About
Why Data Outfit exists.
I'm Alex Silva. I spend my time on data-platform problems that are consequential enough to matter and bounded enough that a permanent hire would be the wrong tool.
I've spent fifteen-plus years inside companies where the data plane is the product: Zillow, Kin, Pluralsight, Kustomer, Disney/ESPN, and a few before that. I have designed the architecture, written the code, carried the pager, and sat in the room when the CFO asked why the bill looked the way it did. I don't enjoy one of those more than the others.
Most of the data-platform decisions that actually matter happen between org boundaries: architecture, infrastructure, streaming, analytics, cost, and migration. That is where I work. I'm equally comfortable in a design review with a principal engineer and in an executive readout with a CFO, and I don't think those should require two different people.
I also have an MBA from UCF, which mostly means I can sit with a CEO or a CFO without turning into a different person. Data Outfit is me, on purpose. It is a founder-led practice, not a firm with a bench or a partner logo wall. If the work needs a squad of contractors or a full-time executive, I will tell you that directly and point you somewhere useful.
I take on the problems that are bounded but expensive to get wrong: a migration with one real shot at sequencing, an architecture that has outgrown its assumptions, a metric that means three things depending on who you ask. I prefer that kind of work, because it is where senior judgment materially changes the outcome, rather than just adding a signature to a decision someone already made.
“If you cannot explain the tradeoff to the people funding it, the architecture is not done.”
Inside
Kustomer · Kin · Zillow · Pluralsight · Rackspace · Disney/ESPN
MBA
University of Central Florida
15+
years building data platforms
10-50+
engineers led per organization
What colleagues say
People who have worked with me, in their own words. The rest are on LinkedIn.
“Throughout the process, Alex demonstrated vast technical acumen, visionary leadership, and a commitment to continuous learning, which ultimately resulted in one of the most diligent evaluations I've experienced in my entire career. From the start, it was clear that Alex is proactive when attacking challenges, finding solutions, and setting his teams up for success.”
“I tapped Alex to be the primary architect for the technical underpinnings of a transformational data infrastructure project. Alex was never afraid to dive into incredibly big, complex and technically challenging projects... He was a strong evangelist, educating and communicating with stakeholders across the company.”
Talks and writing
Selected conference talks on the systems behind this work.
- Designing a reactive real-time data platform
Reactive Summit · 2017
- Designing a reactive data platform: challenges, patterns, and antipatterns
O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference · 2016
- Designing a scalable real-time data platform using Akka, Spark Streaming, and Kafka
Strata + Hadoop World · 2016
Operating beliefs
How I decide what to recommend.
Not marketing copy. Just the beliefs behind the advice.
- 01
The hard part is never the technology choice.
- 02
A metric defined in three places is not defined.
- 03
A platform you cannot afford is a platform you will dismantle.
- 04
Migrations succeed on sequencing, not tooling.
- 05
Governance that stops at the gold layer is incomplete.
- 06
If nobody owns it, it is already broken.
- 07
Advice you cannot implement is not advice.
Have a hard data-platform problem?
Tell me what is happening. I reply within 48 hours.