“We’re all-in on the platform,” Simon Whiteley said of Databricks in August 2026, after Databricks Ventures invested in his firm (founders’ interview). He is the chief technology officer and a co-founder of Advancing Analytics, a data and AI consultancy in London, England (investment announcement).
Building Analytics on Microsoft Azure
He spent more than 13 years as a solution architect and technical lead on Microsoft analytics before joining the firm. Terry McCann, who had worked with him for three years, credited him with designing many of the frameworks used to extract, transform, and load data in the cloud, and with working for most of the major Azure customers in the UK (company announcement).
He founded and ran the SQL Surrey user group and later ran the Microsoft Data User Group in London, which had more than 1,200 members by 2019 (company announcement).
Joining Advancing Analytics in 2019
He joined in May 2019 as director of engineering and a part owner, six months after the firm started, to grow its engineering team (company announcement). He now leads its technology as CTO (founders’ interview).
Teaching Databricks in Public
He is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and a Databricks MVP and runs Advancing Spark, the firm’s video series on Databricks (Sessionize). The firm’s YouTube channel passed 50,000 subscribers in October 2026 (company news).
His conference sessions include “What’s wrong with the Medallion Architecture?”, in which he says companies often regret how they layer a data lake once the layers are hard to change (Sessionize).