A History of Analytics: Part 1
The origins of data analysis, from statistics and early computing to knowledge discovery and modern data science.
About
I lead Re-turn's internal data and analytics capability, with responsibility spanning people, platform, governance, data products, commercial planning and applied AI. I led the move from externally dependent engineering to an internal multidisciplinary capability, supporting Board, operational, finance and regulatory decision-making across Ireland's national Deposit Return Scheme. I bring more than 15 years across data leadership, architecture and engineering.
Leading transformation at Re-turn
I led the shift from analyst-led delivery with externally dependent engineering to an internal, end-to-end data capability. The transformation combined platform ownership, team development, reporting strategy, governance and production AI.
- 6
- people in the multidisciplinary team I lead and develop
- 19
- stakeholders engaged across 13 discovery workshops
- Board to regulator
- one governed platform serving Board, operational, finance and regulatory reporting
Internal Ownership
Brought engineering knowledge and delivery in-house so the team owns the data journey from ingestion and transformation through reporting and governed access.
Engineering Culture
Developed analysts into engineering and platform-ownership roles, embedding practical standards, safe experimentation and learning through real delivery.
Trusted Access
Unified reporting around core business stories through a governed Power BI app, so decisions across the business start from the same trusted numbers.
Featured case study & speaking
Beyond the Lift-and-Shift
How Re-turn Re-engineered for AI with Microsoft Fabric
Presented with The Information Lab Ireland, this public case study covered the journey from roadmap and business case through stakeholder alignment, internal capability building, live Fabric implementation and measurable results.
- ~60%
- faster daily refreshes
- ~93%
- faster key semantic models
- By 7am
- daily reporting ready every morning, previously unpredictable between 8am and 1pm
Responsible AI in production
I brought AI into production at Re-turn: I helped bring Claude into use across the organisation and delivered a Microsoft Fabric Data Agent that answers questions over governed data in plain language, run as directional analytics with human review for important decisions.
Company-wide Adoption
Helped bring Claude into use across the organisation and moved the data team to an AI-assisted way of working, grounded in real delivery.
Production Data Agent
Delivered a production Fabric Data Agent, presented to the whole company, that lets business users explore governed data in natural language.
Governed by Design
Every use case is approved before launch, access is scoped and responses are evaluated for accuracy and appropriate disclosure, with authority to suspend anything that falls short.
Core Skills
Leadership & Delivery
Data Strategy & Governance
People & Capability Leadership
Portfolio Prioritisation
Data Product Leadership
Commercial Planning
Executive Stakeholder Engagement
Architecture & Operating Models
Responsible AI Governance
Platform & Engineering
Microsoft Fabric
Fabric Data Agents
PySpark Notebooks
Data Pipelines
Lakehouse / Medallion
Power BI
Claude / LLMs
Python
SQL Server
Snowflake
AWS
Experience
2025 – Present
Re-turn · Dublin, Ireland
Data Engineering Lead
- Lead Re-turn's internal data and analytics capability and a multidisciplinary team of six, covering recruitment, performance, development, delivery planning and coordination with external partners.
- Owned the migration from ADF and Synapse to a metadata-driven Microsoft Fabric platform, making daily refreshes approximately 60% faster, key semantic models approximately 93% faster and daily reporting reliably ready by 7am, where legacy schedules had finished unpredictably between 8am and 1pm.
- Established a governed portfolio of business-focused data products organised around core stories, shaped with 19 stakeholders across 13 discovery workshops and informed by legacy-report usage and adoption data, to consolidate reporting and guide future investment.
- Define and enforce platform governance across architecture, workspaces, access, metadata, lineage, semantic models, automated quality controls and deployment practices, with accountability for trusted executive and regulatory reporting.
- Own commercial planning for Fabric capacity, Power BI licensing and applied AI tools, translating organisational demand into capacity, allocation and investment recommendations with IT Operations.
- Partner with executive and functional leaders to shape priorities and challenge low-value demand; helped bring Claude into the organisation and delivered a production Fabric Data Agent, earning Employee of the Quarter in 2026.
2024
Glass Lewis · Limerick, Ireland
Data Solutions Architect
- Established and enforced a metadata-driven lakehouse architecture on Microsoft Fabric using the medallion model to streamline ingestion and processing.
- Led data engineers through pipeline design and implementation, aligned to organisational goals and engineering standards.
- Defined governance practices covering metadata, lineage, access control, automated validation and schema enforcement.
Permanent role concluded following relocation of the Irish data function.
2018 – Jan 2024
Contract Consulting · Dublin, Ireland
Data Engineering & Cloud Consultant
Aer Lingus · Lead Data Engineer · 2021–Jan 2024
- Led engineers and testers to deliver key customer-data projects, automating survey feedback and refund systems and cutting manual workload.
- Co-chaired the Data Engineering Working Group and drove Customer 360 and Global Data Platform adoption with Enterprise Architecture and business stakeholders.
Fidelity Investments · Senior Data Engineer · 2020–2021
- Contributed to migrating an on-premises Oracle data warehouse to Snowflake and developed transformations across landing, staging, standard and curated layers.
- Built AWS ETL pipelines, including Lambda-based ingestion and processing.
Aer Lingus · BI Consultant / Cloud Architect · 2018–2020
- Led migration of the Oracle Essbase reporting platform to the cloud and automated Oracle Cloud infrastructure with Terraform.
- Migrated Tableau Server from on-premises infrastructure to AWS, improving report delivery and access.
2015 – 2018
DNM Group · Dublin, Ireland
Senior Business Intelligence Analyst
- Built and optimised ETL pipelines with Python, Java and Talend for public and private-sector clients.
- Delivered reporting for Dublin City Council and Virgin Media, alongside scalable pipelines on AWS.
2009 – 2015
Earlier experience
Business Intelligence Analyst · Software Developer
- Delivered BI at Oracle and earlier freelance software and data work for clients including The World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Certifications & Education
Leadership & Management
Professional Certificate
Microsoft Certified: Fabric Data Engineer Associate
Exam DP-700
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Professional
MSc, Data Mining & Knowledge Discovery
Universidad de Buenos Aires
BSc, Computer Science
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Selected Writing
A History of Analytics: Part 2
How data science developed after 2000, as statistics, computing and large-scale data converged.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations Associate
A first-hand account of preparing for and taking the OCI Foundations exam in 2020.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Associate
Study notes and practical preparation advice from the 2020 OCI Architect Associate exam.
Languages
Spanish: Native
English: Fluent
Portuguese: Basic
German: Basic
Italian: Basic
Irish: cúpla focal ☘️
Speaking & professional enquiries
Building capable teams and business-focused data platforms
I speak and exchange ideas on building internal data capabilities, developing engineering teams and delivering Microsoft Fabric programmes around real business outcomes.