Shabbir Mala

Principal & Delivery Lead, Data and Analytics

Shabbir is a senior data and analytics leader with more than 25 years in consulting. He builds and leads teams of data engineers that design and deliver enterprise-scale data platforms, analytics, and AI. At Rockhop, Shabbir leads delivery for the Data and Analytics group. He works with clients to turn complex business problems into scalable, data-driven solutions they can act on.

About Shabbir

AI & Agentic AI Leader

25+ years of experience

Fabric, Azure & Databricks Expert

Shabbir has spent his career in data and analytics, leading teams and building the platforms clients run their reporting and AI on. Senior architecture, practice leadership, and delivery director roles have taken him from hands-on BI and data architecture to managing entire practices and large delivery teams. His mix of skills means he knows both the technical build and how to run an effective engagement.

His work covers everything from data strategy to the platforms and analytics teams use every day, so it ends up as something the business can act on. Microsoft named him a FastTrack Recognized Solution Architect for Power Platform and Power BI in 2021 and 2022. He is also a Microsoft Certified Fabric Analytics Engineer and Azure AI Engineer, and holds Databricks accreditations in Lakehouse fundamentals, platform architecture, and generative AI.

Area(s) of Expertise:

Enterprise data platform design and delivery
Microsoft Azure, Fabric and Databricks data solutions
AI and agentic AI capabilities
Data engineering team leadership and mentoring
Pre-sales, solution strategy and delivery management
Executive and technical stakeholder relationships

Public Contributions

Speaking

Power BI Summit (2021): Power BI Administration
BizzSummit (2021): Understanding the Complete Power BI Lifecycle
Microsoft Synapse and Power BI World Tour, Houston (2021)
Power BI World Tour, Dallas (2022)

Publications

SQL Query Design Patterns and Best Practices: A practical guide to writing readable and maintainable SQL queries (co-author)

Shabbir's Insights

Medallion Architecture: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and How to Implement It

Medallion Architecture organizes lakehouse data into three layers. Bronze holds raw source data. Silver holds cleaned, validated records. Gold holds business-ready, aggregated datasets. Some builds add a fourth Raw tier in front of Bronze for messy, multi-format sources.