Saahil MehtaAssociate Director, Data & Insights

I lead data and AI at South Pole, and I still ship the systems myself.

Associate Director, Data & Insights · South Pole · London

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Saahil Mehta, a monochrome portrait
Saahil Mehta, South Pole, 2026

Now

I lead a team of six and own the data platform, the marts and the reporting stack for the whole company.

Most of my time goes into Orca, the enterprise AI assistant I built for the business, and the governed platform underneath it: a semantic layer that tells Orca what our data means, self-hosted orchestration, access governance that runs itself, and cost monitoring across every project we have.

I wrote the data strategy the executive committee adopted, and I commit code most days.

Still shipping

Commits over the last twelve months, live from GitHub.

Activity

Loading commits from GitHub.

Work

The systems in production at South Pole, designed and built by me with the team.

All systems

  1. Orca

    South Pole's enterprise AI assistant, open to the whole company. Deep research over the web and company data, South Pole-format documents, decks and sales proposals, scheduled runs, memory, and sharing with version history.

    In production since Jun 2026 · AI assistant

  2. Orca Semantics

    A governed semantic layer on self-hosted OpenMetadata: plain-English definitions, certified metric SQL, a glossary and named owners per domain, all version controlled.

    In build since Jul 2026 · Semantic layer

  3. Orca Visuals

    The visualisation layer on top of Orca Semantics: dashboards and metrics defined as code against the certified definitions, so a chart and Orca's answer agree.

    In build since Aug 2026 · Visualisation

  4. Data Marts Core

    Orchestration for 1,800+ dbt models, migrated from dbt Cloud to self-hosted Dagster on GKE in three weeks.

    In production since Sep 2026 · Orchestration

How it fits together

The systems in production, what each one does and what flows between them.

All systems
How it fits togetherSource systems lands in Raw layer; Raw layer transformed by Data Marts Core; Data Marts Core builds Data marts; Data marts defined in Orca Semantics; Orca Semantics gives meaning to Orca; Data marts queried as the signed-in person Orca; Orca Semantics certified metrics for Orca Visuals; Orca answers The company; Orca Visuals dashboards for The company; Data Foundation Plan sets the roadmap for everything below Data Marts Core.SOURCESINGEST AND LANDTRANSFORM AND OWNSERVE AND ANALYSEPEOPLELANDS INTRANSFORMED BYBUILDSDEFINED INGIVES MEANING TOQUERIED AS THE SIGNED-IN PERSONCERTIFIED METRICS FORANSWERSDASHBOARDS FORSETS THE ROADMAP FOR EVERYTHING BELOWSource systemsoperational systemsRaw layerlanded by pipelinesData Marts Coredbt on DagsterData martstables in BigQueryOrca Semanticsdefinitions and ownersOrcathe AI assistantThe companyeveryone at South PoleOrca Visualsdashboards as codeData Foundation Planthe strategy the executive committee adoptedUNDER EVERY LAYEREnterprise data platformone Terraform estate for the companyData Access Governancegrants with a reason and an audit trailCost Deep Divespend and anomalies on every projectData quality at scaletests and alerts routed to ownersService levelsfreshness and reliability targetsPLANNEDIN BUILD
Owners are named once, in the semantic layer, and access approvals, quality routing and Orca's context all reuse them.

Experience

Seven years across South Pole, Publicis Groupe and WPP.

Full history
  1. Jul 2026 to present

    Associate Director, Data & Insights

    South Pole · London / Remote

    Lead a team of six and own the data platform, marts and reporting stack for the whole company. Set the data strategy the executive committee adopted, and build the systems above with the team.

  2. Mar 2024 to Jul 2026

    Lead Specialist, Data Engineering

    South Pole · London / Remote

    Own the climate-finance data estate: the move to Terraform, governed services that let AI workloads reach sensitive carbon-credit data without breaking access controls, and the first company-wide release of the AI assistant.

  3. Jul 2023 to Mar 2024

    Senior Data Engineer II

    Publicis Groupe, Digitas UK · London

    Cut flagship GCP + Airflow workloads from four hours to two. Built GitHub Actions CI/CD that replaced manual deployments.

Beyond work

Mentoring, a museum archive, and where I studied.

Community

Let's talk.

About building AI systems people actually use, leading data teams, or your data and cloud estate.

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Also available asresume.pdfresume.jsoncv.mdllms.txtstatus.json