ENGINEERING THE ENERGY TRANSITION
Shayantan Debbarman on Building Scalable, Data-Driven Platforms at Flo Energy
Shayantan Debbarman is Director of Technology at Flo Energy, where he leads the design and execution of the company’s core technology platforms supporting energy solutions across Singapore and Australia. With a background spanning computer science research, data science, and large-scale platform leadership at Meta, Shayantan brings a rare blend of deep technical expertise and mission-led thinking to the energy sector.
At Flo, he is responsible for building in-house systems that automate operations, enable rapid scaling, and embed transparency into delivering renewable energy solutions such as solar PPA or environmental certificate purchases. From advanced data architectures and self-serve analytics, to cloud-native platforms and digital customer experiences, his focus is on using technology as a force multiplier, reducing cost, increasing agility, and accelerating the transition to sustainable energy.
In this interview, Shayantan shares how Flo’s technology foundations are enabling growth, trust, and operational efficiency, the role of data and AI in modern energy platforms, and why pragmatic innovation is key to leading technology teams in fastgrowing, purpose-driven companies.
Career Journey & Tech Leadership
Can you share your career journey and what led you to your current role as Director of Technology at Flo? What experiences have shaped your leadership in driving technology within the energy sector?
My career began in academic research as a Computer Science researcher at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, where I worked on optimisation algorithms for nuclear particle detection. That experience sparked my passion for applying technology to solve complex, real-world problems. I later transitioned into data science, developing data models designed to help individuals at risk of certain medical conditions access free health checks. This reinforced my belief that technology can be a powerful force for social impact when applied thoughtfully.
Following this, I spent over eight years at Meta, where I initially focused on platform safety before going on to lead large-scale, cross-team initiatives addressing malicious activity across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Meta VR. These roles deepened my experience in building resilient systems, managing risk at scale, and leading diverse technical teams in fast-moving environments.
I joined Flo in 2024 to strengthen the company’s technology foundations and soon stepped into the role of Director of Technology. The move has allowed me to bring together my technical background, leadership experience, and purpose-driven mindset to help build a technology-led, sustainable energy company. It is particularly rewarding to apply innovation in a sector where technology can directly contribute to long-term environmental and societal impact.
Foundational Tech Platforms
Flo built its core energy platform in-house, designed to automate operations and reduce costs. How has this foundational technology enabled your mission to make supporting renewable energy generation both affordable and accessible across Singapore and Australia?
Our in-house energy platform has been central to making renewable energy solutions more affordable and accessible across our markets. By designing reusable, modular, and easy-to-upgrade services, we are able to roll out new products and features quickly across regions and customer segments without rebuilding systems from scratch.
We have also significantly strengthened our developer operations, achieving elite deployment speed and reliability while maintaining high quality and resilience. In parallel, we have built self-serve tools that empower business teams to operate more efficiently, reducing dependency on engineering resources for routine tasks.
This approach allows us to scale sustainably, as technology costs do not increase linearly with customer growth. As a result, we can keep operations lean while continuously improving functionality, performance, and delivery speed. Ultimately, this foundational technology enables Flo to support renewable energy generation while maintaining affordability, accessibility, and operational excellence.
Data-Driven Decision Making
With Holistics and dbt integrated into Flo’s BI stack, you’ve achieved an 80% Monthly Active User rate for analytics. How has this enhanced data self-service and shaped strategic decision-making across teams?
At Flo, we use a modern data stack that combines Snowflake, Dagster, dbt, and Holistics to power our end-to-end data architecture, automation, and business intelligence. Together, these tools have significantly improved data accessibility and enabled true self-service analytics across the organisation.
Teams can now independently access, explore, and visualise data without relying on technical support, which has removed bottlenecks and accelerated insight generation. Regular stakeholder engagement, alongside targeted training sessions, has also played a critical role in building confidence and capability in using these tools effectively.
As a result, we have achieved an 80% monthly active user rate for analytics, reflecting strong adoption across the business. More importantly, decision-making is now faster, more data-driven, and consistently aligned around a single source of truth, allowing teams to act with greater clarity, confidence, and strategic alignment.
Renewable Energy Certification & Transparency
Flo supplies 100% certified Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) as part of its electricity plans. How have you leveraged technology to ensure transparency, credibility, and trust in the purchase and redemption of these certificates?
Renewable Energy Certificates are tangible records that confirm electricity has been generated from renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal. Each REC represents the environmental benefit of producing one megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity through these clean energy methods. At Flo, we have integrated directly with Evident by the I-TRACK Foundation to make REC redemption both seamless and transparent. Through an API integration between Evident and our internal systems, we ensure that certificates are redeemed in precise alignment with each customer’s preferences and energy usage.
This technology-driven approach provides customers with clear visibility into their individual impact, while ensuring full traceability and credibility throughout the process. By combining automation with trusted third-party verification, we remove ambiguity and build confidence, reinforcing trust in the integrity of our renewable electricity plans.
Scalability in Growth
Flo expanded rapidly, growing from 70 to 160 employees in just over a year and launching operations in Australia. What technology and platform strategies have been essential in achieving this scale while maintaining service reliability?
Scaling at this pace, while entering a new market, required a disciplined yet flexible technology foundation. At Flo, we focused on building systems and ways of working that would support rapid growth without compromising reliability or service quality. Strong hiring and onboarding practices played an important role, supported by digital tools that helped new team members integrate quickly, understand our platforms, and contribute with confidence from day one.
