The data is the raw material. The decision is the product.
I'm Bryan Duffin, a data engineer and analytics consultant with 15 years across marketing and data. I've led DataOps and GTM Analytics for enterprise software companies, run growth for startups, and funded my own product launch with a crowdfunding campaign I ran end to end. The work changes shape, but the job is the same: take a question the business can't answer, find the data that answers it, and build the system that keeps answering it.
Away from the warehouse I'm a husband and a father of four. My free time goes to my kids, board games, and chasing animals out of my wife's garden. I hold a BS in information technology management and am currently completing an MBA.
Diagnose before prescribing
In Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt puts diagnosis first: name what is actually going on before deciding what to do about it. Data work deserves the same discipline. Before anything gets built, I find the number that explains the problem, because a warehouse pointed at the wrong question just answers it faster. Diagnosis is what makes the rest of it strategy instead of activity.
Qualitative data closes the loop
A common analyst failure mode is chasing chains of quantitative data, slicing one metric into the next until the trail goes cold, and handing the business no insight and no direction. The numbers say where to look. Qualitative data, what a customer wrote, why a segment shows up, what a journey actually felt like, is usually what says what it means.
Build an insight engine
A report answers once. I build a place to explore: pipelines and models underneath, a surface on top where leaders can dig for more insights, make informed decisions, and watch the business move. The engine keeps producing long after the engagement ends.