Hi, I’m Gareth 👋
I’m a Senior Data Engineer based in Nottingham with nearly twenty years of experience solving problems with data.
Although today my work centres around cloud platforms, pipelines and data architecture, my career didn’t begin there.
It began in the energy industry.
Back then I was analysing customer journeys, supporting business-critical applications and learning how technology actually supports a business—not just how to build it.
Looking back, that perspective has shaped everything I’ve done since.
My Journey
My career has never followed a perfectly straight line.
I’ve worked as a Business Analyst.
A Technical Analyst.
A Database Administrator.
A Senior Database Administrator.
And now a Senior Data Engineer.
Along the way I even stepped away from IT for a short period to help my wife’s rapidly growing restaurant business scale from just six employees to over seventy. Building systems, improving processes and helping a small business grow taught me lessons about people and operations that I still use today.
Every role has added another layer to how I approach engineering.
Not just writing better code.
Building better systems.
Why I Built Data & Grit
After years of working with production systems, I realised most technical blogs skip the most interesting part.
They explain how something was built.
Very few explain why it was built that way.
This website exists to document that thinking.
Every project starts with a real-world question.
From there I work through the same process I’d use professionally.
- Understanding the business problem.
- Designing an architecture.
- Building the pipeline.
- Modelling the data.
- Visualising the outcome.
- Reflecting on the trade-offs.
Sometimes the answer is a dashboard.
Sometimes it’s an interactive map.
Sometimes it’s simply a better understanding of a problem.
Why Energy?
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work across a few different industries. Each one taught me something new, but they also taught me something unexpected.
I genuinely enjoy working in the energy industry more than anywhere else.
It’s an industry where engineering, economics, geopolitics, weather, infrastructure and technology all collide. A change in one part of the world can ripple through electricity markets, insurance portfolios and even what it costs to heat a home thousands of miles away.
That complexity is exactly what draws me in.
Every dataset tells part of a much bigger story, and every project uncovers another question worth exploring.
How I Think
I’ve become increasingly interested in architecture because I enjoy making engineering decisions.
Not “Can I build this?”
But…
- Should this be serverless?
- Do I actually need a database?
- How will someone maintain this in five years?
- Is there a simpler solution?
Those are the questions that interest me most.
Technology changes.
Good engineering judgement lasts much longer.
Where I’m Heading
I’ve found myself drawn more and more towards architecture — not because it’s the next title on the ladder, but because it’s where business understanding, engineering and technology meet.
Alongside that, I’ve recently been spending a lot of time looking into risk within the energy sector — how assets, hazards and insurance all connect.
That’s also why most of the projects on this site revolve around energy.
They’re opportunities to learn more about an industry I genuinely enjoy while improving my engineering and architectural thinking at the same time.
Outside Work
When I’m not working, I’m usually building something.
Sometimes that’s a data pipeline.
Sometimes it’s a website.
Sometimes it’s restoring part of our Victorian farmhouse.
Sometimes it’s brewing ginger beer.
I’m naturally curious, and I enjoy understanding how things work.
More often than not, a random question becomes the next project on this site.
Thanks for Visiting
If you’re here as an engineer, architect or hiring manager, I hope this site tells you more than what’s written on my CV.
Rather than simply listing the technologies I’ve used, I wanted to show how I approach problems.
Because ultimately, technologies change.
The ability to understand a problem, design a sensible solution and explain the trade-offs is what makes a great engineer.
Contact Me
Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn if you would like to chat or need help with something.