Ryan Bosshart

Ryan Bosshart is co-founder and chief executive of phData, a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based firm that builds data platforms and AI systems for large companies, much of it on Snowflake. He was an original investor when the company launched in 2015, joined its team in 2017 and became CEO in 2018.

Early Data Work at Thomson Reuters

Bosshart holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Augsburg College and has designed and built large-scale distributed systems since 2006. In the early 2000s he worked at Thomson Reuters alongside Adam Fokken and the brothers Mac and Brock Noland, the group that would go on to start phData, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported.

Hadoop Storage Work at Cloudera

Before joining phData full time he was a principal sales engineer at Cloudera, the Hadoop software company, where he led a specialized team focused on storage technologies such as HDFS, HBase and Kudu. He co-chaired the Twin Cities Spark and Hadoop User Group and spoke about Hadoop at conferences across North America.

Joining phData as Vice President of Services

phData appointed him vice president of services in August 2017, a new position that reported to the board, when the firm described itself as a big data consulting and managed services company. In the announcement, Bosshart said the software services industry "has underperformed when it comes to delivering results for customers," and called phData "an engineering-first company focused on delivering results in the areas of Cloud and Hadoop." He became chief executive the next year, the same year Arthur Ventures, a Minneapolis venture firm, invested $2.5 million.

Acquiring Tessellation in 2021

phData generated more than $21 million in sales in 2020, Bosshart told the Star Tribune in early 2022. In November 2021 it acquired Tessellation, a Minneapolis analytics consulting firm, along with its Data Coach learning platform, bringing the combined company to about 280 employees. "We're at the beginning of a long-term trend," he said. "We're in this for the long term and building a long-term company here."

Moving Clients From AI Pilots to Production

In August 2026 phData announced expanded work with Snowflake on governed AI agents, analytics modernization and faster migrations, built around Snowflake's Cortex AI and CoCo tools. "Enterprise AI leaders will be the companies that move fastest from experimentation to production," Bosshart said in the announcement, adding that phData's 3-2-1 GO delivery framework had cut its delivery times by 80%. The firm says it has completed nearly 750 Snowflake consulting engagements, and Snowflake recognized it as its 2026 AI Partner of the Year.