Data mesh, implemented in code
Each domain owns its dbt project, its models, tests and owners. The platform holds the standards: one catalog, one lineage, one set of controls that every domain inherits. A data mesh built in dbt and Iceberg rather than in slides, so the guardrails are in the build, where drift is caught.
Where you are
Central data teams become the bottleneck; domain teams go around them and the estate drifts: three definitions of a customer, no owner for the table the regulator asks about, lineage that ends at the team boundary. The mesh papers describe the fix as an operating model. Operating models do not catch a broken contract at 2 a.m.
How the engagement runs
Domains own repositories
Each domain or department has its own dbt project: its models, its tests, its owners and descriptions in the model YAML. Producers publish Iceberg tables; consumers read them by reference instead of rebuilding the producer's logic.
The platform owns the standards
Naming, test coverage, ownership fields and classification are enforced in CI on every project. A product without an owner or without key tests does not build.
One lineage, one catalog
Lineage is stitched across all repositories and engines from their own manifests, with the cross-engine and cross-repository edges counted. Discovery and audit have one place to look, however many teams there are.
Federated computational governance
Access, privacy and compliance checks run in the platform and apply to every domain the same way. Domains innovate inside the guardrails; the guardrails are code.
Already built
- ●Our own estate runs as independent producer and consumer dbt repositories on a shared Iceberg lake, with lineage stitched centrally and the cross-engine edges counted on every build.
- ●A real-time producer (Kafka → Iceberg) consumed independently by a batch engine and a real-time engine, each as its own repository.
- ●Ownership, tests and descriptions carried in dbt YAML and rendered into the lineage and governance views.
A formal data-contract specification beyond dbt tests and ownership fields, and self-service domain onboarding in the console, are on the roadmap and stated as such.
What you bring
- ●A view of your domains and who owns what
- ●Existing dbt projects, or the SQL to make them
- ●The standards you must enforce (regulatory, privacy, naming)