About Us
Data Vanguards is where data meets design-thinking and first principles engineering. Born from the world of product development, our approach merges design thinking, software engineering, and data science to create impactful data products.
We’ve seen that while data is often considered a valuable asset, it can often act as a liability—underutilised, costly to store and secure, and burdened by compliance with privacy laws. Drawing on our extensive experience across diverse industries, we help businesses shift their perspective to embrace a data product mindset, turning data into a strategic asset.
Our product-driven mindset is at the heart of every project, ensuring that our solutions are customer-focused, value-driven, and rooted in first-principles engineering. Our capabilities span data strategy, product design, data engineering, data science, and application development. This makes us the ideal partner for businesses looking to leverage data as a strategic advantage with without being bound to a niche technical stack.
With Data Vanguards, your data journey is guided by clarity, passion, and a commitment to excellence. Our customers often talk about how we’ve helped them adapt and thrive by adopting a data product mindset.
Our Story
Data Vanguards was born at the intersection of product development, consulting expertise, and hands-on building experience. Our founder, Lee, has had a career that spans the entire technology stack—from app development and DevOps to cloud engineering, data science, and data engineering. Throughout his journey, working with a wide variety of businesses and industries, Lee noticed a common struggle: while data is often hailed as the "new oil," many organizations find it difficult to refine that data into actionable and valuable insights.
Instead, they’re often burdened by the cost of storing and exploring data, while also navigating the complexities of compliance with privacy laws and industry regulations. This gap is what inspired Lee to create Data Vanguards—to help businesses turn their data from a costly liability into a strategic advantage.
Inspired by product-based design thinking and driven by a passion for data, Lee began to formulate a new approach. Data Vanguards is more than just a consultancy; it's a partner in innovation. We guide our clients from ideation to operational excellence, ensuring that every step of the journey is purposeful, incremental, and aligned with long-term success.
Our Founder
Lee Mc Donald is a seasoned technologist with deep roots in data and over a decade of experience spanning software engineering, application development, DevOps, Data Engineering, Data Science and technical advisory work.