Gustavo Santos – Data Platform & Operating Model Builder

Gustavo Santos

Data Platform, Operating Model & Delivery

I help enterprises fix fragile data foundations, build trusted platforms, and create operating models teams can scale on. Best fit for organisations dealing with legacy complexity, weak ownership, governance debt, and delivery instability.

I deliver and stabilise data products and platforms so that teams can trust their data and move faster.

Contact me Download resume

Snapshot

1.8M+ clients

Served by data products

15 people program

Delivery influence across governance, engineering, and business

Leadership facing delivery

Partnership with senior management

Critical foundation redesign

Stabilised key legacy components enterprise-wise

60+ TB/day

Processed in production

Priority-1 programs

Rescued and stabilised critical initiative

Selected highlights

Elia · Risk & governance

Turning a broken initiative into a structured program

Took over a stalled initiative with no clear business requirements, weak processes, limited documentation, and no stable team structure. Introduced clearer operating discipline across governance, engineering, and business stakeholders by defining ownership, documenting processes, and creating a more predictable roadmap and delivery cadence. Led delivery direction and operating structure into a priority-one, two-product program of around 15 people, reducing firefighting around critical risk reporting and giving leadership a more trusted, consistent view.

Toyota · Data platform

Data platform for a CEO-driven transformation

Contributed to a CEO-sponsored transformation using the C-HR model as a pilot, helping migrate processing pipelines and data warehouses to Snowflake. The work replaced fragmented, initiative-specific solutions with a more shared and governed data foundation across departments, making it easier to apply governance, track key metrics, and execute against a clearer roadmap. Worked with senior management and Directors to align data scope, governance, reporting expectations, and delivery priorities throughout the transition.

KBC · Banking

Stabilising a critical data foundation platform

Led the redesign and migration of a fragile legacy exclusions module that was blocking multiple products and creating continuous hyper-care for downstream teams. Made key calls across ownership, process, migration direction, and foundation design to turn it into a more stable, reusable data component. The result reduced support effort by 75%, lowered downstream incidents, and restored more predictable delivery on top of that foundation.

Who I'm best for

Enterprises with legacy complexity

Where years of layered systems, siloed processes, and workarounds make change hard. I help modernise the foundation without losing control

Teams stuck in firefighting mode

Where fragile foundations and unclear ownership keep teams reactive. I help create a more stable delivery model with clearer priorities and standards.

Data estates with weak ownership and poor trust

Where trust in the data is low and accountability is blurred. I help create clearer ownership, better governance, and more reliable foundations.

Leaders who need the data function to become predictable

Where leaders want fewer surprises and more consistent execution. I help teams operate with clearer expectations, visibility, and repeatable outcomes.

What I do

Stabilise critical data foundations

Legacy components, fragile flows, unclear ownership and constant hyper-care. I focus on turning these into predictable, reusable foundations so products can ship reliably and teams can stop firefighting.

Design platforms & governance for scale

Cloud/data platform migrations, Snowflake, and governance setups that give the organisation one shared, trusted foundation, instead of every project reinventing its own data solution.

Build teams and ways of working

Standards, mentoring, documentation and delivery workflows that make good practices the default. I care about sustainable delivery, not heroics.

How I think about data & teams

A data team is a product in itself – with clear owners, SLAs, and a roadmap, not a ticket factory.

Data platforms should be boring in production. The interesting part should be the insights and products, not nightly firefighting. Stability and predictability come first.

Governance is a speed enabler, not bureaucracy. Clear rules, metadata, and ownership let teams move safely and independently instead of slowing them down.

Documentation and contracts matter more than tools. Good documentation, clear SLAs, and data contracts between teams prevent more incidents than any single technology choice.

Growing people grows the platform. Mentoring engineers, setting standards, and giving them ownership is how the whole data function becomes stronger over time.

If we do it twice, we automate it. Repeated manual work is a design bug. Automation is how you scale without burning people out.

Clear ownership is non-negotiable. Every dataset, pipeline, and decision needs an accountable owner; otherwise, quality and reliability degrade quickly.

Processes must be clear, owned, and alive. From business request to BI dashboard, the flow should be explicit, agreed by stakeholders, and treated as a living system we continuously improve.

What I care about in the first weeks

At the start, I’m not trying to redesign everything. I focus on understanding a few critical things:

Where data can really hurt the business: the products, processes or reports that cause real damage if data is wrong, late, or missing.
Which flows are fragile and who owns them (or doesn’t): the pipelines, models, or systems everyone fears touching, and whether anyone is truly accountable.
How much firefighting is normalised: where people are doing “hero work” and treating incidents as routine instead of signals.
How teams actually work vs slide decks: how requests come in, how priorities are set, and how “done” is defined in reality.
Where minimal governance & documentation would unlock speed: the smallest set of rules and docs that would reduce friction and hand-offs.
Team health and skills: who is overloaded, who is underused, and what can realistically be taken on without burning people out.
What leadership really expects from data: how executives talk about data, what they think is possible, and where expectations and reality diverge.

Experience

A simplified view. Full details are on my LinkedIn and resume.

Energy & Transmission · Belgium

Took a broken project with no clear requirements, processes or ownership. Introduced documentation standards, designed cross-department business processes, built a realistic roadmap and secured support to grow the team into a two-product program of ~15 people, turning it into a structured, priority-one initiative.

Automotive · Belgium

Helped shape and drive the migration of processing pipelines and data warehouses to Snowflake as part of a CEO-led operating model change (C-HR pilot). Created a shared, governed data foundation across departments, enabling consistent metrics, governance and execution against a clear roadmap.

Banking · Belgium

Led the redesign and migration of fragile legacy components (including a critical exclusions module) that were blocking product delivery and required constant hyper-care. Stabilised these foundations as reusable data components, reducing incidents for downstream teams and restoring predictable delivery.

Retail & FMCG

Designed end-to-end flows from business questions to decision-ready dashboards and predictive models, supporting assortment and pricing decisions on 1,000+ SKUs and contributing to a double-digit margin increase. Focus on making analytics repeatable instead of one-off projects.

Let’s talk

If you want your data function to be stable, governed, actually shipping useful products, and need someone to own the hard parts. I’d be glad to talk.

Email LinkedIn Download resume Medium