A governance accelerator for Databricks — not a replacement for it.

LakeShepherd is an accelerator for designing and deploying Databricks organization, permissions, environment separation, and audit as one operating model. It combines best practices, configuration templates, management features, and a delivery service to reflect each organization’s structure and approval process into the live environment.

Engorgio itself stays vendor-neutral — but for organizations that have chosen Databricks as their lakehouse, LakeShepherd is the accelerator built specifically for it.

  • Newly adopting DatabricksCompanies that want a consistent operating model for organization, permissions, and environment separation from day one
  • Already on DatabricksCompanies revisiting ad-hoc, tribal-knowledge operations to re-align with best practices
  • Scaling usageCompanies standardizing rules across multiple departments and workspaces
  • Audit & security requirementsCompanies that need to connect approval and audit requirements to permission operations in Databricks

Six capabilities, one operating model.

01

Operating Model

Best practices and configuration templates covering organization, project, permission, naming, and environment-separation design.

Available now
02

Environment Deployment

Provisions and verifies the status of Azure and Databricks environments.

Available now
03

Identity & Role Mapping

Maps Microsoft Entra ID, Databricks groups, and LakeShepherd roles to each other.

Available now
04

Drift Management

Surfaces the difference between the declared configuration and the live environment.

Available now
05

Automated Detection & Notification

Automatically detects permission drift and notifies stakeholders as requests move through approval.

In development
06

Governance Agent

Drafts change proposals, explains their impact, and supports verification. Proposing, verifying, approving, and executing stay separate — the agent never changes permissions on its own.

In development

Complements Databricks native governance — doesn’t replace it.

Databricks provides native governance features centered on Unity Catalog, including Governance Hub for visualizing governance state platform-wide. LakeShepherd doesn’t replace these.

It complements them by handling the organization, permission, and environment design that precedes that state, and the approval, change, and audit process that keeps it accurate.

Ready to build a governance model
that scales with your organization?

LakeShepherd is delivered alongside Engorgio’s Reshape (Design & Deployment) program — not as part of it.