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 six-person data and analytics team, responsible for the Microsoft Fabric platform and the products built on it—from governed pipelines and lakehouse models to Power BI reporting and production Data Agents. The work supports board, operational, finance and regulatory decision-making across Ireland's national Deposit Return Scheme. I bring more than 15 years across data architecture and engineering, including Snowflake and AWS. In 2026 I was nominated for Employee of the Quarter twice and won the second award.
What my team and I own
Platform & Pipelines
All of the company's data, ingested and transformed from every source system into a governed, metadata-driven lakehouse on Microsoft Fabric: pipelines, PySpark notebooks, warehouse and data quality.
Reporting & Serving
We plan what the business sees, not just build it: a Power BI reporting hierarchy that runs from board level through the retailer, product, logistics and finance stories, down to operational areas and regulatory reporting such as the EPA.
AI & Data Agents
An AI-driven engineering workflow built around Claude, and Fabric Data Agents in production so people across the company can ask questions of governed data in plain language.
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.
Core Skills
Leadership & Delivery
Team Leadership
Data Strategy & Governance
Architecture & Solution Design
Analytics & BI Strategy
AI-Driven Development
Stakeholder Engagement
Mentoring & Coaching
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 the data and analytics function at Re-turn, operator of Ireland's national Deposit Return Scheme: with a team of six, we own the company's data end to end, from source-system ingestion to the reporting the business runs on, covering container return, redemption and reconciliation data at national scale.
- Design and govern a metadata-driven lakehouse on Microsoft Fabric (warehouse, data pipelines and PySpark notebooks) that powers operational reporting and producer/retailer reconciliation.
- Plan, build and own the company's Power BI reporting platform on Fabric, deciding with the business what gets built: a hierarchy from board reporting through the core stories (retailer, product, logistics and finance), down to detailed areas such as communities, plus external and regulatory reporting including submissions to the EPA.
- Led the adoption of AI across the company, including a company-wide rollout of Claude, and moved the Data Team to an AI-driven way of working.
- Put Microsoft Fabric Data Agents into production so business users can ask questions of governed data in plain language.
- Guide a team of data engineers and analysts on pipeline design, data quality, reporting standards and governance best practices.
- Nominated for Employee of the Quarter in two consecutive quarters in 2026, winning the award the second time.
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 a small team of data engineers through pipeline design and implementation, aligned to organizational goals and best practices.
- Built repeatable pipelines with retry logic, error handling and high/low watermarking for reliable, consistent data.
- Defined data-governance practices (metadata management, lineage tracking and access control) with automated validation and schema enforcement.
2018 – 2024
Aer Lingus · Dublin, Ireland
Lead Data Engineer · 2021–2024
- 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, standardizing analytics development practices across teams.
- Drove the Customer 360 transformation and adoption of the Global Data Platform alongside Enterprise Architecture and stakeholders.
BI Consultant / Cloud Architect · 2018–2020
- Led migration of the Oracle Essbase reporting platform to the cloud, boosting performance and delivering faster insights.
- Automated Oracle Cloud infrastructure with Terraform, improving disaster recovery and reducing overhead.
- Migrated Tableau Server from on-prem to AWS, improving report delivery and broadening access.
2020 – 2021
Fidelity Investments · Dublin, Ireland
Senior Data Engineer
- Contributed to migrating an on-prem Oracle database to Snowflake, improving scalability of the data warehouse.
- Built ETL pipelines on AWS (including Lambda) for real-time ingestion and processing.
- Developed transformations across landing, staging, standard and curated layers in Snowflake.
2015 – 2018
DNM Group · Dublin, Ireland
Senior Business Intelligence Analyst
- Built and optimized ETL pipelines (Python, Java, Talend) for public and private sector clients.
- Delivered real-time reports for Dublin City Council and financial dashboards for Virgin Media.
- Built scalable pipelines on AWS (S3, Redshift, PostgreSQL).
2009 – 2015
Earlier experience
Business Intelligence Analyst · Software Developer
- Oracle (Buenos Aires): built a sentiment-analysis platform and delivered customized BI with OBIEE and SQL across international consultancy projects.
- Freelance software & data work for clients including The World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Certifications & Education
Microsoft Certified: Fabric Data Engineer Associate
Exam DP-700
Leadership & Management
Professional Certificate
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
Languages
Spanish: Native
English: Proficient
Portuguese: Basic
German: Basic
Italian: Basic
Irish: cúpla focal ☘️