Reclaiming Data Engineering Time: Sightline Payments Optimizes Snowflake with Keebo
Selecting and Implementing Keebo with Confidence
Cooperman led the search for a solution to optimize Snowflake warehouses and discovered Keebo through a Google search. “Keebo really stood out to me. I read case studies online about how much it could save and its ease of use. I also found the licensing structure to be very fair.”
The team evaluated Keebo to ensure it met their security requirements.
“One of our key concerns was access to sensitive data. We needed to ensure that Keebo would not have access, and it doesn’t. Keebo only accesses metadata, which we liked.”
Sean Cooperman, Director of Data Engineering
Sightline Payments
True to Keebo’s promise of simplicity, Sightline was able to implement Keebo quickly. “The documentation from Keebo is very well structured. The onboarding process allowed us to create a script internally and was mostly point-and-click. Within 10 minutes, we were up and running.”
The team soon realized that Keebo required minimal effort to maintain. “In the beginning, I would log in to make sure Keebo was doing its job. Now, I log in once or twice a month.”
Achieving Efficiency and Governance
With Keebo, the Sightline team gained efficiency and control. Its autonomous optimization quickly identified misconfigured warehouses and allowed the team to leverage auto-suspend, resulting in better uptime. Keebo also eliminated manual tuning errors and established a unified governance layer, keeping Sightline’s optimization logic consistent, auditable, and scalable.
“Recently, our analysts were running queries that were not optimal, and thanks to Keebo, we were able to find the queries and fix them quickly with minimal data engineering effort. Keebo autonomously identifies what is wrong and provides the extra profiling we didn’t have before.”
Reclaiming Time and Accelerating Data Initiatives
Reflecting on his goal to free up data engineering time, Cooperman noted:
“Time is money. We used to spend 15 hours a week on manual optimization. With Keebo, you can install it and forget it. You don’t really need to touch it. It makes my life easier. If we didn’t have Keebo, I would need to hire additional resources to monitor Snowflake.”
By reclaiming those 15 hours a week, Sightline’s data engineering team was able to accelerate the company’s Medallion Architecture, focusing on the Bronze, Silver, and Gold data layers. This shift from constant warehouse monitoring to designing data flow became the primary driver of Sightline’s increased data reliability. The reclaimed bandwidth also enabled the implementation of a Data Mesh framework, empowering departments like Marketing and Operations to act as true data owners rather than waiting on a centralized engineering bottleneck.
Reinvesting Savings to Fund Innovation
Since 2023, Sightline has saved an average of 30-40% annually on Snowflake costs. These sustained savings have created headroom for innovation, enabling the team to invest in new initiatives without increasing the overall budget.
“Keebo savings have freed up Snowflake credits that can be used for marketplace purchases and other Snowflake partner tools. The reclaimed credits have effectively funded our AI/ML exploration, including Snowflake Cortex. Our invoice for Keebo pays for itself with the credits we have saved.”
These results mark a significant milestone in Sightline’s FinOps for Data Clouds journey, helping the company move from reactive budgeting to a proactive model where it can measure unit economics by department.
Advice for Data Engineering Teams
Drawing on his experience with Keebo, Cooperman shares advice for teams that may be skeptical about automated warehouse optimization:
“I was skeptical at first about it, too, but I would encourage people to definitely give it a try. Within three weeks of implementation, we were able to see the immediate impact. We had really great support. Our Keebo Customer Success Manager helped ensure we had the right balance on our settings and shared valuable information about how the solution works. The personal client touch made a real difference.”