Fractional Head of Data and AI
Senior data and AI leadership without adding a full-time executive
Many companies have data projects, AI experiments, vendors, and reporting requests moving at the same time. What they are missing is senior leadership connecting those decisions to the business.
Cloud Data Consulting can provide that leadership on a fractional basis, beginning with a defined business area or initiative. We help you decide what matters, establish the architecture and ownership needed to support it, and keep delivery pointed at business outcomes. We work with your executives, operating teams, internal technology staff, and outside vendors, and stay close enough to the implementation to know whether the plan is working.
When This Helps
- Data and AI work is spread across teams without a common direction.
- Executives cannot tell which projects deserve attention or investment.
- Important business definitions differ across systems and reports.
- Vendors are making architectural decisions that no one inside the company owns.
- The company wants to use AI, but its data, governance, security, or operating processes are not ready.
- Engineering work is moving, but the business is not seeing enough value.
- The company needs senior judgment but does not need, or is not ready to hire, a full-time data executive.
The sponsor may be a CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, or another executive responsible for turning data and AI investment into business results. For a private-equity firm, the sponsor may be an operating partner working with a portfolio company that needs experienced data leadership without adding a full-time executive.
What We Do
Align the work
We connect the data strategy to the business strategy. We identify the decisions, workflows, and information that matter most, then establish a practical sequence for addressing them.
Own the architecture
We provide senior judgment across data platforms, integration, modeling, analytics, governance, security, and AI, and help you make sound decisions across internal teams and vendors instead of letting the architecture emerge one project at a time.
Build the foundation for useful AI
We begin with the workflow and the information needed to support it. We help you choose AI opportunities that can create measurable value, define the required data and controls, and keep accountable people involved in the work.
Keep delivery honest
We turn strategy into a roadmap with clear ownership, then review actual delivery against it.
What You Get
- Senior data and AI leadership for the agreed scope.
- A current roadmap tied to business priorities.
- Clear architectural decisions and ownership.
- An independent view across platforms and vendors.
- Regular executive and delivery-team working sessions.
- Risks, dependencies, and pacing items surfaced early.
- Working materials the company can maintain and act on.
Why Cloud Data Consulting
Cloud Data Consulting is founder-led and hands-on. Bernie Pruss has worked in data architecture for more than 30 years, and CDC has led more than 20 Snowflake implementations. That experience is paired with current data engineering, governance, analytics, and AI-assisted delivery practice.
CDC's implementation practice is centered on Snowflake. That focus lets us bring proven architecture, delivery patterns, and judgment to companies already using Snowflake or evaluating it as the foundation for their data and AI work.
When implementation is needed, CDC can provide architecture and engineering directly or work with your existing teams and partners.
The value is not another layer of project management or a larger pool of developers. It is senior judgment connected to working systems.
Start With a Discovery Conversation
We will identify the business area or initiative that matters most and decide together whether a bounded discovery and alignment engagement would be useful.
An ongoing fractional leadership role follows only when you and Cloud Data Consulting agree it will help you execute the roadmap.
Schedule a Discovery Conversation