Geoff Black

I am a Principal Data Architect and consultant with more than thirty years designing and modernising enterprise data platforms, across both government and private sector organisations.

My work focuses on helping organisations move from fragmented legacy analytics environments toward modern lakehouse architectures capable of supporting advanced analytics, AI and real-time decision intelligence. In practice that is as much an organisational problem as a technical one. A target-state diagram is easy; getting an organisation to agree on ownership, funding and sequencing is the work.

I combine hands-on technical expertise with consulting experience: facilitating architecture workshops, guiding platform strategy, and helping teams scale platforms they can still operate once the consultants have gone. I trade through Aurora Data, a specialist practice based in Brisbane and working with organisations across Australia.

What I work on

• Enterprise data platform architecture and target-state design
• Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services and Azure Databricks
• Lakehouse architecture and modern analytics platforms
• Data governance, lineage and platform operating models
• Performance tuning and database solution design
• AI-ready data foundations

Selected work

Electoral Commission of Queensland, 2024 State General Election

I led the architecture and delivery of the Electoral Commission of Queensland's near real-time analytics platform supporting the 2024 Queensland State General Election. Built on Microsoft Fabric, the platform enabled operational decision-making while polling was live.

Under live election conditions there is no maintenance window and no second attempt. The platform had to be correct, available and fast at the same time, on a day that could not be rescheduled and would be examined afterwards in public.

Read the full case study

Certification and instruction

I have held Microsoft Certified Trainer accreditation for thirty years. Complex architecture has to be explained before it can be agreed to, and explaining it well is a separate skill from designing it. Alongside architecture work I deliver SQL Server training, technical instruction and curriculum development, and engagements routinely finish with a team that can carry the platform themselves.