About
Lead Data Analyst / Analytics Engineer — Braga, Portugal.
My name is Rodrigo Ferreira, I build business intelligence solutions on the Microsoft and Databricks stack — pipelines and automation at one end, semantic models and reports at the other. I've been working with all sort of data solution for over a decade now, across Brazil, China and Europe.
I currently consult at Devoteam, delivering Power BI and Microsoft Fabric work for international clients. Before that I modernised reporting at Serasa Experian, and spent nearly four years in southern China building Mous' first data infrastructure from scratch — which is where I learned that the hardest part of analytics is usually not the analytics.
I started in economics and moved sideways into data through spreadsheets, which is why I still think a well-built Excel model deserves more respect than it gets. That detour also turned into Função Excel, a Portuguese-language Excel tutorial site and YouTube channel I ran from 2015 to early 2026 — 140+ articles and an audience of around 18,000 subscribers.
This site is where the English-language version of that habit lives: notes and tutorials on data analysis and data engineering, the projects worth showing, and the cheat sheets I got tired of looking up twice.
What I work with
- Analytics & BI
- Power BI
- DAX
- Power Query (M)
- Semantic models
- Row-level security
- Data modelling
- Databricks AI/BI
- Data engineering
- SQL
- Python
- PySpark
- Spark SQL
- KQL
- ETL / ELT
- Microsoft Fabric
- Lakehouse
- Warehouse
- Object-level security
- Dynamic data masking
- Deployment pipelines
- Data pipelines
- Data governance
- Automation & integration
- Power Automate
- VBA
- REST APIs
- Advanced Excel
Experience
Lead Data Analyst Consultant · Devoteam
Sep 2023 – Present
Lisbon, Portugal / Remote
- End-to-end Power BI and Microsoft Fabric delivery for clients across pharmaceuticals, media, finance, retail and manufacturing.
- Acting tech lead on several projects, and the main point of contact for gathering and shaping client requirements.
- Built internal tooling — C# scripts for Tabular Editor, reusable RLS implementations — that cut manual work and made delivery more consistent.
- Mentored junior analysts and ran knowledge-sharing sessions on Power BI practice, TMDL and GitHub integration.
Senior BI Analyst · Serasa Experian
Apr – Aug 2023
Blumenau, Brazil
- Brought in to modernise the Customer Care area's reporting infrastructure.
- Rebuilt every report as an automated Power BI dashboard, taking refresh time from hours to minutes.
- Automated database extracts and ingestion over REST APIs, removing the manual collection step entirely.
Data Analyst · Mous
May 2019 – Feb 2023
Dongguan, China / Remote
- Hired to build the company's first data and reporting infrastructure from nothing.
- Built a production tracking tool feeding the ERP, which grew to cover several other areas of the business.
- Modelled production cost scenarios in Power BI to support purchasing and pricing decisions.
- Built a Power Apps mobile app for QC inspections on the factory floor, replacing a paper process.
Project Manager — China Market Entry · Lugano Alimentos e Bebidas
Nov 2016 – Aug 2018
Shenzhen, China
- Primary on-the-ground decision-maker between the Brazilian HQ and the China team.
- Ran market research on the Chinese premium food sector and managed the import licensing process.
Sales Information Analyst · Philip Morris International
Mar 2014 – Oct 2016
Porto Alegre, Brazil
- Owned regional sales data and reporting for Rio Grande do Sul, feeding Brazil's national HQ.
- Automated the department's entire sales data process with Excel VBA, cutting manual work and error rates sharply.
Certifications
- Databricks Data AnalystDatabricks · 2026
- DP-700 — Fabric Data EngineerMicrosoft · 2026
- DP-600 — Fabric Analytics EngineerMicrosoft · 2024
- PL-300 — Power BI Data AnalystMicrosoft · 2024
Education
- MSc Information Management — Business Intelligence2023 – 2025
NOVA IMS, Lisbon
- BSc Economics2010 – 2014
UNISINOS, São Leopoldo, Brazil
Languages
- Portuguese Native
- English Fluent
- Spanish Basic
- Mandarin Elementary
Get in touch
I'm available for freelance and contract work: Power BI reports, Fabric or Databricks pipelines, and data engineering builds. If that's something you need, reach out.