Financial Services · Data Warehouse Migration · American Express
Data Warehouse Migration Project Manager Simulation — American Express
Lead a $9.2M Snowflake data warehouse migration for American Express. What looks like a straightforward Teradata-to-Snowflake lift reveals layers of hidden complexity — undocumented Informatica jobs, shadow ETL pipelines, PCI-DSS compliance gaps, and 15 years of legacy technical debt that nobody felt safe surfacing. Navigate the Technical Iceberg across 27 simulated days as the true scope of the migration reveals itself. Gain hands-on project management experience over 27 days of real decisions, stakeholders, and PMO deliverables — no prior experience required.
The scenario
American Express — one of the world's largest financial services companies processing over $1.4 trillion in annual transaction volume — has approved a $9.2M enterprise data warehouse migration from its aging Teradata on-premises infrastructure to Snowflake on AWS. The current Teradata environment has been the backbone of Amex's analytics and reporting for 15 years, supporting everything from fraud detection scoring to regulatory financial reporting, cardholder segmentation, and merchant analytics. The business case is compelling: Teradata licensing costs $3.8M annually, the hardware is approaching end-of-life, and the platform cannot scale to support Amex's growing real-time analytics requirements. Snowflake on AWS offers elastic compute, native support for semi-structured data, and a modern transformation layer (dbt) that replaces the legacy Informatica ETL platform. Deloitte Consulting has been engaged as the implementation partner, with a team of 8 specialists focused on data modeling, pipeline development, and migration execution. The project appears well-scoped: 400 documented Informatica jobs, 4 major data domains (Transaction Processing, Cardholder Analytics, Merchant Services, Financial Reporting), and a 12-month timeline with clear phase gates. But beneath the documented surface lies 15 years of organic growth — undocumented stored procedures, shadow pipelines built by individual teams, schema drift across thousands of tables, and PCI-DSS compliance requirements that were never mapped to a cloud migration approach. You have been brought in as the IT Project Manager to deliver the migration. The technology is proven. The hidden complexity is the project.
What you'll do as the project manager
- →Migrate all four data domains (Transaction Processing, Cardholder Analytics, Merchant Services, Financial Reporting) from Teradata to Snowflake on AWS within the approved timeline and budget
- →Convert 400+ documented Informatica ETL jobs to dbt transformation models with full version control, testing, and documentation
- →Maintain zero disruption to regulatory financial reporting (SOX) and fraud detection systems (PCI-DSS) throughout the migration
- →Enable 200+ analysts to transition from Teradata-connected Tableau/Power BI dashboards to Snowflake-connected equivalents with validated data parity
- →Establish a modern data governance framework with automated data lineage, quality monitoring, and PCI-DSS compliant data masking for cardholder data
Project management skills you'll build
The challenges you'll navigate
- •Legacy complexity underestimation: The Teradata environment has grown organically for 15 years. Self-reported documentation coverage may be incomplete — undocumented stored procedures, ad-hoc ETL jobs, and shadow pipelines could significantly expand the migration scope
- •PCI-DSS compliance in cloud: Migrating cardholder data to a cloud platform requires a fundamentally different compliance architecture. Data masking, encryption at rest, tokenization, and access controls must be redesigned for Snowflake/AWS — this work may not be fully scoped
- •Analyst disruption: 200+ analysts depend on Teradata-connected dashboards for daily operations. Any data discrepancy between legacy and migrated platforms will erode trust and slow adoption
- •Vendor dependency: Deloitte's SOW covers documented systems only. If undocumented complexity surfaces, additional scope and budget will be required — creating a commercial negotiation mid-project
- •Financial reporting continuity: SOX compliance requires unbroken audit trails on financial data transformations. Converting Informatica jobs that feed regulatory reports to dbt carries audit risk if transformation logic is not perfectly replicated
Technology & stakeholders
You'll manage 6 stakeholders, including Ravi Kumar (SVP Technology & Chief Information Officer), Priya Sharma (VP Data Platform Engineering), Tom Fitzgerald (Director of Enterprise Risk & Compliance), and more.
What you'll walk away with
A verified, shareable record of a completed enterprise project — plus the PMO deliverables you produced along the way (charter, project plan, SteerCo deck, closure document). It's real, demonstrable project management experience you can put on your resume and speak to in interviews.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need project management experience to start?
No. This simulation is built for aspiring and practicing project managers alike — you learn by doing. You make real decisions and get feedback, with no PMP or prior PM job required.
How long does this simulation take?
It runs over 27 days, roughly 29 minutes per day, covering the full project lifecycle from initiation to closure.
What will I learn?
You practice the core of project management — stakeholder management, budget and schedule control, risk, scope, and PMO governance — in the context of data warehouse migration in financial services.
Is this based on the real American Express?
It's a realistic scenario inspired by American Express and the Financial Services sector. Details and names are fictionalized for training — it's a simulation, not a record of any actual project.
What do I get at the end?
A verified project completion plus the PMO deliverables you produced (charter, plan, SteerCo deck, closure) — proof of hands-on experience you can show employers.
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