Gustavo Santos – Enterprise Data Operating Models, Platforms & Governance

Gustavo Santos

Enterprise Data Operating Models, Platforms & Governance

Lead data platform, governance, and operating-model transformations in complex environments where delivery is unstable, ownership is unclear, and leadership needs clearer roadmap decisions, stronger prioritisation, and a function it can rely on.

My background is strongest in complex enterprise environments where trust, ownership, and predictability matter. My goal is not to keep organisations in permanent transformation mode. It is to leave behind clearer ownership, stronger foundations, better prioritisation, and a healthier operating model that can keep working without constant intervention

Turning fragile data estates into trusted business capabilities

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Snapshot

1.8M+ clients served

Served by data products

15 people operation

Program grew in product, governance and engineering

Priority-1 turnaround

Rescued and stabilised critical initiative

60+ TB/day in production

Processed by data program

75% less support effort

Stabilised key legacy foundations

Highlights

Elia · Risk & governance

Turning a broken initiative into a structured priority-one programme

Took over a stalled initiative with no clear business requirements, weak processes, limited documentation, and no stable team structure. Brought clearer operating discipline across governance, engineering, and business stakeholders by defining ownership, documenting processes, and creating a more realistic 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 · Enterprise data platform

Building shared data foundations in a CEO-driven transformation

Contributed to a CEO-sponsored transformation using the C-HR model as a pilot, helping shape the migration of processing pipelines and data warehouses to Snowflake. Replacing 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.

KBC · Investment

Stabilising a critical legacy data foundation

Led the redesign and migration of a 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.

My focus

Stabilise critical data foundations

Turn legacy components, delicate 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.

Shape the roadmap and delivery sequence

Turn reactive environments into structured roadmaps by sequencing initiatives, managing dependencies, defining milestones, and making explicit trade-offs between platform debt, migrations, governance work, and new delivery requests.

Build the operating model around the platform

Define how the function works in practice: ownership boundaries, prioritisation rules, team interaction, standards, documentation, and where governance needs to be enforced first.

Grow teams and leadership capability

As programmes scale, I help define the roles needed, support hiring and onboarding, coach engineers through ambiguity, and raise expectations around ownership, quality, and delivery discipline.

What I do in the first weeks

I do not start by redesigning everything. I start by reading the system, identifying the points of failure, and understanding where leadership needs clarity first

01

Understand where data can really hurt the business

The products, processes or reports that cause real damage if data is wrong, late, or missing.

02

Identify fragile flows and unclear ownership

The pipelines, models, or systems everyone fears touching, and whether anyone is truly accountable.

03

Measure how much firefighting has become normal

Where people are doing “hero work” and treating incidents as routine instead of signals.

04

See how teams actually work, not how the slides describe it

How requests come in, how priorities are set, and how “done” is defined in reality.

05

Find where minimal governance and documentation would unlock speed

The smallest set of rules and docs that would reduce friction and hand-offs.

06

Assess team health, load, and capability

Who is overloaded, who is underused, and what can realistically be taken on without burning people out.

07

Understand what leadership really expects from data

How executives talk about data, what they think is possible, and where expectations and reality diverge.

Operating Principles

I do not start by redesigning everything. I start by reading the system, identifying the points of failure, and understanding where leadership needs clarity first.

What I hold myself accountable for

Clear strategy, predictable delivery, fewer incidents and escalations, a healthy team that people want to join, and leadership-level visibility that fits in three slides.

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.

About

Over time, my role has expanded beyond platform delivery itself. In high-priority transformations, I have helped shape roadmaps, define team structures, support hiring, guide prioritisation, coach engineers through ambiguity, and frame trade-offs for senior stakeholders.

My strongest foundation is still in data platform, governance, and delivery transformation, but I operate with the data function in mind, not just the technology stack

Let’s talk

If your data function needs stronger foundations, clearer ownership, and more predictable delivery, I’d be glad to talk.

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