Jaco van der Laan

Services

We choose the patterns, prove them, and build them together.

Senior, focused engagements — not a seat to fill or sprints to run. Together we choose the right patterns; I prototype them to prove they work; we build them with your team, documenting as we go — so the knowledge stays with you. No drop-and-leave, no handover gap.

Transfer-by-design. We choose the patterns and build them together, documenting as we go — so the knowledge lives in your team from day one. No drop-and-leave, no handover gap.

Demo-driven. I run regular demos — typically every two weeks — turning progress into clear visuals everyone can follow, keeping business and engineers aligned and surfacing issues early. I do it to set the example: the aim is for the team to pick up the habit and present their own work the same way. The demo rhythm becomes the team’s, not mine.

Four engagement types: assess, build, advise, teach — priced as engagements, not days
Four ways to work together — assess, build, advise, teach.

Architecture & readiness assessment fixed scope

A scoped review of your data and AI foundation: is it structured, validated, governed — ready to build reliable AI on? You get a clear report and a roadmap.

  • Where structure, rules and validation are missing
  • What’s reliable today and what only looks reliable
  • A prioritised path to a foundation you can trust

Foundation sprint / build engagement

Hands-on design of the structure, rules and validation layer that makes AI reliable for your context. Time-boxed, focused, transfer-oriented.

  • The rules and classification layer (the wedge)
  • The validation / plausibility loop that checks output
  • Built with your team so it stays with your team

Advisory / sounding board retainer

Senior architecture and governance guidance for a leadership or data-product team. On-call thinking partner for the decisions that matter.

  • Architecture and governance direction
  • Build-vs-buy and tool decisions (foundation first, tools follow)
  • A trusted second opinion when the stakes are high

Masterclass / in-company workshop per day

The structure-beats-magic approach and the smart-teams operating model, taught to your team — with your data, not a generic deck.

  • Structure + Data + AI + Rules → Intelligence, applied
  • How smart teams work when structure carries the context
  • The skills your people actually need next

On rates

I price engagements, not days.

A day-rate turns senior work into a line item. I’d rather understand what you’re trying to achieve and propose an engagement that fits the value — fixed scope where it makes sense, a retainer where it doesn’t.

The honest first step is a conversation. If it’s a fit, you’ll get a clear proposal. If it isn’t, I’ll tell you that too.

How it works

How an engagement starts.

1 · A conversation

We talk through what you’re trying to build and what’s already in place. No charge, no obligation — and an honest answer on whether I’m the right fit.

2 · A clear proposal

If it’s a fit, you get a scoped engagement — what we’ll do, what you’ll have at the end, and how long it takes. Usually a focused few weeks, not an open-ended placement.

3 · We build it together

We choose the patterns, prove them, and build them with your team — documented as we go, with regular demos. The knowledge stays with you.

Start the conversation

Expertise

The domains I work in.

25 years and 230+ published articles, organised into the areas I actually work in. Each is a thread I’ve thought through in depth, in public.

Layered data architecture: source to integration to delivery, metadata-driven across every layer
The backbone of most of my work: source → integration → delivery, metadata-driven throughout.

Architecture & modeling

Data architecture, metadata-driven engineering, business-oriented & Data Vault / bi-temporal modeling.

SQL & quality

SQL migration & regression testing, deterministic generation & parsing, data quality & governance.

AI & visualization

Reliable AI through rules, plus diagrams from metadata — yEd, draw.io, PowerDesigner, erwin.

Explore the full body of expertise →

For teams — a new way of working

The meeting is just the merge.

When structure carries the context, your team stops spending meetings on catch-up. People arrive prepared, the meeting shrinks to judgement, and plans, retros and summaries are generated — and validated — underneath.

Ceremony-driven vs structure-driven teams — the meeting becomes the merge of prepared material
Less ceremony, more deep work and sharper decisions — the human at the wheel, structure underneath.

Tell me what you’re building.

A few questions, an honest answer about whether I’m the right person.

Get in touch