ABOUT
Jonathan Kini
I help data leaders understand where their BigQuery and Snowflake costs come from, and build the visibility to keep them explainable over time.
The Short Version
If your data platform bills are growing and no one can explain why, you're not alone. That's the pattern I've seen across dozens of teams—and the gap I help close.
I started documenting the patterns I observed. That documentation became a methodology. Now I help data teams see what they've been missing.
I got into this work because too many conversations between engineering and finance end in frustration—and they don't have to.
Background
9+ years building and operating production data platforms. Not advising from the sidelines. Building. Operating. Being on call when things broke.
I've worked with scale-ups growing from Series A to IPO and with enterprise teams juggling legacy ETL alongside modern cloud infrastructure. I've debugged pipelines at 2am, explained to executives why the BigQuery bill jumped 40%, and built the monitoring dashboards that were supposed to prevent both situations.
I've seen dbt projects with hundreds of models nobody remembered, dashboards costing thousands per month opened twice a week, and pipelines running hourly on data that hadn't changed in six months.
Industries: banking, pharma, media, e-commerce—each with its own constraints on compliance, budget, and scale.
What I Learned Along the Way
After enough late nights and enough difficult conversations with Finance, a few things became clear.
Visibility comes before optimization. You can't govern what you can't see. Most teams try to cut costs before they understand where costs come from. That rarely works, and when it does, the gains don't last.
Ownership is the missing layer. Technical fixes without clear accountability don't stick. You can optimize a query, but if nobody owns that dashboard, it'll drift back to its old behavior within months.
Explainability matters more than savings. The goal isn't to reduce costs at all costs. It's to understand where money goes, so you can make informed decisions. Sometimes the right answer is "yes, this costs a lot, and it's worth it."
How I Work
Direct accessNo account managers, no junior consultants. When you have a question, you get an answer from the person who looked at your data.
Business termsTechnical depth is available when you want it, but you won't need to parse consultant-speak to understand what's happening.
Actionable outputNo 50-page reports that sit in a drawer. Prioritized recommendations with clear owners and concrete next steps.
Lasting visibilityA clear path to govern costs as you scale—not just cut them once.
Let's Talk
The best way to start is a 30-minute call. We'll discuss your platform, your current challenges, and whether I can help. No pitch deck. No pressure.