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PRINCIPAL-LED DATA & AI CONSULTING

Snowflake modernization
and AI.
From business priorities
to working systems.

Work directly with Brad Burnette to connect business priorities to practical technology decisions. Twenty years across architecture, administration, and engineering, supporting leaders from presales and discovery through prototypes, proofs of concept, delivery, and handover.

Discuss your next move Explore the work
Brad Burnette, President and Field CTO
BRAD BURNETTESenior judgment.
Direct involvement.

President & Field CTO
Architecture & Practice Leadership

20 yearsArchitecture, administration
& engineering
Snowflake certifiedSnowPro Advanced Architect
SnowPro Specialty: Gen AI
Oracle expertArchitecture, administration
& performance engineering
End to endPresales & discovery → prototypes & POCs
→ architecture, delivery & handover

Credentials across the modern data stack.

Explore my credentials

“Brad consistently demonstrated a deep sense of professionalism and technical integrity. His approach to projects was always thorough, ensuring that the best interests of our clients were met with precision and care.”

Patrick Buell · Former employer · Chief Deployment Officer, Eliza · Co-founder, HakkodaReference about Brad’s work at Hakkoda.

SELECTED DELIVERY EXPERIENCE

Hard problems.
Working results.

Selected work from prior consulting roles, connecting business and care priorities to architecture, reliable platforms, and teams equipped to deliver.

MEDICAL SERVICES ORGANIZATION

<1 month

A working episodes-of-care
proof of concept.

Prior engagement at Hakkoda

FROM STALLED USE CASE TO WORKING PIPELINE

A clearer care history.
A foundation for earlier action.

The starting point
A medical services organization serving underserved, at-risk teenagers nationwide needed to identify episodes of care across its data. The use case remained unresolved after work by seven prior contractors.
The assignment
Assigned as the sole architect and engineer for the proof of concept. Led client discovery primarily with the CIO, working with directors and delivery teams to translate business needs into solution, data, and platform architecture, then implemented the pipeline and its episode-of-care calculation logic.
The result
A working pipeline with episode-of-care calculations, delivered in under one month. It established a data foundation for predictive analytics and more proactive care, helping the organization work toward identifying emerging risks and supporting young people earlier.

Scope: proof of concept. The outcome was the working data foundation; predictive-care benefits were the intended next step.

FEDERAL HEALTHCARE DATA PLATFORM

Architecture at scale.
A team equipped to deliver.

As Principal Architect & Team Lead at Opera Solutions / ElectrifAI, I set the architecture and led delivery of a federal healthcare data platform serving a large national population, while training and managing more than 20 senior technical staff.

20+Senior technical staff
trained and managed
Hundreds of TBProcessed monthly by
the healthcare platform

The on-premises-to-AWS migration used AWS Snowball to move highly sensitive personally identifiable and protected health information (PII/PHI). The work brought together cloud architecture, security, performance engineering, and development of the team responsible for reliable operations.

ORACLE PERFORMANCE & PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE

Meet the daily window.
Make room for recovery.

A critical Oracle processing cycle took nearly 36 hours; the business needed it comfortably inside a 24-hour window. The performance work spanned hundreds of stored procedures, Oracle Exadata, and AWS RDS.

A targeted architectural decision removed the performance blocker with minimal new implementation, bringing processing below the daily limit while improving availability, resilience, recoverability, and cost.

Nearly 36hStarting processing time
Under 24hDaily processing requirement met

The value was a dependable operating window and a more economical platform, with room to recover when things went wrong.

FOUR WAYS TO MOVE FORWARD

Start with the decision.
Define the work.

An AI mandate, a legacy platform, or a delivery team that needs direction. Each engagement starts with your constraints and a useful decision, then defines the work needed to move forward.

01 / DIRECTION

Make the next decision
a clearer one.

Clarify what to invest in, what to defer, and what needs a technical experiment. Turn executive priorities into architecture decisions and a roadmap engineering teams can execute.

INITIAL ENGAGEMENT OUTPUTS
  • Current-state assessment and business priorities
  • Target architecture and explicit tradeoffs
  • Sequenced roadmap, ownership, and delivery scope
Discuss a roadmap

02 / MODERNIZATION

A better platform.
A deliberate transition.

