Jon Goldberg
Studied at Quinnipiac College
Hiring Manager at Optimum
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About Jon
I've been the inquisitive kid my whole life. In elementary school, I competed in a robotic firefighting competition, and I never really stopped taking things apart to see how they worked. I studied philosophy in college because I liked chasing why things are the way they are, then fell into a business-analyst job supporting actuaries and underwriters at an insurance company. I turned out to be the person who could solve problems others couldn't, so I followed that thread - teaching myself SQL, then engineering, then how to lead. Eighteen years on I run data and analytics organizations, but I still think like that curious kid trying to make sense of the mess. Outside of work I've got two kids and a bouldering wall in my basement - I climb to think, and there's something about working out the next hold that clears my head. I climbed the career ladder the hard way too, from entry-level analyst to director, mostly self-taught, so I know what it feels like to be a few rungs down looking up and unsure how to get there. That's the person I'm best with. I care more about whether an idea actually helps you than whether it sounds impressive. If you're trying to grow in data and analytics - break in, level up, or make the jump to leading - I've climbed that route, and I'd like to help you find your next hold.
Why do I coach?
My career wasn't shaped by a master plan. It was shaped by a handful of people, and sometimes a single conversation that changed how I think. My first manager pushed me to innovate, and taught me that the real measure of a leader isn't what you can do yourself - it's whether you've built a team that can run without you, through the right frameworks, processes, and a lot of trust. A peer once talked me out of being the hero: sometimes you let something fail so the root cause finally gets fixed, instead of slapping on another bandaid. Another manager got me to take notes and stay organized - a small habit that became one of the things that most sets me apart as a leader and earns people's trust. And the first tech lead I worked with handed me The Pragmatic Programmer and Clean Code and walked me through design patterns and craft - that's when I stopped being a hobbyist and became a practitioner. None of those were big speeches. They were short, generous exchanges that compounded over eighteen years. That's why I coach. The right word at the right moment can change someone's trajectory, and I've been on the receiving end enough times to want to be that person for someone else. If I can save you a few years of learning something the hard way, that's a good day.
Work Experience
Director of Data Governance, Platform and Applications
Optimum
April 2024 - Present
Hiring Manager
I lead a three-domain data portfolio at Optimum: data governance and quality, platform and applications, operational reliability, as well as a dbt Cloud transformation project, delivered by globally distributed teams inside a 150+ person SAFe delivery organization. • Leading the department-wide rollout of agentic AI development tooling (Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Atlassian Rovo) on a persona-based framework, reaching roughly 200 people across data & analytics, with usage standards and core agents. • Set enterprise data engineering standards for the dbt Cloud transformation (Medallion Architecture, testing, CI/CD, reference-data management, Data Modeling). • Deployed an automated data quality framework (dbt and Elementary) that cut data issues 72% and saved 100+ hours a month. • Stood up a reliability function that drove severe incidents to zero, improved MTTR roughly 50%, and holds platform uptime at 100%. • Own FinOps, security, and compliance across the portfolio. Data Governance, Data Engineering and +2 skills
Co-Founder/CDO
Self-Employed
September 2023 - Present
Interviewer
Fractional data leadership for client organizations: strategy, governance, modern platforms, and AI-enabled ways of working. • Cut time-to-insight 80% (two hours to 15 minutes) by architecting a governed single source of truth on a Medallion Architecture (Fivetran, Snowflake, dbt, Tableau). Data Architecture, Data Engineering and +2 skills
Head of Data & Analytics
Upright Real Estate Investing Platform
June 2022 - September 2023
Hiring Manager
Built the data function from the ground up at a fintech (real-estate lending): team, warehouse, and governance. • Captured $2M+ in annual operating value by automating institutional "Trusted Payment" reporting and avoiding significant added headcount. • Cut cloud computing costs 50% while improving pipeline reliability, through data observability and FinOps. • Consolidated 4,000+ scattered legacy reports into 20 governed, domain-focused data products by migrating Metabase to Sigma, giving one trusted source from individual operators up to the board. • Decentralized self-service insight to 30+ business leaders by standing up the Enterprise Data Warehouse (dbt, Snowflake, Python, AWS) and a Data Champions program. • Saved roughly 1,000 employee-hours a month by automating deal reporting (about 30 minutes per deal across ~2,000 monthly deals). Data Engineering, Leadership and +1 skill
Director of Data Analytics
The Hartford
May 2019 - June 2022
Hiring Manager
Led enterprise Analytics (BI and Data Science) Enablement across three teams, supporting 10,000+ users. • Grew Analytics Enablement from a single unit into a 25-person organization that earned the department's highest NPS. • Cut SAS licensing by $685K a year and added new analytics and data-science capabilities by leading a $2M cloud migration for 400+ legacy SAS users through roughly 20 years of institutional resistance, using change management and upskilling. • Saved another $300K a year by migrating on-prem workloads to AWS. • Managed a $10M+ annual budget across nine enterprise platforms, including vendor assessments, contract negotiations, and multi-platform strategy. • Led "Entity Resolution as a Service" on Quantexa, a self-service identity and master-data platform with documented APIs, used across underwriting, marketing, cross-sell, and risk for pricing, decisioning, customer intelligence, and claims and fraud ML. Data Engineering, Data Analysis and +1 skill
BI Data Engineer
The Hartford
July 2016 - May 2019
Interviewer
• Took enterprise self-service analytics from zero to 450 developers and 8,000+ monthly users by building a persona-tailored Tableau framework (Executive, Developer, End User) plus community gamification. • Upskilled 160 developers in Tableau and dashboard design through three cohort-based boot camps. • Unlocked the enterprise MLOps program by rebuilding the partnership with the Data Science department. Business Intelligence and Data Engineering
Data Engineer
The Hartford
January 2015 - July 2016
Data Engineering and Data Analysis
Senior Business Analyst
The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
March 2012 - June 2013
Data Engineering and Data Analysis
Education
Quinnipiac College
Master of Science (MS), Business Analytics
2016 - 2018
Central Connecticut State University
Bachelor of Arts - BA, Philosophy
2005 - 2008