDurgesh's cohort + 1:1 mentorship
“I didn’t start over. I just went deeper.”
The record
- Company
- 7-Eleven
- Role
- Data Engineer
- Background
- Zero Experience + Career Gap
- Reported hike
- 500%
- Came through
- a cohort taught by Durgesh + 1:1 mentorship with Durgesh
- Published
- 4 October 2026, with Sneha's consent
How Sneha made the switch
Sneha has a Master's degree in Computer Science, and the working days before the switch were mostly Excel sheets and Power BI dashboards. The switch began with a question about what sits behind a dashboard.
There was no shortage of material: roadmaps, courses and opinions on what a data engineer should learn. The hard part was choosing. Sneha took Durgesh's mentorship to turn a long list (SQL, Python, Spark, Databricks, pipelines) into an order to learn it in.
Then the offer came, and Sneha joined 7-Eleven as a Data Engineer. The Power BI years were not wasted: someone who knows how frustrating a stale refresh is, and that a dashboard built on wrong data is worth nothing, knows what the pipeline behind it has to get right.
Our wall lists the background as "Zero Experience + Career Gap". That means no data engineering experience and a career gap before this role; the Excel and Power BI work is what came before the switch.
In Sneha's own words
Sneha wrote the whole story on Medium on 4 October 2026. The lines below are copied from that post word for word.
- “What actually happens before this data reaches my dashboard?”
- “The problem wasn’t finding information. The problem was figuring out what actually mattered.”
- “It wasn’t a complete career restart. It was more like moving one step deeper into the same world.”
What this result is, and what it is not
It is one person's result, published with Sneha's consent and linked to a LinkedIn profile and to a first-person account that anyone can read. It is not a placement guarantee. Durgesh taught and mentored; Sneha sat the interviews and earned the offer.
7-Eleven is also where Durgesh Yadav and Pragya Rathi, PrepNPlaced's founders, work as data engineers. 7-Eleven has no connection with PrepNPlaced. We say where they work so you can weigh this story knowing it.
If you want to follow the same path
- 1:1 Data Engineering Mentorship The 1:1 plan with Durgesh: SQL to Spark, Snowflake, Kafka and AWS, 3 projects and 10 mock interviews.
- The data engineering cohort Live weekend classes with Durgesh and Pragya, from SQL through Spark and the cloud.
- Data engineer vs data analyst What changes when you move from reports to pipelines.
- Data engineering roadmap 2026 The order to learn SQL, Python, Spark and the cloud in.
- Explaining a career gap How to talk about a gap honestly in an interview.
- Every success story All named placements, each with a LinkedIn profile you can open.
Questions people ask about this placement
Can a Power BI or Excel analyst move into data engineering?
Yes. Sneha Kulkarni worked mostly in Excel and Power BI and now works as a Data Engineer at 7-Eleven. In the Medium post Sneha describes it as going one step deeper into the same work, not starting over. Sneha came through a cohort taught by Durgesh + 1:1 mentorship with Durgesh. It is one person's result, not a guarantee.
Is 7-Eleven connected to PrepNPlaced?
No. 7-Eleven has no connection with PrepNPlaced and does not endorse it. It is the company where both founders, Durgesh Yadav and Pragya Rathi, work as data engineers, which is why this page says so.
Did PrepNPlaced guarantee this placement?
No. PrepNPlaced does not guarantee placements. The cohort teaches, the mentorship guides, and the candidate clears the interviews.
Where can I read Sneha's own account?
On Medium: "From Power BI & Excel to Data Engineering: My Switch to 7-Eleven", published by Sneha Kulkarni on 4 October 2026 at https://medium.com/@snehakulkarni973/from-power-bi-excel-to-data-engineering-my-switch-to-7-eleven-8a511631bffe. The quotes on this page are copied from that post word for word.