Zeelo is a leading smart transportation platform that provides tech-enabled passenger shuttles as a service for employers and schools. With operations across multiple countries and tens of thousands of daily passengers relying on efficient routing and scheduling, Zeelo depends on robust data infrastructure to support critical business decisions and deliver exceptional transportation experiences.

Results

• 5X faster development cycles with deployment time reduced from ~4 hours to ~5 minutes

• Months without pipeline failures compared to weekly failures previously

• Major cost savings achieved through eliminated Cloud Composer costs and reduced processing waste

• Strategic transformation enabling team to shift with confidence from reactive data requests to proactive, high-impact projects

The Challenge

When Charlie Cabot joined Zeelo's data team, he inherited legacy data infrastructure that was ready for a major overhaul in order to deliver the capability that Zeelo needed as it rapidly scaled. The existing data transformation infrastructure had been built over years in an ad hoc manner using a custom in-house framework that created substantial development challenges.

"The team was not fully comfortable making changes to core elements of the transformation code because it was so time consuming to guarantee that it wouldn't break something," explains Charlie Cabot, Director of Data & Analytics at Zeelo. "The tests were there, but they were pretty simplistic. They would tell you if something had broken at the very end, but they wouldn't give you any insight as to why."

This technical debt created a series of challenges that were felt by the entire organization. Lineage was nearly impossible to trace, making impact analysis extremely difficult. The fear of touching core transformation logic was preventing the team from taking on value-add projects that could benefit the company. Instead, they were spending time working around the limitations by making changes in visualization layers or other workaround areas, further increasing technical debt.

Simple data requests that should have taken minutes were taking hours or being declined entirely. "For anything that required changes to the data warehouse, it would take a very long time to test and safely make changes" Charlie recalls. "There were times where we would just say no - it's not worth it, we can't change that right now."

The Solution

After evaluating five different competitors, Zeelo's team created a shortlist of Paradime and dbt™ Cloud, ultimately choosing Paradime based on its support, technical capabilities, and cost-effectiveness. The evaluation process focused on delivering maximum value while minimizing risk during a critical infrastructure transformation.

"The top thing was that the support was excellent from Fabio and the rest of the team," Charlie explains. "From the first call on, it was clear that if we chose Paradime we would get above and beyond help on the human side to succeed."

AI-Enhanced Developer Experience

Paradime's Code IDE delivered the technical sophistication Zeelo's team needed while dramatically improving development velocity. The platform's developer-first approach provided immediate value through features designed for data engineering professionals.

"The UI of Paradime has a lot to do with that. The ability to preview data and run and test right there allows us to develop and test what we've done really quickly," Charlie notes.

The team particularly values DinoAI's assistance with routine development tasks. "Having DinoAI help write the YAMLs is really helpful," Charlie shares. This AI-powered assistance eliminates time-consuming manual work, allowing developers to focus on complex business logic rather than boilerplate code.

The platform's technical exposure was another key differentiator. "We liked that it exposes a bit more technical detail," Charlie explains, highlighting how Paradime's approach aligns with the needs of experienced data engineering teams.

Turbo CI for Confident Deployments

Turbo CI has been transformational for Zeelo's development process, enabling the team to make changes with confidence while maintaining production stability. The comprehensive testing and validation capabilities eliminated the fear that previously affected development efforts.

"We feel much more confident because of the tests in place and Turbo CI," Charlie explains. This confidence has translated directly into improved development velocity and reduced risk.

The contrast with their previous workflow is dramatic. "The shortest time it would take to do anything in the old days was nearly four hours because we had a clunky setup with two siloed environments, two different test frameworks, and it was all quite painful. And now we can fully test and push a change in five minutes."

Bolt for Simplified Orchestration

Zeelo leveraged Paradime's Bolt to replace their Cloud Composer setup, achieving both cost savings and operational simplification. This strategic decision eliminated unnecessary infrastructure complexity while improving reliability.

"When we migrated to dbt™ and Paradime, we could turn Cloud Composer off. That was a significant saving," Charlie notes.

The team implemented a sophisticated hybrid approach during migration, running Paradime schedules 20 minutes before their legacy system schedules, ensuring seamless transition without disrupting ongoing projects. This approach enabled them to build new capabilities in Paradime while maintaining existing operations.

The Impact

For Zeelo, Paradime has fundamentally transformed how the data team operates, enabling a strategic shift from reactive support to proactive value creation. The platform eliminated the technical barriers that previously prevented the team from taking on high-impact projects.

"We're saving more time which we can invest in larger projects. Part of the strategy has been to move from reactive to proactive and to be able to actually structure a project, build something big and lead a bit rather than just trying to keep up with the data requests," Charlie explains.

The reliability improvements have been equally impressive. "Our pipeline failure rate has dropped tremendously.”

Perhaps most importantly, Paradime has made previously daunting technical debt reduction projects approachable. "We have a bunch of data modeling improvement work still left to do. What we really did in our migration project was just port the existing code into dbt™. But now, the refactor project is much less scary because we have the testing and the lineage and a good editor in place."

The business case was compelling for leadership. "It was basically about improving development time so we could deliver more value faster," Charlie shares. "If we as a team can deliver significantly more, then that's worth paying for."

What's Next

With their data infrastructure now running efficiently on Paradime, Zeelo is positioned to tackle the major refactoring projects that were previously too risky to attempt. The team plans to leverage DinoAI for upcoming refactoring initiatives, further accelerating their technical debt reduction efforts.

The foundation Paradime has provided enables Zeelo to focus on strategic data initiatives that drive business value, rather than fighting infrastructure limitations. As Charlie concludes, "Paradime has been a really great partner to us and it's been a great tool for us. So we're very happy customers."

For Zeelo, Paradime represents more than just a platform migration—it enables a fundamental transformation in how their data team operates, delivering both immediate productivity gains and long-term strategic capabilities that support the company's mission to revolutionize transportation.