December 01, 2025
Nobody Owns the Data Warehouse (And That’s Why It’s Broken)
“Who should I talk to about getting this data into the warehouse?”
I’ve heard this question at every biotech company I’ve worked with. The answer is usually a long pause followed by “Well… it depends.”
The Ownership Vacuum
Here’s what happens when nobody owns the data warehouse:
- Scientists add tables without documentation because “it’s just for my team”
- Engineers build pipelines that only they understand
- The warehouse becomes a junkyard of unmaintained datasets
- Nobody knows what’s safe to delete
- Everyone’s afraid to change anything
The data warehouse becomes everyone’s responsibility, which means it’s nobody’s responsibility.
Why This Kills Series A Companies
You just raised Series A. Your team doubled. Suddenly:
- New scientists can’t find the data they need
- The same analysis exists in five different places
- Pipeline failures cascade because nobody understands dependencies
- Your technical team spends 40% of their time answering “where is X?” questions
The infrastructure you built for 10 people doesn’t work for 30.
The Missing Role
The solution isn’t hiring another data engineer. It’s establishing data stewardship.
Someone needs to:
- Define what belongs in the warehouse (and what doesn’t)
- Establish naming conventions and documentation standards
- Review new additions for conflicts and redundancy
- Sunset deprecated datasets
- Be the single point of contact for data architecture decisions
This doesn’t have to be a full-time role at Series A. But it needs to be someone’s explicit responsibility.
What Good Ownership Looks Like
At one company, we designated a senior scientist as the data steward. She spent about 8 hours a week on it:
- Weekly office hours for data questions
- Monthly warehouse reviews to identify tech debt
- Approval process for new table additions
- Quarterly documentation sprints with the team
Result: The warehouse went from chaos to actually useful. Scientists could find their data. The engineering team stopped being the bottleneck.
The Question
Does anyone at your company have “data warehouse ownership” in their job description?
If not, you’ve found your first bottleneck.
