Independent Senior Data Architect · Toronto, Canada
Senior Data Architect · Collibra Certified Solution Architect · Toronto, Canada
I build the data infrastructure that capital markets firms run on — greenfield platforms, enterprise governance, Data Mesh strategy, and AI-powered data tools for Tier 1 Canadian banks and government organisations.
About
Since 2006, I've specialized in delivering senior data architecture expertise to organisations tackling complex, high-stakes data challenges. In 2014, I began operating independently to focus on the most challenging engagements at Tier 1 Canadian banks, crown corporations, and government agencies.
My deepest work: architecting a greenfield capital markets data platform for one of Canada's largest banks — a production-grade streaming platform now governing data across derivatives, FX, equities, fixed income, and regulatory reporting.
I sit at the intersection of three disciplines most organisations struggle to combine: capital markets domain depth, modern platform architecture, and enterprise data governance. That combination is rare. That is why Tier 1 institutions seek me out.
"The governance framework, CDE policies, and ASD standards I designed are still the backbone of a Tier 1 bank's GBM data platform — years after initial delivery."
Selected Clients
Core Expertise
Senior data architecture and AI engineering engagements across seven practice areas — each built on real production experience at Tier 1 institutions.
Greenfield and transformation engagements — designing real-time capital markets data platforms from architecture to production.
Full lifecycle Collibra delivery — from POC and vendor selection through enterprise production, administration, workflow automation, and Edge integration.
Building practical AI tools on top of governed data platforms — RAG pipelines, local LLM deployments, and natural language interfaces for enterprise data assets.
Designing federated governance frameworks, domain ownership models, and data product contracts for large financial institutions.
Enterprise MDM strategy, 360° client view design, and data mastering programme delivery across capital markets organisations.
Physical and logical data modeling across 15+ asset classes using FpML, FIX, and Common Data Models — Elasticsearch, Avro, and relational.
Data architecture for Basel III, CAT, BCBS239, ESG, T+1, and Initial Margin — bridging regulatory requirements and technical platform design.
Experience
Independent consulting since 2014. Building data platforms for Tier 1 institutions since 2006.
Scotiabank · Global Banking & Markets
Architected and delivered the Intake & Governance framework for the GBM Data Platform across 10+ capital markets asset classes. Led Collibra administration, workflow development, and Edge integration. Spearheaded the Capital Markets Client Data Strategy and MDM programme. Contributed to Enterprise Liquidity Risk, T+1 Settlements, GCP Migration, and ESG Reporting initiatives.
BCLC · British Columbia Lottery Corporation
Architected the enterprise Collibra operating model and self-serve governance framework. Designed automated workflows, built Power BI DQ reporting dashboards, integrated Collibra with Snowflake for metadata exchange and policy alignment, migrated legacy workflows to Collibra Workflow Developer, and delivered team training programmes.
CMHC · Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Designed and delivered enterprise data models for the Finance domain across Azure Databricks and MySQL — spanning Appraisal, Lender, Fraud, Property, and Organisation subject areas. Modelled complex nested JSON data structures using ERwin, producing well-governed physical and logical schemas aligned to organisational data standards. Built an automation script that derived JSON schemas directly from the data dictionary — eliminating significant manual effort for the team and accelerating delivery of new data structures across the platform.
National Bank of Canada
Architected Wealth Management data models and governance migration to AWS. Designed data governance policies and automation solutions for the Common Data Model framework.
Scotiabank · Global Banking & Markets
Built Scotiabank's GBM Data Platform from the ground up — establishing the foundational streaming architecture, Kafka topic naming conventions, data strategy, and governance framework. Led Collibra POC and full implementation. Designed data models for 15+ capital markets asset classes. Served as primary regulatory liaison for CAT compliance.
TD Securities
BCBS239 data aggregation requirements for Basel III RWA capital calculation. OTC Derivatives data integration across Darwin, Murex, and Calypso.
RBC Capital Markets · Group Risk Management
LGD Engine business rules for Basel III capital calculation across FX, Equities, and Derivatives. BSC and CMI policy authorship.
CIBC · Royal Bank of Scotland (London) · State Street Bank (Toronto & Boston) · Vocalink (London) · UBS · Level 3 Communications
Capital markets business analysis and data architecture across Basel II/III, derivatives valuation, payment processing, and data migration at global financial institutions.
Credentials
Six professional certifications spanning data management, architecture, project delivery, and agile methodology.
Collibra
Solution Architect — Implementation
Certificate No. C12135
DAMA International
Certified Data Management Professional
CDMP
PMI — Project Management Institute
Project Management Professional
PMP
IIBA Canada
Certified Business Analysis Professional
CBAP
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Master
CSM
SCRUMstudy
Scrum Fundamentals Certified
SFC
Google Cloud · In Progress
Professional Data Engineer
GCP PDE
Databricks · In Progress
Data Engineer Associate
Databricks DE
Microsoft · In Progress
Azure Data Engineer Associate
DP-203
Portfolio
Production-grade projects demonstrating real patterns from Tier 1 financial institution data platforms — including AI-powered tools built for enterprise use.
00 — AI Tool · Featured Project
A fully local RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipeline that lets business users ask plain English questions about internal documents — schemas, policies, pipelines, data dictionaries, governance docs, runbooks, and KPIs. Supports PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, JSON, and Markdown. Runs 100% locally — no cloud, no API keys, no data leaving your machine. Built for data teams at financial institutions who need AI-powered document intelligence without the security risk of sending data to external services.
Ask questions like "Which columns contain PII?" or "What should I do if nightly_aggregation fails?" — and get grounded answers with source citations from your actual documents.
01 — Streaming Pipeline
Production-grade streaming pipeline for equity and FX trade events — Avro serialisation, 15-rule DQ validation engine, batched BigQuery sink, DLQ routing, and optional Collibra lineage registration.
02 — Governance Toolkit
Enterprise Collibra automation — bulk asset management, automated CDE registration, BPMN workflow library, lineage ingestion, Snowflake integration, and DQ reporting via REST APIs.
03 — Data Contracts
YAML-based data contracts for capital markets asset classes with automated Soda Core validation, contract enforcement on Kafka topics, and Power BI contract health dashboards.
04 — Data Mesh
Data product YAML specifications, domain ownership registry, federated governance policy templates, and self-serve catalog model adapted for capital markets organisations on GCP.
Capital Markets Domain
The asset class, source system, and regulatory knowledge that takes a decade to build — and cannot be learned from a course.
Get In Touch
I work with financial institutions and government organisations on data platform architecture, Collibra governance implementations, and Data Mesh strategy. If you have a complex data challenge — let's talk.