Balaji Ranganathan · Principal Data & AI Engineer
Fabric and Databricks lakehouses for Commonwealth agencies, governed AI agents, and four live products I build and run myself. 10+ years across Federal Government, Go8 research and commercial enterprise.
Also: CV (PDF) · Architecture diagrams
What a Commonwealth Director said
“I have never seen anyone as proficient and expert as Balaji!”
On integrating SAP data into the agency's Enterprise Data Platform and getting it through Technical Advisory Group endorsement.
10+ years
Data & AI delivery
Federal Government · Go8 research · commercial enterprise
SAP, Aurion, CRM
Into one governed lakehouse
Commonwealth agency Enterprise Data Platform on Azure and Fabric
4 live products
Built and run by me
LexiCanvas · McpCognito · SentrySurface · SurfaceProxy
Security-reviewed
ISM / PSPF-aligned delivery
Technical Advisory Group endorsement · formal SDD and ADR handover
Unedited recommendations from Australian Government Branch Heads and delivery executives on enterprise modernizations.
Executive Key Takeaways
I would highly recommend Balaji for his enthusiasm, expertise and going over and above achieving what seems impossible in the field of data! Balaji was firstly instrumental in realignment of our Enterprise Data Platform. He helped us position us well to build Enterprise dashboards and digital products! He seems to be an all rounder in the data world! I wonder if there is anything he can’t do?
Country Head @Adactin
November 21, 2023, Vaibhav (Vab) was senior to Balaji but didn’t manage Balaji directly
Executive Key Takeaways
I highly recommend Balaji as a Senior Data Engineer. He demonstrated exceptional technical prowess, particularly in data engineering and governance using Microsoft Azure platform. What sets him apart is his ability to translate complex data into actionable business insights, driving significant value for our projects. His workmanship has also been instrumental in elevating our team's overall performance. Balaji is a true asset to any data-driven organisation.
Primary focus on Enterprise Data Lakehouses (Fabric / Databricks / dbt) and Governed Agentic AI (MCP / LangGraph), backed by event-driven Azure integration and streaming security pipelines.
Architecting enterprise data estates across Microsoft Fabric and Databricks. Migrating siloed operational feeds, SAP ERP ledgers, and distributed data sources into unified bronze/silver/gold lakehouses with strict medallion boundaries, automated dbt transformations, and Kimball dimensional marts.
Medallion Lakehouse
Architecture
Zero-Copy DirectLake
Serving Mode
dbt + Purview
Lineage & Contracts
How it's delivered
Context / Ingest
Metadata-driven ingestion with Delta Parquet landing & automated schema drift detection
Architecture / Conform
dbt SQL transformations applying business contracts, deduplication & surrogate key hashing
Outcome / Serve
Gold dimensional models with zero-copy DirectLake serving to Power BI & downstream APIs
Delivery Framework
Every engagement delivers decision records (ADRs), executable topology maps, and runbooks — not just ephemeral code.
01
Constraints, governance baselines, sovereignty and TCO mapped before a line of code.
02
Topologies and ADRs that make trade-offs explicit — vendor-neutral by default.
03
Infrastructure-as-code, data pipelines, agents and automation shipped in thin slices.
04
Lineage, observability, RLS and runbooks so the system outlives the engagement.
Proof of work
Each one solves a real problem end to end, and shows how I would approach yours.
Data & Infrastructure as Code
Creator & Systems Architect
Agentic AI & MCP
Lead Systems Architect
Cyber Threat Intelligence
Lead Data & Security Architect
Enterprise Workflow Automation
Principal Solutions Architect
Role Fit & Engagement Options · Sydney & Canberra
Join as a Principal / Lead Platform Engineer, or engage me for a fixed-scope review or build through Vertex Core Group. Contract arrangements are also available via the enquiry form.
Target: CIOs, CTOs, Chief Architects, Technology Delivery Directors & Executive Technical Search
Architect-led engagement owning the end-to-end build of your enterprise data platform. I lead the technical vision, drive the engineering execution, and embed best-practice delivery (dbt, Medallion, governance) directly into your team.
Core Deliverables
Fit: You are hiring a permanent or fixed-term Principal Architect / Platform Lead to anchor your data and AI practice.
Target: Programme Directors, CDOs & Transformation Leads
Need a rapid independent audit or fixed-milestone delivery without headcount delay? Engaged via my incorporated consulting vehicle (Vertex Core Group) with clean ABN/SOW procurement.
Core Deliverables
Fit: You need an authoritative architectural blueprint or fixed-milestone build delivered under a clean corporate SOW.
For technical reviewers
Interactive trade-off analysis, architecture diagrams and the delivery method behind the work above.
Systems Topology
Interactive production blueprints — tap a component to trace its dependencies and inspect its 3-bullet ADR, drag to pan, or use the controls to zoom. Same documentation philosophy behind LexiCanvas.
Medallion Lakehouse topology integrating SAP, Aurion, and enterprise transactional stores with zero-copy DirectLake reporting.
Architecture Studio
Pick what matters to you. The recommendation re-weights live, so you see which option wins for your constraints, not just in general.
Architectural comparison for modern enterprise lakehouse migrations (Teradata / SSIS / Oracle offload).
Leaning: Databricks Lakehouse
Select Fabric for Microsoft-centric enterprise reporting consolidation and SaaS simplicity; select Databricks for multi-cloud heavy ETL, streaming analytics, and deep custom AI/ML pipelines.
What matters most to you? (tap to weight ×3)
Field Notes & Decision Records (ADRs)
Executive white papers and Decision Records (ADRs) on platform collisions, real production TCO, and modern sovereign AI governance.
Choose Microsoft Fabric to consolidate enterprise M365 and Power BI reporting estates under turnkey SaaS economics; retain Databricks for multi-cloud, high-throughput Spark streaming, deep ML modeling, and complex Photon-vectorized ETL.
Legacy RPA (UiPath) must be strictly isolated to non-API desktop windows. Databricks AI Gateway governs the data estate and model serving layer. Microsoft Copilot Studio and Foundry own the employee workspace. The glue connecting them is event-driven Model Context Protocol (MCP) agents.
Legacy VM bot farms run up massive recurring licensing and maintenance bills while remaining brittle to UI changes. Migrating document reconciliation and data extraction to headless MCP agent swarms substantially cuts annual run-rate costs while handling fuzzy, unstructured edge cases with ease.
Need an independent architectural verdict for your board or cloud steering committee?
Vendor-neutral audits on Fabric, Databricks TCO, and Sovereign MCP Agent security.
Direct Availability · Contract, Leadership & Advisory
Direct access—zero agency bloat. Available immediately for Principal / Lead Contract roles (Day-Rate, PAYG, Pty Ltd ABN, or BuyICT), executive permanent leadership, or fixed-scope architecture sprints via Vertex Core Group.