The Analytics Engineering Podcast

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Tristan Handy has been curating the Analytics Engineering Roundup newsletter since 2015, pulling together the internet’s best data science & analytics articles. Tristan and co-host Julia Schottenstein now bring the Roundup to real life, hosting biweekly conversations with data practitioners inventing the future of analytics engineering. You can view full episode summaries and read back issues of the Roundup newsletter at https://roundup.getdbt.com. The podcast is sponsored by dbt labs, makers of the data transformation framework dbt. To reach our team, drop a note to podcast@dbtlabs.com.

dbt Labs, Inc.


    • May 11, 2025 LATEST EPISODE
    • monthly NEW EPISODES
    • 43m AVG DURATION
    • 75 EPISODES


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    Latest episodes from The Analytics Engineering Podcast

    Why compilers matter (w/ Lukas Schulte)

    Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2025 41:59


    In this episode, Tristan Handy and Lukas Schulte, co-founder of SDF Labs and now part of dbt Labs, dive deep into the world of compilers—what they are, how they work, and what they mean for the data ecosystem. SDF, recently acquired by dbt Labs, builds a world-class SQL compiler aimed at abstracting away the complexity of warehouse-specific SQL. Join Tristan and members of the SDF team at the dbt Launch showcase to learn more about the brand new dbt engine. Register at https://www.getdbt.com/resources/webinars/2025-dbt-cloud-launch-showcase For full show notes and to read 8+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The evolution of databases (w/ Wolfram Schulte)

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2025 54:17


    In the first episode of our new season on developer experience, the cofounder and CTO of SDF Labs, now a part of dbt Labs, discusses databases, compilers, and dev tools. Wolfram spent close to two decades in Microsoft Research and several years at Meta building their data platform. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Building a data team from the beginning (w/ Daniel Avancini)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2025 50:12


    Daniel Avancini is the chief data officer and co-founder of Indicium—a fast-growing data consultancy started in Brazil.  There are a lot of data consultancies around the world, and a lot of them do great work. What has been so fascinating about Indicium's journey is their HR model. Rather than primarily hiring experienced professionals, they decided to go hard on training. They built a talent pipeline with courses and an internal onboarding process that takes new employees from zero to 60 over a few months. The result has been phenomenal and Indicium delivers great client outcomes, but most importantly, they're building skills for hundreds of brand new data professionals. Data is a hard field to break into because fundamentally you can't do the real thing unless you have access to data. So any company that is investing in building scalable hiring and training processes for analytical talent is one to be excited about. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Data engineering at Snowflake (w/ Rahul Jain)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2025 44:04


    A look inside at the data work happening at a company making some of the most advanced technologies in the industry. Rahul Jain, data engineering manager at Snowflake, joins Tristan to discuss Iceberg, streaming, and all things Snowflake.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The intersection of UI, exploratory data analysis, and SQL (w/ Hamilton Ulmer)

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2024 50:37


    Hamilton Ulmer is working at the intersection of UI, Exploratory Data Analysis, and SQL at MotherDuck, and he's built a long career in EDA. Hamilton and Tristan dive deep into the history of exploratory data analysis. Even if you spend most of your time below the frontend layer of the stack, it is important to understand the trends in both the practice of data visualization  and the technologies that underlie that practice. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Making data movement as reliable as electricity (w/ Taylor Brown)

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 8, 2024 46:40


    Fivetran recently passed $300 million ARR and has over 7,000 customers globally. Taylor Brown, the cofounder and COO of Fivetran, joins the show to talk about Fivetran's moat, the impact of AI on the data ingestion space, and open table formats and catalogs.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Data as an assembly line (w/ Cedric Chin)

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2024 51:11


    Cedric Chin runs Commoncog—a publication about accelerating business expertise. He joins Tristan to talk about the analytics development lifecycle, how organizations value (or misvalue) data, and why “data teams are not some IT helpdesk to be ignored.”   For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The data jobs to be done (w/ Erik Bernhardsson)

