Robert Macpherson-Webster

Data Engineer & Scientist | Bringing research rigour to real-world data problems

Greater Melbourne Area

About

Data engineer and scientist with a PhD in Materials Physics and a track record of solving complex data challenges for robust, production-grade platforms. I bring the analytical rigour of a research background to every stage of the engineering lifecycle - from scoping requirements with stakeholders to delivering scalable pipelines and actionable outcomes. Over the past five years, I've worked across energy, financial services, education and startups, leading teams and delivering platforms on Databricks and AWS. Recent work spans emissions reporting for Net-Zero Banking Alliance compliance, reporting on fault identification and DER services for electricity metering providers, and AI/data maturity assessments for continuing education institutions.

Experience

  • Lead Data & AI Consultant at OneStep Group
    May 2025 - Present · 1 yr 2 mos

  • NCS Group Australia (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia · Hybrid)
    • Manager Consultant Data Engineer
      Jul 2024 - May 2025 · 11 mos

      Client Engagements: - Data Technical Lead - Climate Data & Insights, Financial Services Client, 07/2024- 05/2025

    • Senior Consultant Data Engineer
      Apr 2023 - Jul 2024 · 1 yr 4 mos

      Client Engagements: - Data Technical Lead, Financial Services Client, 09/2023 - 07/2024 - Senior Data Engineer, Financial Services Client, 04/2023 - 09/2023

  • Consultant Data Engineer at Thoughtworks
    Sep 2022 - Mar 2023 · 7 mos

    As a data engineer in the Data & AI Service, I work across a range of fields and technologies including: - Generative AI - Sustainable technology - Privacy enhancing technologies - Large language models - Data mesh - TinyML

  • R3 IoT Limited (Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom · Hybrid)
    • Lead Data Engineer
      Jan 2022 - Aug 2022 · 8 mos

      As lead data engineer, I focused on developing processes for R3's analytics and data science workloads. As part of these efforts, I started a small, on-prem k8s cluster for machine learning experiment tracking (MLOps) and also established analysis and reporting workflows on AWS using serverless offerings to track data usage of deployed products. I also had the opportunity in this role to develop an open-source C# .NET library for monitoring microservices with Vigil.

    • Data Engineer
      Dec 2020 - Jan 2022 · 1 yr 2 mos

      In this role, I worked across the entire tech stack of the business, working with software engineers to devise solutions for data analysis pipelines, API & Data Warehouse design, embedded linux firmware, encryption & security.

  • Data Scientist - S2DS Fellow at Science to Data Science
    Aug 2020 - Sep 2020 · 2 mos

    Collaboration with the Ditchley Foundation as part of part of S2DS project-based data science course hosted by Pivigo. We delivered a toolkit for the Ditchley Foundation which uses graph database technology and NLP topic modelling to discover domain experts who are influential on social media. The final product had a success rate >90% for identifying relevant twitter accounts.