Decide how to migrate or modernize a representative workload before scaling the transition. Connect legacy business logic to a Snowflake architecture with a clear validation and cutover approach.

INITIAL ENGAGEMENT OUTPUTS
  • Source and dependency assessment
  • Migration waves, reconciliation, and cutover plan
  • Snowflake architecture, performance, and governance
Discuss modernization

03 / APPLIED AI

Connect AI ambition
to useful work.

Decide whether a defined workflow is a good AI investment. Build an agreed prototype, evaluate its behavior, and establish what would be required to take it into production.

INITIAL ENGAGEMENT OUTPUTS
  • Use-case selection, data/access review, and prototype
  • Evaluation examples and a go-forward recommendation
  • Production requirements, support, and ownership plan
Discuss an AI initiative

04 / TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP

Give the team direction.
Keep the work moving.

Give executives and engineers a shared delivery plan. Set technical direction, surface dependencies and risks, and establish clear decisions, reviews, and ownership.

INITIAL ENGAGEMENT OUTPUTS
  • Delivery direction and architecture decisions
  • Technical reviews, standards, and mentoring
  • Executive communication and operational handover
Discuss delivery leadership

A CLEAR FIRST STEP

A focused conversation.
A defined engagement.

  1. Share the situation.Your objective, current environment, constraints, and the decision that is holding things up.
  2. Agree the work.Scope, deliverables, access, responsibilities, timing, and acceptance criteria.
  3. Leave with a next move.A decision package, tested pattern, evaluated prototype, or delivery plan—matched to the engagement.
Talk through your situation

INTENSIVE DAILY PRACTICE. PRACTICAL ENGINEERING.

AI built into
the engineering work.

I use ChatGPT Pro, Claude Pro, and Gemini Pro extensively every day across Snowflake architecture, engineering, research, coding, debugging, and delivery documentation. I also develop MCP servers, reusable skills, and plugins that connect those tools to practical workflows.

ChatGPT ProClaude ProGemini Pro

CONNECT THE TOOLS

MCP servers
& integrations

Develop Model Context Protocol servers and tools that connect AI assistants to practical engineering capabilities and workflows.

MAKE THE WORK REUSABLE

Skills, plugins
& repeatable workflows

Build Claude and ChatGPT skills, instructions, and plugins that capture proven methods and support consistent work across complex tasks.

BUILD THE EXPERIENCE

Conversational data
& applied AI

Combine Snowflake Cortex, Cortex Analyst, semantic models, Streamlit, and voice-driven workflows in business-facing proofs of value.

SNOWFLAKE AI & ML

From AI-assisted engineering
to enterprise AI applications.

Shape the use case, select the platform capabilities, and define the engineering, evaluation, and operating model around them.

01

AI-assisted engineering

Snowflake CoCo (Cortex Code) for SQL and Python development, data exploration, pipeline engineering, and agent workflows.

02

Analytics & agents

Cortex Agents, Cortex Analyst, and semantic views to connect business questions to defined metrics and enterprise data. Snowflake CoWork for business-facing agent experiences.

03

Search & grounded answers

Cortex Search for enterprise search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), connecting AI responses to relevant business content.

04

Document intelligence

Cortex AI document processing with AI_PARSE_DOCUMENT and AI_EXTRACT to turn document text, layouts, and tables into useful structured data.

05

AI in data pipelines

Cortex AI Functions through SQL and Python for classification, extraction, summarization, embeddings, and other language workflows within data pipelines.

06

Machine learning & features

Snowflake ML, Feature Store, Model Registry, and ML Jobs for reusable features, model development, and deployment.

07

Applications, evaluation & operations

Streamlit in Snowflake and Snowpark Container Services for applications, with AI Observability, evaluation, access controls, guardrails, and cost management built into the delivery plan.

EXAMPLE FROM MY AI PRACTICE

A business question.
A working data experience.

In Snowflake proofs of value, I have combined semantic models, Cortex Analyst, Streamlit, and voice-driven workflows to let business users ask questions of data.

Proof-of-value experience; production readiness is assessed separately.

  1. 01Ask

    A question in natural language or voice.

  2. 02Connect

    Business meaning through a semantic model.