At the same time, we invested in tooling and platform infrastructure that reduced friction across the organisation. By strengthening DevOps capabilities and adopting collaboration and workflow tools across engineering, product, and operations, we were able to streamline communication, automate routine tasks, and maintain clarity as teams grew across regions. Just as importantly, we implemented clear access controls and role-based permissions to protect user data and ensure compliance, while still enabling teams to move quickly and work effectively.
Together, these choices allowed us to scale efficiently and sustainably, ensuring that our growth translated into stronger execution, reliable operations, and a consistently high-quality experience for both employees and customers.
User Experience & Digital Platforms
Flo provides intuitive web and mobile interfaces for customers to manage consumption and payments. How are digital experiences shaped by the technology team, and how do they align with your renewable-first ethos?
At Flo, our technology team shapes digital experiences by closely analysing customer behaviour and usage patterns, allowing us to prioritise features that deliver the greatest value. Through collating customer feedback and analysing their behaviour on our website, we’ve found that customers value being able to analyse and view their own energy consumption and make payments seamlessly.
These insights recently informed a revamp of our FlowSmart Dashboard, making it easier for customers to track usage, manage payments, and clearly understand their environmental impact. By combining thoughtful, user-centred design with data-driven decision-making, we ensure our digital platforms consistently reflect Flo’s renewable-first ethos, empowering customers to make sustainable choices with confidence and ease.
Cloud Infrastructure & Software Investments
With investments in AWS EC2, Google Workspace, and Storyblok CMS, how do you view the role of cloud and SaaS platforms in scaling technology operations and maintaining agility?
One of the greatest advantages for technology start-ups over the past two decades has been access to high-quality, user-friendly cloud and SaaS platforms. These tools significantly accelerate development and provide a robust foundation on which technology teams can build and scale.
For a young company like Flo, platforms such as AWS EC2, Google Workspace, Storyblok CMS, GitHub, and the Atlassian suite give us access to industry-leading capabilities from day one. This enables our teams to move quickly, remain agile, and focus their efforts on building meaningful products rather than investing time and resources into developing core infrastructure from scratch.
By leveraging these platforms, we are able to scale our technology operations efficiently, maintain reliability, and adopt new capabilities at speed. This approach not only supports rapid growth but also gives us a strong engineering foundation, helping us deliver high-quality, customer-focused digital experiences as the business continues to evolve.
Innovation in Energy Tech
What emerging technologies, such as AI-driven forecasting, smart energy management, or embedded analytics, do you believe hold the most promise in accelerating the energy transition and improving operational efficiency?
One of the primary reasons we are able to support global renewable energy generation is the sophistication of the AI-driven solutions and data models we use internally. These models help us optimise forecasting, operational planning, and decision-making in an increasingly complex energy environment.
Alongside this, we rely on a strong data foundation built on tools such as dbt, Dagster, Snowflake, and Holistics. Together, these platforms allow us to develop and manage multiple business-critical data pipelines while enabling self-serve analytics for key stakeholders. This ensures teams across the organisation can access reliable insights quickly and make informed, data-driven decisions.
Looking ahead, one emerging technology with significant potential is Model Context Protocol platforms, such as make.com. These platforms use AI to intelligently connect and orchestrate the growing ecosystem of tools we rely on, while also suggesting optimisations across cost, time, and workflows. By reducing manual effort and improving integration efficiency, they can play a meaningful role in accelerating operational efficiency and supporting the broader energy transition.
Sustainability Through Technology
Beyond certifications, how do you embed sustainability within your development and deployment processes, ensuring both infrastructure and innovation advance environmental goals?
We are still in the early stages of embedding sustainability into our development and deployment processes, but it is an area of clear focus as we continue to evolve our technology foundations.
One initiative we have begun exploring is the option of self-hosting certain solutions on-premises and powering them with solar energy. While this work is still in progress, it represents a meaningful step towards reducing the environmental footprint of our infrastructure and better aligning our operational choices with our sustainability ambitions.
Over time, our aim is to expand these efforts and integrate sustainability considerations more deeply into how we design, deploy, and operate our platforms. By taking a deliberate, long-term approach, we want to ensure that both our technology and innovation roadmap actively support our broader environmental goals, rather than treating sustainability as a separate or secondary concern.
Advice for Aspiring Tech Leaders in Energy
What advice would you offer tech professionals aspiring to lead digital innovation in energy, especially in fast-paced, mission-driven companies like Flo?
For technology professionals working in traditional industries such as energy, the most important starting point is developing a deep understanding of the business itself. Spend time learning how processes operate end to end and identify where technology can deliver clear, measurable value.
Over time, our aim is to expand these efforts and integrate sustainability considerations more deeply into how we design, deploy, and operate our platforms.
A practical approach is to begin with the “low-hanging fruit.” Focus first on automating manual or inefficient tasks, then move on to optimising core processes. These early wins build credibility, free up capacity, and create momentum for broader transformation.
From there, technology leaders can begin to push innovation forward with greater focus and confidence. Anchoring your vision in efficiency and optimisation ensures that innovation efforts are purposeful and aligned with real business needs, rather than innovation for its own sake.
By combining practical problem-solving with a clear, long-term view of where technology can make the greatest impact, aspiring leaders can drive meaningful digital transformation in fast-moving, mission-driven companies like Flo, while maintaining focus, clarity, and measurable outcomes.
Flo Energy is Singapore’s largest independent electricity retailer, focused on making it simple for businesses and households to switch to affordable renewable energy. The company provides electricity plans that balance cost, compliance and sustainability, matching 100% of customers’ electricity usage with renewable energy certificates to support the transition to cleaner power.
Shayantan Debbarman Director of Technology