Director of BI & Data @ Paystone

I turn data into decisions and ideas into products.

I build data-driven cultures and the products that run on them — from enterprise data lakes to AI-first transformations to the apps I ship on the side.

$70M
Fundraise — led investor KPI reporting
$1.1M
ARR opportunities uncovered
60+
Data sources unified
Anthony Patrick Saoud

/ Selected work

Things I've built.

Data platforms and ML systems that move businesses, plus products I ship on my own time. Same standard either way.

Personal Product · Health + Sport

CrankFuel

In active development

A fueling and nutrition companion built for Type 1 diabetic cyclists — because I am one.

CrankFuel helps endurance cyclists who manage Type 1 Diabetes plan and execute their in-ride fueling: carbohydrate timing, insulin-on-board awareness, and glucose-aware nutrition strategies. It's the tool I always wished existed on long rides — built with safety as a first-class constraint, not an afterthought.

  • Glucose-aware carb and fueling planning for endurance efforts
  • Safety-first design — conservative defaults around insulin and lows
  • Born from the intersection of two things I live: cycling and T1D
React NativeTypeScriptNode.jsAI/ML

Client Product · Web Platform

Nicola Circelli Law

Shipped

A complete refactor and modern rebuild of a law firm's web presence.

A ground-up rebuild of the Nicola Circelli Law website — modern, fast, and maintainable. Designed and shipped on a disciplined workflow: feature branches, pull requests, preview deploys, and a clean handoff. Proof that good engineering hygiene applies whether you're shipping to one client or millions.

  • Full refactor to a modern, performant stack
  • Branch → PR → preview-deploy → merge workflow throughout
  • Backed by Supabase, deployed on Vercel
Next.jsTailwind CSSSupabaseVercel
Nicola Circelli Law homepage hero

Nicola Circelli Law homepage hero

Client reviews section with Google ratings

Client reviews section with Google ratings

Built-in AI legal assistant chat

Built-in AI legal assistant chat

Swipe for screenshots

Personal Product · Field-Service SaaS

FlowFit

In active development

An all-in-one operations platform for home-service businesses — with an AI assistant that runs the back office.

FlowFit (codenamed FluxHammer) is a full SaaS platform for home-service trades like plumbers and HVAC techs — replacing the patchwork of spreadsheets, sticky notes, and missed calls with one system for clients, scheduling, inventory, invoicing, work orders, and reviews. Its standout is an embedded AI assistant that books jobs, drafts client records, and answers questions about the business in plain English.

  • AI assistant (“Poo-Dini”) that schedules jobs and creates clients conversationally
  • Kanban + calendar scheduling, invoicing, inventory, work orders, and reviews in one place
  • Supabase backend with SMS via Twilio and product analytics via PostHog
Next.jsReact 19TypeScriptSupabaseOpenAITwilioVercel
FlowFit business dashboard with KPIs

FlowFit business dashboard with KPIs

Kanban job scheduling board

Kanban job scheduling board

Poo-Dini AI assistant creating a client

Poo-Dini AI assistant creating a client

Swipe for screenshots

Professional · Data Platform

Databricks Lakehouse

Production

A unified lakehouse combining 60+ sources into one source of truth.

I architected Paystone's data foundation — originally a data lake on AWS S3 and Redshift unifying 60+ disparate sources, then consolidated into a Databricks Lakehouse for near real-time streaming and a far stronger MLOps experience. One governed platform that every downstream model, dashboard, and AI agent now runs on.

  • 60+ data sources unified into one governed platform
  • Consolidated onto a Databricks Lakehouse for near real-time streaming & MLOps
  • Unified data and KPIs across the entire organization
  • The foundation every model, dashboard, and agent is built on
DatabricksDelta LakeApache SparkAWS S3RedshiftSQL

Professional · Conversational AI

Genie Conversational AI

Production

Ask the data questions in plain English — no SQL, no waiting on an analyst.

Deployed Databricks Genie on top of the lakehouse to put a natural-language interface on company data. Teams ask questions conversationally and get governed answers back in seconds — self-serve insight at the speed of a sentence, instead of a dashboard request and a two-day wait.

  • Natural-language querying over the Databricks Lakehouse
  • Self-serve answers without writing SQL or waiting on analysts
  • Conversational AI brought to everyday business decisions
DatabricksGenieUnity CatalogLLMsSQL

Professional · Agentic AI

Agentic AI Frameworks

Production

Production AI agents — from pre-sales research to RAG-powered support.

Designer and builder of Paystone's agentic AI frameworks, with two agents in production. A pre-sales research agent profiles a prospect end-to-end before every call, saving reps roughly an hour each. A technical knowledge-base agent does retrieval over Databricks Vector Search (RAG) and is served flexibly — via MCP, a Databricks App, or directly inside Salesforce chat.

  • Pre-sales research agent — full prospect discovery, ~1 hour saved per call
  • Technical knowledge-base retrieval (RAG) on Databricks Vector Search
  • Served anywhere: MCP, a Databricks App, or Salesforce chat
  • Core to Paystone's AI-first transformation
Databricks Vector SearchRAGMCPLLMsSalesforcePython

Professional · Machine Learning

Google Review Propensity Model

Production

An XGBoost model predicting which customers are likely to leave a Google review.

Built a gradient-boosted (XGBoost) model that scores each customer's probability of leaving a Google review. It lets the business concentrate review-generation effort exactly where it's most likely to convert — turning behavioral signals into measurable online-reputation growth.

  • XGBoost model scoring review-likelihood per customer
  • Focuses review-generation effort where it actually converts
  • Turns behavioral signals into reputation growth
PythonXGBoostScikit-LearnPandasDatabricks

Professional · BI & Reporting

Looker Deployment

Production

One reporting layer to consolidate every metric across the company.

