The in-house attempt was two engineers part-time, no observability, no audit log, and a Confluence page that called itself a runbook. The acquirer’s CTO walked it pre-LOI and said: “rip and replace, or a 25% diligence haircut.” The data was good. The build around it wasn’t defensible.
Service Snowflake + Databricks build · warehouse + governance + cost · UK
Snowflake + Databricks build for the team whose bill. doubled overnight.
Snowflake or Databricks build for UK data and ML teams. We design the warehouse, wire per-workload cost attribution, set up Unity Catalog, RBAC and a semantic layer, and take you from data lake to BI in one audit-defendable design.
24hreply, from a senior
200+projects shipped since 2019
Senioronly, on the spine
(Why CTOs sign for data + ML)
You need a Snowflake or Databricks build. We ship it with senior engineers and the receipts your acquirer asks for.
A warehouse is a system you defend on a diligence call, not a notebook you grew by accident. We start with a 5-day audit so you know the cost, the governance gaps, and the fixed-price quote before any pipeline ships.
0
0
5day
The data-lead this page is for“rip + replace or 25% diligence haircut” retention signed
A UK SaaS scale-up tried the warehouse in-house. The acquirer’s CTO walked the codebase.
We rebuilt over ten to fourteen weeks. Senior engineers paired daily. ADRs documented the same day. The evidence pipeline was wired on day one. Per-workload cost attribution went in so the bill could never spike silently again.
The acquirer’s CTO came back to the diligence call, walked the same surface, and signed retention. Full team kept. Deal closed at ask. This page is for the founder or data-lead who decided the data and ML system is shipping to production, and wants it to land without taking the business down.
Eight data + ML pains we hear in every audit call
The pain. The day-1 warehouse architecture.
Each one is the difference between a warehouse you defend on a diligence call and one your customers find broken before you do.
The silent failure
Per-workflow observability and alerts
Per-pipeline observability wired to PagerDuty and Slack. The customer never finds out a workflow died before you do again.
The cost spiral
Per-workload cost attribution
Cost tags plus budget alerts on every workload. The bill stabilises within 30 days and the spike has a name next time.
The governance sprawl
Unity Catalog, RBAC, semantic layer
Row and column governance through Unity Catalog or Snowflake RBAC, with a semantic layer so the numbers mean the same thing to every team.
The stack we ship every warehouse build on.
Snowflake or Databricks at the core, Python and dbt for the transforms, and the infrastructure that keeps governance and cost under control as the data grows.
T1
What we build every warehouse on
warehouse-firstSnowflakeDatabricksUnity CatalogdbtApache AirflowPythonPostgreSQLApache SparkFivetran / AirbyteSentryDatadogGitHub Actions
T2
When your data brief calls for it
reach when neededBigQueryDelta Lake / IcebergApache KafkapgvectorMLflowFastAPI
T3
The infrastructure for scale
AWS-defaultAWSAWS S3AWS LambdaKubernetes (EKS)DockerRedisAWS KMSCloudWatch + GuardDutyAWS Cost ExplorerAWS BackupTerraformVault
WHAT SHIPS ON EVERY DATA + ML BUILD
The engineering a notebook estate can’t hand you
The capability that turns a sprawling notebook estate into a warehouse
your acquirer’s CTO walks without flinching.
Per-workload cost attribution
Every workload tagged, budget alerts wired. Your bill stabilises within 30 days and never spikes silently again.
Send a 5-line briefUnity Catalog + RBAC governance
Row and column governance through Unity Catalog or Snowflake RBAC, multi-tenant aware, with a semantic layer the whole team shares.
Send a 5-line briefAudit-defendable evidence
Every decision in an ADR. Every mutation in a signed audit log. Defensible to an acquirer’s CTO and a regulator alike.
Send a 5-line briefTested restore, rehearsed
A DR drill on the calendar with RTO and RPO documented. Restore under four hours, proven, not hoped.
Send a 5-line briefIdempotent + reproducible
Time-travel, idempotent workflows, versioned transformations. Every result reproducible, so every number stays defendable.
Send a 5-line briefSenior-only, no juniors
The engineers who sign your scope are the ones who ship and maintain it. Two seniors paired daily, ADRs the same day. Names on the SOW are names on the commits.
Send a 5-line brief
Results
The in-house warehouse,
The in-house warehouse,
after the rebuild, in numbers
We rebuilt a sprawling notebook estate into a defendable warehouse: governed access through Unity Catalog, per-workload cost attribution, signed audit log, a tested restore, and an evidence pipeline the acquirer’s CTO could walk.
Diligence
12
Weeks to acquirer-defendable
100%
Team retention signed
Cost
<30d
To a stabilised bill
<4h
Tested restore time
Track record
9
Warehouse builds since 2020
0
Production incidents shipped
WHAT WE BUILD
The warehouse, built to defend
A focused set of capabilities that take you from a sprawling data lake to BI in one audit-defendable design.
