# Ori Rafael

> Ori Rafael co-founded Upsolver with Yoni Eini in 2014 and served as its CEO before Qlik acquired the company in January 2025. A database and data-integration practitioner, he is identified in public Qlik-related interviews as Senior Director of Engineering at Qlik. His work focuses on simplifying data-lake ingestion and management, and he co-authored a 2022 O’Reilly report on declarative data pipelines.

- **Role:** Senior Director of Engineering at Qlik
- **Organizations:** Qlik, Upsolver, Israel Defense Forces
- **Education:** Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, MBA, Tel Aviv University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Upsolver and led it through its acquisition by Qlik., Led Upsolver during its $13 million Series A and $25 million Series B funding milestones., Co-authored an O’Reilly report with Roy Hasson and Rick Bilodeau.

## Career timeline

- **Before 2014** — Spent seven years in Israeli intelligence in database administration, development-team leadership and data-integration roles.
- **2014** — Co-founded Upsolver with Yoni Eini; served as CEO.
- **2018** — Upsolver publicly launched its data platform in January.
- **2019** — Upsolver announced SQL-based ETL for cloud data lakes in October.
- **2020** — Upsolver raised a $13 million Series A round.
- **2021** — Upsolver announced a $25 million Series B round in April.
- **2022** — Co-authored Unlock Complex and Streaming Data with Declarative Data Pipelines, published by O’Reilly in July.
- **2024** — Appeared with Yoni Eini at Upsolver’s Chill Data Summit in New York.
- **2025** — Qlik acquired Upsolver in January; Rafael subsequently appeared as Senior Director of Engineering at Qlik.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Upsolver and led it through its acquisition by Qlik.
- Led Upsolver during its $13 million Series A and $25 million Series B funding milestones.
- Co-authored an O’Reilly report with Roy Hasson and Rick Bilodeau.
- Upsolver technology became part of Qlik Open Lakehouse.

## Latest updates

- **2025-01** — Qlik acquired Upsolver, bringing its ingestion and Iceberg optimisation technology into Qlik.
- **2025-05** — Rafael appeared with Sam Pierson at Qlik Connect as Senior Director of Engineering at Qlik.
- **2025-09** — Qlik Open Lakehouse became generally available on September 16; Rafael joined Architecting IT podcast 271, published September 19.
- **2026-04** — Techstrong TV republished the Qlik Connect interview on April 17; the original Tech Field Day recording was made in May 2025.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ori-rafael-91723344

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ori-rafael
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-23