Mike Swordy

Data strategy, analytics engineering, BI, data science, and the practical work of turning data into better decisions.

About

Mike Swordy

I'm Mike Swordy. I've spent the last fourteen years in analytics, BI and data science - as a consultant and in-house, across retail, health, fintech, gaming and energy.

Most of that work has sat close to the awkward bit: turning data into something a team can actually use and stand behind. Marketing, sales, product, operations, people, finance - different audiences, same pattern of definitions, tradeoffs and trust.

I sit between data strategy, architecture and hands-on delivery. I like shaping how a data function works, and I still like staying close to the craft: modelling, transformation, semantic layers, governance, and making numbers hold up when someone pushes on them.

I've worked with Looker, Power BI and Tableau, and with dbt-era analytics engineering. I still think of myself as a builder as much as a leader.

Currently

I'm at Kraken, leading analytics for water and telco clients - embedded and standalone analytics, data model work, and supporting client reporting that has to survive regulatory scrutiny. Internally I support the product roadmap; for clients it's operational insight and getting more from the platform and data model.

Before that:

  • Principal consultant and manager at Mesh-AI, leading the data analytics practice, mainly with energy and commodities clients
  • Head of Data at Railsr, a SaaS fintech scale-up, where a dozen embedded analysts served different parts of the business from one platform - and agreeing what a number meant was half the job

Writing

I write about analytics engineering, data modelling, and the practical work of making organisational meaning durable - not just the SQL that executes it.

The essays here are thinking in public. If something resonates, I'd welcome the conversation.

Elsewhere