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2024 42:55


    Erik Bernhardsson, the CEO and co-founder of Modal Labs, joins Tristan to talk about Gen AI, the lack of GPUs, the future of cloud computing, and egress fees. They also discuss whether the job title of data engineer is something we should want more or less of in the future. Erik's not afraid of a spicy take, so this is a fun one.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Coalesce 2024 edition: What's next for data teams? (w/ Scott Breitenother)

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2024 44:23


    Show description: Scott Breitenother, founder of data consultancy Brooklyn Data Co., joins Tristan at Coalesce 2024 in Las Vegas to discuss the early days of dbt, the evolution of data teams, and what's next for the dbt community. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The current state of the AI ecosystem (w/ Julia Schottenstein)

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2024 45:44


    Former co-host Julia Schottenstein returns to the show to go deep into the world of LLMs. Julia joined LangChain as an early employee, in Tristan's words, to “Basically solve all of the problems that aren't specifically in product and engineering.” LangChain has become one of, if not the primary frameworks for developing applications using large language models. There are over a million developers using LangChain today, building everything from prototypes to production AI applications.

    Creating value from GenAI in the enterprise (w/ Nisha Paliwal)

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2024 45:20


    Nisha Paliwal, who leads enterprise data tech at Capital One, joins Tristan to discuss building a strong data culture for in the world of AI. She is the co-author of the book Secrets of AI Value Creation.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Developer productivity on GitHub Copilot (w/ Eirini Kalliamvakou)

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2024 53:59


    Dr. Eirini Kalliamvakou is a senior researcher at GitHub Next. Eirini has built a career on studying software engineers, how to measure their productivity, how developer experience impacts productivity, and more. Recently, Eirini has been working on quantifying the impacts of GitHub Copilot. Does it actually help software engineers be more productive? Tristan and Eirini explore how to quantify developer productivity in the first place, and finally, arriving at whether or not Copilot‌ makes a difference. In the search for real business value, this research is a real bellwether of things to come. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs. Join data practitioners and data leaders this October in Las Vegas at Coalesce, the analytics engineering conference hosted by dbt Labs. Register now at coalesece.getdbt.com. Listeners of this show can use the code podcast20 for a 20% discount.

    The rapid experimentation of AI agents (w/ Yohei Nakajima)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 9, 2024 45:55


    Yohei Nakajima is an investor by day and coder by night. In particular, one of his projects, an AI agent framework called BabyAGI that creates a plan-execute loop, got a ton of attention in the past year. The truth is that AI agents are an extremely experimental space, and depending on how strict you want to be with your definition, there aren't a lot of production use cases today.  Yohei discusses the current state of AI agents and where they might take us.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Funnel analytics and AI models for event sequences (w/ Misha Panko)

    Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2024 44:09


    Misha Panko has worked in data for a long time, including on high performance data teams at Uber and Google. Today, Misha is the co-founder and CEO of Motif Analytics, a product focused on helping growth and ops teams understand their event data. In this episode, Tristan and Misha nerd out about the state of the art in computational neuroscience, where Misha got his PhD. They then go deep into event stream data and how it differs from classical fact and dimension data, and why it needs different analytical tools. Make sure to check out the back half of the episode, where they dive into AI and how Motif is applying breakthroughs in language modeling to train foundation models of event sequences—check out his team's blog post on their work. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    From Moneyball to Gen AI

    Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2024 37:37


    Eric Avidon is a journalist at TechTarget who's interviewed Tristan a few times, and now Tristan gets to flip the script and interview Eric. Eric is a journalist veteran, covering everything from finance to the Boston Red Sox, but now he spends a lot of time with vendors in the data space and has a broad view of what's going on. Eric and Tristan discuss AI and analytics and how mature these features really are today, data quality and its importance, the AI strategies of Snowflake and Databricks, and a lot more. Plus, part way through you can hear Tristan reacting to a mild earthquake that hit the East Coast. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.