Rolled out Looker as Paystone's company-wide reporting standard — consolidating metrics that had been scattered across tools and teams into one governed layer. A single, trusted definition of every KPI, consistent across the whole organization.

  • Company-wide reporting standard on Looker
  • Consolidated metrics across every team into one layer
  • Governed, consistent KPI definitions org-wide
LookerLookMLDatabricksBigQuerySQL

Professional · Internal Tooling

AI Resume Screening Tool

Internal

An internal tool that saves hours of manual candidate screening.

Built an internal resume-screening tool to take the grind out of shortlisting candidates — saving the hiring team hours per role while keeping a human in the loop for the decisions that matter. A small, practical example of pointing ML at the boring problems.

  • Automated first-pass candidate screening
  • Hours saved per role, human-in-the-loop by design
  • Practical ML applied to real operational friction
PythonScikit-LearnPandasNLP

/ Career

The path so far.

A decade of turning analytics into strategy — and increasingly, into shipped product.

May 2021 — Present

Paystone

Director of BI & Data

Current

Insights & Analytics Division

  • Led KPI compilation and investor-facing reporting through the company's $70M fundraise — owning the data investors evaluated and fielding their questions directly. The raise led to the acquisition of NiceJob.
  • Lead a team of 6 — data engineers, analysts, and scientists — organized into domain-based, full-stack pods.
  • Uncovered $1.1M in ARR opportunities within COGS.
  • Deployed Databricks to consolidate data engineering pipelines, enabling near real-time streaming and a stronger MLOps experience.
  • Deployed Looker as the internal reporting tool and FormaAI for residuals and compensation payouts.
  • Unified data and KPIs across the organization and companies onto one platform.
  • Built a culture of idea-based meritocracy — zero attrition since the team's inception.
  • Leading Paystone's AI-first transformation.

Aug 2019 — May 2021

Paystone

Insights & Analytics Manager

Insights & Analytics Division

  • Built Paystone's data lake on AWS S3 and Redshift, combining 60+ data sources.
  • Built a neural network for early detection of customer churn.
  • Built intuitive dashboards and visualizations to help the business grow.
  • Built a data-driven culture — moving the org from "I think" to "I know".
  • Acted as a consultant to the business, helping shape successful strategies.
  • Built a resume-screening tool to save hours selecting candidates.

May 2018 — Aug 2019

3M

Marketing Manager

Industrial & Safety Markets

  • Owned the strategy for the industrial and safety verticals.
  • Led the cross-selling initiative to drive cross-division engagement.
  • Created the One 3M Sales Guide to enable distributor reps to sell more 3M.

Oct 2014 — May 2018

3M

Product Owner

Business Insights & Analytics

  • Product Owner for the B2B team, leading and setting the strategy for success.
  • Coached 3M Korea, 3M Brasil, and 3M Sweden on analytics best practices to replicate Canadian success.

/ Toolkit

From model weights to managing people.

Full-stack range — comfortable in a notebook, a data warehouse, a React codebase, and a 1:1.

Data & ML

PythonTensorFlowScikit-LearnPandasNumPyApache SparkDatabricksBig Data

Data Platform & BI

AWSGCPRedshiftSQLLookerPower BIExcelSalesforce

Engineering

TypeScriptJavaScriptReact.jsNode.jsExpress.jsMongoDBMongooseAPIsHTML / CSSGit

Leadership

People ManagementCoachingStrategyConsultingScrumBuilding TrustCommunication

/ About

Data leader. Relentless builder.

I'm a data and BI leader who never stopped being a builder. By day I lead Business Intelligence & Data at Paystone, where I've grown a domain-based, full-stack team and steered the company's AI-first transformation. I led the KPI reporting that anchored our $70M fundraise — the data investors leaned on, and the questions I answered — which led to the acquisition of NiceJob.

But I don't just present numbers — I ship. I've built data lakes from sixty-plus sources, trained neural networks to catch customer churn before it happens, and on nights and weekends I build full products: a nutrition app for Type 1 diabetic cyclists, a modern web platform for a law firm, and whatever problem is bugging me next.

My north star is simple: move organizations from "I think" to "I know" — and make the experience of getting there genuinely delightful.

⛷️

Ski Racing

Racing with the London Ski Club (LSC).

🚴

Endurance Cycling

Team member with ESP Cycling — and the reason CrankFuel exists.

🤝

Board Service

Former Vice Chair, Family Service Thames Valley (2019 — 2021).

🌍

Trilingual

Fluent in English, French, and Arabic.

Education

  • M.Sc.Econ., International Finance

    University of Galway, Ireland

    2013 — 2014

  • H.Dip. in Economics

    University of Galway, Ireland

    2012 — 2013

  • B.S. in Economics

    Lebanese American University

    2009 — 2012

Certifications & Accreditations

Academy Accreditation — AI Agent Fundamentals

Databricks · Feb 2026

Academy Accreditation — Databricks Lakehouse Fundamentals

Databricks · Nov 2022 — Nov 2023

Databricks Lakehouse Fundamentals

Databricks · Nov 2022 — Nov 2023

The Complete 2022 Web Development Bootcamp

Udemy · Aug 2022

JavaScript (Basic)

HackerRank

SQL (Advanced)

HackerRank · Apr 2022

SQL (Intermediate)

HackerRank · Apr 2022

SQL (Basic)

HackerRank · Apr 2022

Python for Data Science & Machine Learning Bootcamp

Udemy · Dec 2020

Certified Scrum Product Owner

Scrum Alliance · Sep 2017 — Sep 2019

/ Contact

Let's build something.

Whether it's a data problem worth solving, a product worth shipping, or just a good conversation — my inbox is open.

Say hello