  3. 03Respond

    A SQL or report response in the application.

  4. 04Evaluate

    Check representative questions and results before wider use.

THE STANDARD

Define the problem. Review the result.
Leave work another team can understand and use.

ARCHITECTURE & ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP

Technical leadership
that stays connected
to delivery.

I work comfortably with executives in the language of their business: priorities, investment, risk, and results. I translate technical complexity into clear options and recommendations so leaders can own the decisions with confidence, then align the team and delivery behind them.

Executive & commercial judgment

Presales discovery, executive presentations, prototypes and proofs of concept, solution tradeoffs, scope, staffing, estimates, and statements of work.

Architecture & practice direction

Solution, data, and platform architecture; engineering standards, reusable assets, and technical reviews. Anticipate dependencies, operating risks, and future growth while solving the immediate problem.

Implementation & ownership

Hands-on engineering, difficult delivery problems, validation, operational documentation, and knowledge transfer.

Your leaders set the ambition and own the decisions. My role is to bring clarity, anticipate what comes next, and help the organization build the capability to deliver.

DEVELOP PEOPLE. BUILD THE PRACTICE.

Give people room to lead.
Make their contribution visible.

Strong delivery should leave stronger engineers and architects behind it. I help people with the ability and commitment to grow take on meaningful responsibility, develop their judgment, and become leaders in their own right.

  • Create the opportunity.Offer coaching, stretch assignments, and the space to lead. Encourage people to improve on my approach and bring their own ideas to the work.
  • Champion the person.Make contributions visible to senior leadership. Advocate for recognition and advancement, including during performance and promotion reviews.
  • Share the credit.Give the people doing the work credit for the result. Stay accountable for direction and outcomes while letting emerging leaders own the accomplishment.

“He thrived particularly in engagements with clients where he could build relationship with his customers and his transparent communication and unyielding commitment to doing what was right had the most significant impact.”

Patrick Buell · Former employer · Chief Deployment Officer, Eliza · Co-founder, HakkodaReference about Brad’s work at Hakkoda.

ONE CONNECTED DELIVERY LIFECYCLE

From the first conversation
to lasting capability.

Connect business goals to technology choices from the first presales conversation. Use prototypes and proofs of concept to test assumptions, shape the architecture, and carry the work through delivery, operational ownership, and handover.

  1. 01

    Discover & qualify

    Understand the business initiative, the people, the systems, and what success means. Shape a presales recommendation around the value, constraints, and decision at hand.

    LEAVE WITH

    Shared priorities
    and success criteria

  2. 02

    Prototype & decide

    Use a focused prototype or proof of concept when evidence is needed. Evaluate options and make scope, sequencing, ownership, and tradeoffs explicit.

    LEAVE WITH

    A tested direction
    and executable delivery plan

  3. 03

    Architect

    Design the solution, platform, integrations, data models, and security. Account for growth, dependencies, recovery, and operating costs before they become delivery obstacles.

    LEAVE WITH

    A target architecture
    and implementation patterns

  4. 04

    Deliver

    Lead the team, review the work, resolve hard problems, and build alongside the engineers.

    LEAVE WITH

    Working solutions
    and validated outcomes

  5. 05

    Enable

    Document decisions, transfer knowledge, and equip the team to run and evolve the result.

    LEAVE WITH

    Operational ownership
    and a capable team

EXPERIENCE THAT REACHES THE IMPLEMENTATION

Depth earned
in the work.

Twenty years as an architect, administrator, and engineer across Oracle, Snowflake, cloud modernization, and healthcare data. I have had the privilege of learning from exceptional leaders, AI practitioners, architects, and engineers. Their trust, example, and guidance shaped how I work, and I aim to pass that on.

Explore my professional background
2025–2026

Data Ideology

Principal Architect & Snowflake Practice Lead

Snowflake architecture, AI strategy, pre-sales advisory, practice standards, accelerators, staffing, and SOWs.

2024–2025

Cleartelligence

Technical Lead, Data Management Practice

Architecture, modeling, AI adoption, delivery planning, engineering standards, and senior technical mentoring.

2022–2024

Hakkoda

Lead Solutions & Data Architect / Lead Engineer

Snowflake modernization, hands-on implementation, engineering team leadership, and client delivery.