    Being Pro-Human in the AI Era

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2024 50:09


    Barry McCardel is the co-founder and CEO of Hex. Hex is an analytics tool that's structured around a notebook experience, but as you'll hear in the episode, goes well beyond the traditional notebook. We're big fans of Hex at dbt Labs, and use it for a bunch of our internal data work. In this episode, Barry and Tristan discuss notebooks and data analysis, before zooming out to discuss the hype cycle of data science, how AI is different, the experience of building AI products, and how AI will impact data practitioners. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The 2024 Machine Learning, AI & Data Landscape (w/ Matt Turck)

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2024 36:22


    Matt Turck has been publishing his ecosystem map since 2012. It was first called the Big Data Landscape. Now it's the Machine Learning, AI & Data (MAD) Landscape.  The 2024 MAD Landscape includes 2,011(!) logos, which Matt attributes first a data infrastructure cycle and now an ML/AI cycle. As Matt writes, “Those two waves are intimately related. A core idea of the MAD Landscape every year has been to show the symbiotic relationship between data infrastructure, analytics/BI,  ML/AI, and applications.” Matt and Tristan discuss themes in Matt's post: generative AI's impact on data analytics, the modern AI stack compared to the modern data stack, and Databricks vs. Snowflake (plus Microsoft Fabric). For full show notes and to read 7+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    How the Media Covers Gen AI (w/ Matthew Lynley, Supervised)

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2024 48:15


    Matthew Lynley is a bit of a hybrid. He's been a long-time journalist covering enterprise tech, currently in his fantastic AI and data newsletter Supervised, and he's also been a hands-on data practitioner.  Matthew has covered the analytics tech stack, but this time Tristan turns the tables to get Matthew's perspective on the rise of Gen AI as a topic in the popular press, what's going on in the space today, and where AI is headed. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    AI's Impact in the World of Structured Data Analytics (w/ Juan Sequeda, data.world)

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2024 48:18


    Juan Sequeda is a principal data scientist and head of the AI Lab at data.world, and is also the co-host of the fantastic data podcast Catalog and Cocktails.  This episode tackles semantics, semantic web, Juan's research in how raw text-to-SQL performs versus text-to-semantic layer,  and where we both believe AI will make an impact in the world of structured data analytics. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The End of the Modern Data Stack (w/ Benn Stancil, Mode)

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2024 45:54


    Benn Stancil, cofounder and CTO at Mode, returns to The Analytics Engineering Podcast to discuss the evolution of the term "modern data stack" and its value today. Tristan wrote on this idea for The Analytics Engineering Roundup in Is the Modern Data Stack Still a Useful Idea? For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Data Mesh Architecture at Large Enterprises (w/ Moritz Heimpel and Ben Flusberg)

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 8, 2023 46:07


    Moritz Heimpel from Siemens and Ben Flusberg from Cox Automotive have very similar jobs. They both act as stewards of the data strategies at large, complex companies. In this episode, we get into what it's like to collaborate with data at scale. Ben and Mortitz share their experiences adopting a data mesh architecture and what that looks like at their organizations. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Let's Talk About Data Vault (w/ Brandon Taylor and Michael Olschimke)

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2023 44:04


    If Data Vault is a new term for you, it's a data modeling design pattern. We're joined by Brandon Taylor, a senior data architect at Guild, and Michael Olschimke, who is the CEO of Scalefree—the consulting firm whose co-founder Dan Lindstedt is credited as the designer of the data vault architecture.  In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Michael and Brandon explore the Data Vault approach among data warehouse design methodologies. They discuss Data Vault's adoption in Europe, its alignment with data mesh architecture, and the ongoing debate over Data Vault vs. Kimball methods.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Navigating AI Complexity (w/ Jonathan Frankle)

