Mike Lombardi

• Data- focussed Lead Data Architect with over 20 years of industry experience in architecting and developing enterprise data solutions at scale
• Technical strategist and leader in real-time Big Data solutions and machine learning architecture, with rich expertise in machine learning, MLOps, modern data warehousing, Big Data integration, event streaming, self-serve reporting platforms, data science integration and enrichment 
• Highly experienced in architecting and developing data intensive applications in a cross cloud capacity (GCP, Azure and AWS)
• Practitioner in management and orchestration of machine learning projects for predictive and statistical analysis. Providing technical leadership in the progression from notebook to production at scale
• Proficient in Agile development methodologies, CI/CD, TDD/BDD, pair-programming, peer reviews, sprint/retro cycle

Farfetch, London — Senior Data Architect 

April 2022 - Present

• Ownership of the company's Enterprise Data and ML strategy using cross-cloud data architectures that can scale and support diverse teams across analytics, data engineering and machine learning. Adopting a Hub & Spoke model to increase agility
• Ensuring alignment across information architecture and data governance across data product teams. Enabling accurate and performant data model design across Enterprise Data Models
• Defining data solution architecture using GKE, Airflow, BigQuery and DBT for both internal and external facing data products
• Leveraging BigQuery, Spark & Databricks to scale ML workloads and rapid experimentation of new models to support personalisation at scale (recommendations, search and ranks)
• Enterprise architect for Farfetech’s in-house event tracking platform (omnitracking) that supports 500M events daily. Defining the product roadmap to support enhanced data quality assurance using data contracts
• Responsible for maintaining accurate Reference Architectures, Guidelines, Decision Logs, RFCs and Budget forecasting. Ensuring a balance between cost efficiency and innovation. Using C4 and ArchiMate methodologies
• Influencing company wide OKRs at exec level to ensure Global Data Strategy alignment 

BBC, London — Lead Data Architect 

November 2019 - April 2022 

• Responsible for setting the technical strategy, architecture design and delivery of BBC’s Machine Learning Platform on GCP for supporting personalisation (recommendations) across BBC Sounds, News, World Service and Sport
• Part of the leadership team of BBC Datalab (the team responsible for delivering machine learning services across the BBC’s product portfolio), providing mentorship for the team’s engineers and data scientists and managing the team’s GCP budget
• Lead BBC Datalab’s cross-functional team of engineers and data scientists in building out a dedicated research and experimentation platform in GCP, leveraging Kafka, BigQuery, Beam, Airflow and GKE 
• Enabled prototyping using Google Vertex AI, TFX and Kubeflow to help streamline rapid deployment from ideation to production
• Provided subject matter expertise on MLOps strategies to increase maturity across the BBC’s machine learning teams 
• Evangelised emerging technology in machine learning both at the C-level and at the team level

Comparethemarket.com, London — Data Solutions Architect

September 2018 - November 2019

• Served as the Enterprise Data Architect for the company’s new streaming and analytics platform leveraging Apache Kafka
• Led real-time integration into S3 Data Lake using Spark (EMR)  using structured streaming
• Designed and delivered the department’s new modern data warehouse using Airflow, Redshift and Athena
• Provided subject matter expertise on enterprise data model to support data science and insight teams into a Single Customer View
• Provisioned a data science framework (Python) to support key initiatives such as segmentation, clustering, recommenders and a variety propensity models
• Served as the Principal Architect for the Power BI (self-serve) platform and AWS integration
• Provided GDPR consultancy across the entire data estate, PII, encryption, deletion (as a service) and data access requests
• Developed a roadmap for the API adoption strategy across both internal systems and external vendors to support the wider MarTech stack

Comparethemarket.com, London — Lead Big Data Engineer

June 2016 - September 2018

• Served as the Lead Engineer / Architect for the company’s new analytics platform using a multi-node Redshift cluster
• Led the migration from SQL on-premise to a complete cloud based solution for web analytics using AWS services (Spark EMR, EC2, S3, Data Pipeline)
• Led the procurement of a new BI platform using Power BI to support self-service reporting and external partner portal
• Served as the Principal Solutions Architect for rolling out an R Server in AWS for use in data mining, propensity models and customer behavior segmentation
• Liaised with Finance, Marketing and HR to define robust solutions that would remove manual effort and improve collaboration between departments
• Served as the Principal Data Modeller for Single View of Customer, financial YoY/forecasting, auditing and fraud detection
• Provided consultancy services across the data department and implemented hybrid solutions to deal with on-premise/cloud setups

James Hay Partnership, Milton Keynes — Head of Business Intelligence

March 2016 - June 2016

• Defined roadmap for new BI/MI function across the company
• Had overall responsibility for data governance and integration across the SQL Server estate 
• Served as the Principal Design Authority for data warehouse and data mart design and delivery
• Defined and procured a new reporting and analytics platform  

Comparethemarket.com, Peterborough — Tech Lead BI

March 2013 - March 2016

• Led an Agile BI Team of seven in both SQL Server and Hadoop platforms 
• Replaced ETL and SQL backend systems with Cloudera Hadoop with data ingest from both MongoDB and Kafka.
• Developed data models in a Hive data warehouse
• Successfully delivered the new SQL Server data warehouse providing self-service reporting/analytics across product teams leveraging the full suite of MSBI tool sets (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS and Office 365 BI portal)
• Researched and developed a roadmap for migrating warehouse capacity into Amazon Redshift. My proof of concept showed that 80% improved efficiency could be gained by using a cloud-based solution. This became the first step into delivering near real-time BI.
• Provided predictive analytics and data mining capability using R and transitioned solutions into Spark
• Technical lead for practicing test-driven development, continuous delivery/integration, pair-programming/mob-programming and automated unit testing pipelines as part of the Agile development process

OTHER EXPERIENCE

BGL Limited, Peterborough — Senior MI Developer

March 2012 - March 2013

Whistlebrook, Cambridge — BI Team Lead / Senior Consultant

November 2007 - March 2012

Whistlebrook, Cambridge — BI Analyst Developer

May 2005 - November 2007

Whislebrook, Cambridge — Junior Developer

November 2004 - May 2005

Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge — BSc (Hons) Computer Science

2001 - 2004

Royal King’s Guard, Oslo — Norwegian National Service

2000 - 2001

Nordstrand Videregående Skole, Oslo — Equivalent to Sixth Form College

1997 - 2000

• A’ Level: Mathematics & Information Processing
• GCSE: Physics, English, Geography, French, Social Studies, IT User Systems, History, Economics, Natural Science, Mathematics – 2 A’s & 8 B’s