2015–2022

Opera Solutions / ElectrifAI

Principal Architect & Team Lead

Federal healthcare architecture, large-scale data engineering, platform operations, and technical team development.

Earlier foundations: Airpoints / Perks.com · Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services · Crews & Associates

SNOWFLAKE DEPTH

Architecture expertise.
Gen AI capability.

Formal credentials complement hands-on platform experience and practical AI development.

HANDS-ON ACROSS THE STACK

Snowflake · Oracle · PL/SQL · Exadata · AWS RDS · Cortex · Streamlit · dbt · Coalesce · Matillion · Fivetran · Airflow · Shipyard · AWS · Azure · SQL · Git & CI/CD

Additional credentials earned

SnowPro Core; AWS Cloud Practitioner, Developer Associate, and Solutions Architect Associate; dbt, Coalesce, Fivetran, and OCI credentials.

THE PERSON BEHIND THE ARCHITECTURE

Brad Burnette

President & Field CTOArchitecture & Practice Leadership

I connect executive initiatives with the engineering decisions that make a solution work in its business context. Through Burnette Data Consulting, I lead teams across discovery, strategy, solution design, architecture, data modeling, engineering, analytics, AI, governance, and compliance while growing their technical capability. With the depth to stay involved from the first executive conversation through delivery, I help turn strategic direction into aligned technical solutions and competitive advantage.

B.S. Applied Mathematics
University of Central Arkansas

More about my professional background

FAMILY, LANGUAGE & CONNECTION

A place in the family.
A wider view of the world.

Family is at the center of my life. Each July, I welcome a Japanese high school exchange student into my home for the school year, through June. We begin getting to know one another long before arrival, and each student becomes part of the family.

We share everyday life and travel, with the same care, encouragement, and sense of belonging I would want for my own child. Hosting is a part of family life I deeply value and cannot imagine being without.

I began learning Japanese to better support the students I host, and I still take lessons. I also began studying Mandarin in 2025. Learning someone’s language is another way to help them feel understood and at home.

A shared home.A changed life.

“The blessing that comes from hosting foreign exchange students in our home far outweighs any burden it places on us. Our family simply isn’t complete without our students.”

Brad Burnette
A group gathered in a kitchen with plates of decorated cookies
Baking together at home at Christmas.
Brad and his Japanese exchange student Koko smiling with their arms raised on a mountaintop in Hawaii
A beautiful day climbing a volcano.
Brad beside one of the bowing deer in Nara, Japan
The famous “bowing deer” of Nara, Japan.
A group smiling around an outdoor restaurant table
Meeting our student’s family in Hawaii.
Three people enjoying a meal together in a restaurant
Beach vacation with our student on her second day in America!
Two people with snowboards inside a gondola above snowy trees
Introducing our student to the joy of winter sports in Breckenridge.

I have long appreciated his interpersonal skills, his gift for making others feel heard and valued as well as his ability to communicate ideas clearly and concisely.

I do not hesitate in recommending Brad, as I know him to be a reliable, ethical individual who would be an asset to any team or organization.

Mark C. Moore · Personal reference

TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE

Engineering judgment,
in practice.

Selected technical writing by Brad Burnette, published by Data Ideology.

SNOWFLAKE INGESTION

When COPY INTO fails,
stop playing detective.

Read the article PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING

If your query got faster only the second time, you may not have fixed anything.

Read the article

“His work ethic, integrity, and ability to navigate complex technical environments with ease will make him a valuable addition to any organization.”

Patrick Buell · Former employer · Chief Deployment Officer, Eliza · Co-founder, HakkodaReference about Brad’s work at Hakkoda.

LET’S START WITH YOUR BUSINESS

Bring the hard questions.
Let’s turn priorities into business results.

Bring the business outcome you need—and the constraints standing in the way. I’ll help you make the critical tradeoffs, align leaders and delivery teams, and lead the work from discovery through implementation. The focus is measurable progress: stronger capabilities, lower risk, and technology that advances your business.

Discuss your next move
BRAD BURNETTE

President & Field CTO
Architecture & Practice Leadership
Greater Atlanta Area
Remote collaboration

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