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2023 46:20


    Jonathan Frankle is the Chief Scientist at MosaicML, which was recently bought by Databricks for $1.3 billion.  MosaicML helps customers train generative AI models on their data. Lots of companies are excited about gen AI, and the hope is that their company data and information will be what sets them apart from the competition.  In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Jonathan discusses a potential future where you can train specialized, purpose-built models, the future of MosaicML inside of Databricks, and the importance of responsible AI practices. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Career Growth in Data Roles (w/ Hubspot's Kasey Mazza at Coalesce 2023)

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2023 29:17


    In this conversation with Tristan recorded at Coalesce 2023, Kasey Mazza, an analytics engineering manager on the RevOps team at HubSpot, discusses the roles of data analysts and analytics engineers, the importance of building internal data communities, and the evolving landscape of data teams.  Watch Kasey's Coalescse 2023 presentation The career growth software development lifecycle. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Operationalizing Your Warehouse, Streaming Analytics, and Cereal (W/ Arjun Narayan of Materialize and Nathan Bean of General Mills)

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2023 42:23


    It turns out data plays a big role in getting cereal manufactured and delivered so you can enjoy your Cheerios reliably for breakfast. We talk with Arjun Narayan, CEO of Materialize, a company building an operational warehouse, and Nathan Bean, a data leader at General Mills responsible for all of the company's manufacturing analytics and insights.  We discuss Materialize's founding story, how streaming technology has matured, and how exactly companies are leveraging their warehouse to operationalize their business—in this case, at one of the largest consumer product companies in the United States.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Roche's Data Transformation Journey (w/ Yannick Misteli)

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2023 40:05


    Yannick Misteli is the head of engineering for the go-to-market domain at Roche, a $250 billion multinational pharmaceutical and diagnostics company.  Roche was an early supporter of dbt Cloud, and Yannick helped move his team of 120+ engineers to a modern data stack. He always finds a way to push the boundaries to make a large company founded in 1896 incredibly modern and innovative. We wanted to know more about the "how" of the work—the people, process, and technology.  Read more about Roche's data journey here: https://docs.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-squared

    The State of Databases Today (w/ Andy Pavlo)

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2023 48:28


    Andy Pavlo is a professor of databaseology (he says it's a made-up word) at Carnegie Mellon and currently on leave to build his own company—OtterTune, which uses AI to figure out the settings to get the best performance out of databases. He is one of the preeminent minds on databases and a die-hard relational database maximalist. We talk about the state of databases today, why there are so many specialized databases (and if we need so many), why tuning databases is so hard but important, and how the database landscape will evolve.

    Bring Your Own Data to LLMs (W/ Jerry Liu of LlamaIndex)

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 25, 2023 42:53


    Jerry Liu is the CEO and co-founder of LlamaIndex. LlamaIndex is an open-source framework that helps people prep their data for use with large language models in a process called retrieval augmented generation. LLMs are great decision engines, but in order for them to be useful for organizations, they need additional knowledge and context, and Jerry discusses how companies are bringing their data to tailor LLMs for their needs. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Ramp's $8 Billion Data Strategy (W/ Ian Macomber and Ryan Delgado)

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2023 49:19


    Ian Macomber, head of analytics engineering and data science at Ramp and formerly the VP of analytics and data engineering at Drizly, and Ryan Delgado, a staff software engineer at Ramp, have played pivotal roles in establishing Ramp's data team from the ground up and are spearheading the development of their comprehensive roadmap. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Ian and Ryan share insights on how Ramp's data team transformed unstructured data from contracts into valuable insights to enable faster decision-making. The $8 billion company values speed and empowers teams to build, ship, and measure products quickly. Ian and Ryan also talked about their approach to adopting new tech and elevating data as an equal player alongside product engineering and design. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    dbt Labs on dbt (w/ Daniel Le)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2023 30:40


