James Dzidek, PhD

I'm focused on data platform architecture and pipeline orchestration at enterprise scale.

My background spans two decades across consulting, enterprise architecture, and data engineering. I spent nearly five years as a Digital Architect and Advisor at Microsoft Consulting Services, driving cloud transformations for some of Canada's largest organisations across financial services, manufacturing, and retail. Before that, I served as Lead Data Architect at the Ontario Cannabis Store, where I built their data analytics platform from the ground up on Azure. Earlier in my career I worked as an Enterprise Architect at DNB, Norway's largest financial institution, and as a consultant at IBM.

I hold a PhD in Empirical Software Engineering from the University of Oslo, with my main research published in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Today I work on Dagster and Databricks implementations inside large enterprises, most recently with a global consumer goods company running Kubernetes, Unity Catalog, and medallion architectures. Much of that work now sits where data platform operations meet AI and agentic systems: ownership, dependencies, deployment, and reliable recovery.

Based in the EU, I work with teams across Europe, primarily in DACH and the UK.

If something here resonates with a problem you're working through, I'd be glad to talk. Get in touch.