Summary
Aaron Phethean is a founder and CEO with over two decades of experience building large-scale data platforms and products used by over a billion people and trusted by thousands of companies, including 41 of the world’s top 50 banks. He founded Matatika (formerly Meltano) to free data teams from vendor lock-in, cutting ETL costs by 30–60% while enabling zero-risk migrations through a parallel “Mirror Mode” approach. His background spans hands-on engineering, product leadership and platform launches at Temenos, where he led cloud, DevOps and marketplace initiatives, giving him rare empathy for both engineers and procurement. Aaron is committed to open-source-by-default and ethical, performance-based pricing—practical principles that shape his product and community work, including a podcast that surfaces real-world lessons for data leaders. He combines entrepreneurial grit with deep product and systems experience, and often frames cost and migration problems as design challenges rather than purely technical ones.
13 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Information Technology, Information Technology at TAFE Queensland