    Daniel Le is the CFO at dbt Labs where he has built multiple teams. He is also the former head of FP&A and operations at Zoom, and he helped scale FP&A as the former finance director at Okta.  In this conversation with Julia, Daniel shares his view as CFO on the challenges SaaS companies face and the importance of finance teams creating a holistic view of their business. Daniel gives advice to data leaders about how they can automate business processes with dbt Cloud and use self-service analytics to automate revenue recognition, generate consistent headcount analytics, and more to impact their organization. Read more about Daniel's story here. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The Arc of Data Innovation (w/ Bob Muglia, former CEO of Snowflake)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 12, 2023 47:59


    Bob Muglia likely needs no introduction. The former CEO of Snowflake led the company during its early, transformational years after a long career at Microsoft and Juniper.  Bob recently released the book The Datapreneurs about the arc of innovation in the data industry, starting with the first relational databases all the way to the present craze of LLMs and beyond. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Bob shares insights into the future of data engineering and its potential business impact while offering a glimpse into his professional journey.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    It's 2023, and Privacy Is Now Fun! (w/ Ian Coe of Tonic.ai + Abhishek Bhowmick of Samooha)

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2023 47:39


    Advances in ML have transformed data privacy from a regulatory necessity into an opportunity to improve the work of data people. Synthetic data for modeling + testing is one example of a hard thing that's now easy - and in this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Ian + Abhishek cover many other ways that privacy can actually be a skill that propels your work forward, rather than a mere legal best practice. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Julia, Pedram Navid + Taylor Murphy Recap Data Council

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2023 42:03


    Julia just got back from Data Council in Austin, a conference organized by Pete Sonderling, where lots of startups share what they're building, data practitioners go to learn in hands-on workshops, and of course investors go to spot the next big trend. In this episode, Taylor Murphy (Head of Product & Data at Meltano) + Pedram Navid (Founder, West Marin Data) join Julia to recap the conference and have a bit of fun. They talked streaming, how the MDS is growing up, new SQL variants, and, of course, AI. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.

    Cloud Warehouse Cost Optimization (w/ Niall Woodward + Brad Culberson)

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2023 45:54


    Brad Culberson is a Principal Architect in the Field CTO's office at Snowflake. Niall Woodward is a co-founder of SELECT, a startup providing optimization and spend management software for Snowflake customers. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Brad and Niall discuss all things cost optimization: cloud vs on-prem, measuring ROI, and tactical ways to get more out of your budget. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    dbt Labs + Transform Join Forces on Metrics (w/ Nick Handel + Drew Banin)

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2023 43:09


    Nick Handel, as co-founder at Transform, helped develop the popular open source metrics framework MetricFlow. Drew Banin, a co-founder at dbt Labs, helped build the initial version of the dbt Semantic Layer, which launched last year.   Transform was acquired in February by dbt Labs, and in this conversation with Tristan, they talk through their collective plans for the future of the dbt Semantic Layer. For full show notes and to read 7+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    What Can Generative AI Do for Data People? (W/ Sarah Nagy + Chris Aberger)

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2023 48:29


    Sarah and Chris are both at the forefront of bringing the promise of gen AI to our actual work as data people—which is a unique challenge!  Precise truth is critical for business questions in a way that it's not for a consumer search query. Sarah Nagy is the CEO of Seek AI, a startup that aims to use natural language processing to change how professionals work with data. Chris Aberger currently leads Numbers Station AI, a startup focused on data-intensive workflow automation. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, they dive into what this future might actually look like, and tangibly what we can expect from gen AI in the short/medium term. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    3rd Party Data, Demystified

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 10, 2023 45:26


    Auren Hoffman currently serves as the CEO and Chief Historian at SafeGraph, a data-as-a-service company he founded, which provides primarily location data.  In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Auren shares how truly few companies are making use of 3rd-party datasets today, how opening up more datasets to public research could help us solve big problems, and a fun fact about Abraham Lincoln's (!) work in the industry.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    A Romp Through Database History (w/ Postgres co-creator Mike Stonebraker + Andy Palmer)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2023 47:44