SERVICE
(01)
Warehouse design + semantic layer
Snowflake or Databricks at the core, with a semantic layer so the numbers mean the same thing to every team. From data lake to BI in one design.
Snowflake
Databricks
dbt
Semantic layer
Warehouse design + semantic layer
SERVICE
(02)
Governance + access control
Row and column governance through Unity Catalog or Snowflake RBAC, multi-tenant aware. “Everyone has admin” is not a model a regulator accepts.
Unity Catalog
RBAC
Multi-tenant
Audit log
Governance + access control
SERVICE
(03)
Cost attribution + tuning
Per-workload cost tags plus budget alerts on every workload. Warehouse sizing, auto-suspend, clustering and query tuning so every pound has a name.
Cost tags
Budget alerts
Warehouse sizing
Query tuning
Cost attribution + tuning
SERVICE
(04)
Observability + disaster recovery
Per-pipeline observability wired to PagerDuty and Slack, and a DR drill on the calendar with RTO and RPO documented. Restore under four hours, proven.
Observability
PagerDuty
DR drill
Tested restore
Observability + disaster recovery
SERVICE
(05)
Compliance + procurement pack
A Vanta evidence pipeline from day one, a signed DPA and SCCs, plus a DSAR runbook and audit-log export. Procurement clears in days, not quarters.
SOC 2
DPA + SCCs
DSAR runbook
Evidence pipeline
Compliance + procurement pack
Two phases. Audit, then sprint.
The audit bounds your risk at week one. You decide whether to continue with a fixed-price quote in hand, no day-rate and no scope creep.
5-day audit
Two senior engineers read your existing estate and brief, then write it up.
- 30-page written brief
- Six ADRs and a risk matrix
- Cost + governance gap analysis
- Fixed-price quote for the sprint
Warehouse build sprint
Eight to fourteen weeks of fixed-scope shipping, audit-led and evidence-first.
- Warehouse design + semantic layer
- Unity Catalog, RBAC, governance
- Per-workload cost attribution
- Observable, multi-cloud comfortable
Post-build retainer
One day a week of a senior engineer for three to six months.
- Performance and cost tuning
- New surface and observability
- Your team gets unblocked
- 30-day walk-away both ways
“You keep everything. IP assigns on every commit. No lock-in, no deposit forfeiture, no surprises at the end.”
What data-leads actually ask before signing
Pain-first, soft-second.
The audit is £8K fixed. The sprint is typically £35K to £95K, fixed-price, scoped at the end of the audit. No day-rate, no scope creep. You see the number before any pipeline ships, and you decide whether to continue.
It depends on your workload, not on fashion. Snowflake leads when BI and SQL analytics dominate and you want governance and time-travel out of the box. Databricks leads when ML, Spark, and notebooks are the centre of gravity, with Unity Catalog for governance. We make the call in the audit, with your team, against your actual queries, and write down why.
No. We work in place where we can. Migration is scoped at the audit if you want it, and the old and new run in parallel until you sign off. Nobody flips a switch and hopes.
An ADR pack, a signed audit log, the evidence pipeline, and a SOC 2 Type II stance. The acquirer’s CTO walks the same surface they threatened to discount, and signs full-team retention. We’ve done this three times across 2024 and 2025.
Yes, because we make the spend legible first. Per-workload cost tags and budget alerts go in so every pound has a name. Warehouse sizing, auto-suspend, clustering and query tuning follow. On the rebuild that opened this page, the bill stabilised inside 30 days.
Unity Catalog or Snowflake RBAC for row and column governance. A Vanta evidence pipeline from day one, with SOC 2 Type 1 achievable in eight to twelve weeks. A signed DPA and SCCs, plus a DSAR runbook and audit-log export. Procurement clears in days.
Every Snowflake or Databricks build runs with two senior engineers paired, not one. Every decision goes into an ADR the same day. Mohit reviews every PR. In seven years, two engineers have left mid-project. Both handovers were inside 48 hours.
Yes, with 14 days’ notice. Engineers move to other projects, the spend pauses, and you resume with 14 days’ notice. No cancellation fee, and a 30-day walk-away both ways throughout.
In context
Inside the work.
A look at the kind of snowflake databricks build surface we hand over — real screens, real data, documented and yours from day one.
One paragraph. That’s it.
Tell us your current estate, your deadline, and the outcome you want. Mohit replies inside 24 hours: a clear yes, a clear no, or the one question that decides it, with availability and the next audit slot.
What happens after the email lands
- < 24h
A personal reply.
Yes, no, or the deciding question. Straight to your inbox.
- Week 1
The 5-day audit.
30-page brief, six ADRs, cost and governance gaps, fixed-price quote.
- Wk 12
A defendable warehouse.
Governed, cost-attributed, observable, the brief your acquirer reads.