About

My name is Guy Cutting, and I’m located in Portland, Oregon. I have a master’s degree in Systems Science from Portland State University, and am certified as a Google Cloud engineer. I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for twenty years, and I have a strong sense of place, so that’s why I chose the name Northwest Data Consulting for my business. I get special satisfaction from working with companies in the Portland and wider northwest area.

But dealing with data means being able to work with almost anyone from almost anywhere, and I’m happy to work with organization from across the US and the world. If you feel your company could benefit from improvements in your data culture (and almost all companies can), don’t hesitate to reach out, even if you’re not in the Portland area.

I began my career in tech as a web application and database developer, building applications in ColdFusion and PHP, Microsoft SQL and MySQL. After more than a decade as a developer, I became interested in the emerging field of data science, and went back to school to get my master’s degree. I studied AI, statistical and machine learning, modeling and simulation, operations research, data warehousing, and other related subjects.

After getting my master’s I worked for a while on a contract and consulting basis as a data analyst and scientist. After working on a number of projects, it became clear to me that what a lot of companies really needed to support their data analytics and data science efforts was data engineering, so I shifted focus to that newly emerging area. As a part of that process I studied cloud engineering and got my Google certification.

My biggest takeaway from these years of working with companies’ data is that a lot of organizations are struggling with the quest to become data-driven. Every company wants to get as much actionable insight from their data as they possibly can, but in practice doing so can be very difficult. There are so many tools available, but that very proliferation can lead to overwhelm when trying to set up a data stack for your company.

I’m passionate about helping organizations navigate this process of establishing a modern data culture. My focus is on small and medium-sized businesses that may not have as many resources as enterprise organizations. It used to be that only tech companies focused heavily on their data, but now organizations of all types must embrace putting their data to best use, or they will quickly fall behind.

On a more personal note, I’m a huge jazz fan. See the soundtrack page for some streaming music links to keep you uplifted while you browse this site or go about the rest of your day.

I’m also a writer of poetry, short fiction, and novels. If you’d like to check out my writing, go to www.guydcutting.com. I’m working on editing some material for posting to an online platform, so I’ll post links here when I have them. As a writer, I consider effective communication to be at least as important as any of my technical skills. I hope that this site proves informative for you, even if you choose not to employ me as a consultant.