Growing the team: Welcome to our new starters

Butterfly Data grows the way good things often do—organically, through finding the right people at the right time. This year so far, we have welcomed six new team members whose backgrounds span solar physics, cruise ship IT operations, digital forensics, army cadets and at least one Venice-to-Athens cycling adventure. What brings them together is a genuine enthusiasm for data and a belief that the work we do at Butterfly Data matters.

We are pleased to introduce them properly.

Harvey Thomas

Harvey joins us from a background in full-stack application development, having built software across web, desktop and mobile platforms using Microsoft .NET and React. He spent nearly three years at Swansea Council – progressing from GIS application developer apprentice to junior applications developer – before moving into digital forensic analysis at EX1 Digital Forensic Services. His Level 4 IT apprenticeship included a distinction in SQL, and he was head boy of his comprehensive school.

I get satisfaction from taking hard to read data and turning it into something useful.

Harvey is most excited about data engineering and is motivated by the simple but powerful idea of turning hard-to-read data into something genuinely useful for people, not just organisations. When he isn't at work, you can find him watching anime, playing badminton or gaming with his cat Nox close by.

Wildcard fact: Harvey was a Lance Corporal in the Army Cadet Force.

Remy Furtado

Remy brings over 15 years of experience across the insurance, banking and financial services sectors, with a career that has taken him from Henderson Global Investors and AXA PPP Healthcare to Dufrain Consulting, Volante Global and Lockton. He holds a dual master's — including an Erasmus Mundus MSc across three European universities — and certifications from Microsoft, SAS, Databricks and Collibra, among others.

Working for a data consultancy allows me to apply my extensive industry experience to solve complex data challenges while learning continuously and driving business transformation through client partnerships.

His specialisms lie in data governance, data quality and regulatory compliance, and he has a particular talent for translating technical complexity into clear business insight. He is also a current volunteer for his local parish, where he manages everything from Gift Aid administration to the parish website.

Before all of that, Remy spent several years living aboard cruise ships, managing IT operations for vessels sailing through the Caribbean, Alaska, the Mediterranean and across the Panama Canal – an experience that taught him to troubleshoot critical systems under pressure and adapt to constantly changing environments.

Wildcard fact: Remy has overseen onboard technology systems, from point-of-sale to navigational infrastructure, while sailing some of the world's most iconic waterways.

Chris Willcock

Chris joins the Butterfly Data team after six years at EDF Energy, where he progressed from data and technology graduate to senior data engineer. In that time he developed a strong specialism in end-to-end data platform design — building scalable, enduring solutions that balance engineering rigour with real business value. He holds an AWS Associate Developer certification and is expert-level in both Python and MySQL.

His goal at Butterfly Data is to continue developing reusable, best-practice engineering patterns that can serve clients across a range of industries, bringing reliability and discipline to every engagement. Outside of work, Chris solves Rubik's Cubes (currently sub-20 seconds, with a personal best of 14.3 seconds), walks the Malvern Hills, cooks, and games.

I wanted to work in data consultancy to continue to deliver reliable data solutions across a number of different industries and clients, gaining exposure to new and interesting data and business problems.

Wildcard fact: Chris cycled from Venice to Athens with no training whatsoever. He describes this as foolish. We think it is extraordinary.

Daniel Johnson

Daniel comes to Butterfly Data from academia, where his career has been anything but conventional. His PhD at the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute focused on modelling and simulating rotating sunspots using high-performance computing, producing a space weather forecasting model that he presented to audiences ranging from the general public to policymakers at the Houses of Parliament. He went on to work as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of St Andrews, engineering solutions to outstanding research problems in computational physics and collaborating with scientists around the world.

He brings to Butterfly Data a generalist skill set honed across the full technical project lifecycle: data acquisition, engineering, analysis, science and stakeholder delivery. He is a self-described continuous learner who chose data consultancy specifically for the variety of problems it presents.

I find that working on varied projects is the best route to personal development for me, data consultancy offers this variety.

On most Saturdays, Daniel is still actively working on his solar physics research and writing academic papers — because some habits are worth keeping.

Wildcard fact: Daniel is Butterfly Data's most northerly employee.

Louise Palin

Louise arrives with 15 years of experience in team leadership, process optimisation and stakeholder management, with much of it gained at Coleg Llandrillo Rhyl, where she managed operational databases, led financial and procurement processes across curriculum teams, facilitated senior leadership meetings and coordinated learner panels and industry focus groups. She is also a qualified orienteering coach and Level 2 fitness instructor.

She joins Butterfly Data at an exciting point in her own professional journey – developing her technical and agile project management skills as a Scrum master. She is most interested in data quality and approaches every working day by tackling the hardest task first.

I wanted to join Butterfly Data to combine technical problem-solving with strategic business impact — facilitating the transformation of data into actionable insights for clients whilst accelerating my own learning.

When she isn't working or training for endurance events, Louise is spending time with family and friends.

Wildcard fact: Louise can fit in a holdall bag.

Ayub Hassan

Ayub joins our DevOps team, bringing deep expertise in cloud-native infrastructure, Kubernetes, automation and CI/CD. His professional background includes building and maintaining Kubernetes platforms on AWS EKS and Azure AKS, implementing Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and CloudFormation, developing CI/CD pipelines across Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI and leading cloud migrations from on-premise into AWS and Azure. He holds certifications as an AWS Solutions Architect Associate, Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate and HashiCorp Terraform Associate and completed a software development bootcamp with Le Wagon to ground his DevOps instincts in strong engineering fundamentals.

Ayub's ambition is to design and lead large-scale, resilient cloud-native platforms that improve developer experience and operational efficiency at scale, while continuing to bridge the gap between software engineering, DevOps and modern data platforms. He is most interested in data integration and rates his excitement about the work Butterfly Data does at five out of five.

What attracted me to data consultancy was the opportunity to work on technically challenging, large-scale environments where cloud engineering, infrastructure, automation and data platforms directly contribute to solving real operational and business problems.

Outside of work, Ayub plays football, trains in karate, goes to the gym and tutors maths and physics.

Wildcard fact: Ayub holds a black belt in karate.

A team worth growing

Each of these individuals chose Butterfly Data as the place to do their best work. As we continue to grow organically, we do so because we attract people who care about the importance of data, client impact and each other. We are proud of that and we are proud of the team that is building it with us.

You can discover more about our team here. If you are interested in joining or working with us, visit our Join Us page or get in touch.