    Mike Stonebraker is a veritable database pioneer and a Turing Award recipient. In addition to teaching at MIT, he is a serial entrepreneur and co-creator of Postgres. Andy Palmer is a veteran business leader who serves as the CEO of Tamr, a company he co-founded with Mike. Through his seed fund Koa Labs, Andy has helped found and/or fund numerous innovative companies in diverse sectors, including health care, technology, and the life sciences.  In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Mike and Andy take us through the evolution of database technology over 5+ decades. They share unique insights into relational databases, the switch from row-based to columnar databases, and some of the patterns of database adoption they see repeated over time. For full show notes and to read 7+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    What Does Apache Arrow Unlock for Analytics? (w/ Wes McKinney)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2023 47:08


    Wes McKinney is the creator of pandas, co-creator of Apache Arrow, and now Co-founder/CTO at Voltron Data. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Wes takes us on a tour of the underlying guts, from hardware to data formats, of the data ecosystem. What innovations, down to the hardware level, will stack to lead to significantly better performance for analytics workloads in the coming years? To dig deeper on the Apache Arrow ecosystem, check out replays from their recent conference at https://thedatathread.com. For full show notes and to read 7+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Minimum Viable Experimentation

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2022 45:37


    Product experimentation is full of potholes for companies of any size, given the number of pieces (tooling, culture, process, persistence) that need to come together to be successful. Vijaye Raji (currently Statsig, formerly Facebook + Microsoft) and Sean Taylor (currently Motif Analytics, formerly Facebook + Lyft) have navigated these failure modes, and are here to help you (hopefully) do the same. This convo with Tristan + Julia is light on tooling + heavy on process: how to watch out for spillover effects in experiments, avoiding bias, how to run an experiment review, and why experiment throughput is a better indicator of success than individual experiment results. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The Data Generalist's Vision Quest (LIVE w/ Stephen Bailey)

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2022 26:37


    The first LIVE IRL episode!   Stephen Bailey, data engineer at Whatnot and writer of an incredibly entertaining data substack, joins Tristan for a follow-up conversation to Stephen's Coalesce talk, “Excel at nothing: how to be an effective generalist.” You can read Stephen's writing at https://stkbailey.substack.com/. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Why You'll Need Data Contracts (w/ Chad Sanderson + Prukalpa)

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2022 48:42


    WARNING: This episode contains detailed discussion of data contracts. The modern data stack introduces challenges in terms of collaboration between data producers and consumers. How might we solve them to ultimately build trust in data quality? Chad Sanderson leads the data platform team at Convoy, a late-stage series-E freight technology startup. He manages everything from instrumentation and data ingestion to ETL, in addition to the metrics layer, experimentation software and ML.  Prukalpa Sankar is a co-founder of Atlan, where she develops products that enable improved collaboration between diverse users like businesses, analysts, and engineers, creating higher efficiency and agility in data projects.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    How Does Data Drive Growth in Practice? (w/ Abhi Sivasailam)

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2022 49:53


    Abhi is a growth and data leader, and an excellent Twitter follow. Most recently, he was Head of Growth and Analytics at Flexport, where he helped the company to grow 10x over the past 3 years. Previously, Abhi led growth and data teams at Keap, Hustle, and Honeybook. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Abhi explains his methodology for setting up a new growth data organization, and how you might be falling victim to the dreaded "arbitrary uniqueness" bug. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs

    Katie Bauer: Data Scientists Are Not Pizza

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2022 43:25


    Katie was a founding member of Reddit's data science team and, currently, as Twitter's Data Science Manager, she leads the company's infrastructure data science and analytics organization. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Katie explores how, as a manager, to help data people (especially those new to the field!) do their best work. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Data Activation Everywhere (w/ Julie Beynon of Clearbit)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2022 43:30


    As Head of Analytics at Clearbit, Julie serves as a data team of one in a 200+ person company (wow!). In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Julie dives into how she's helped Clearbit implement data activation throughout the business, and realize the glorious dream of self-serve analytics. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    The Personal Data Warehouse (w/ Jordan Tigani of MotherDuck)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2022 51:39


    Jordan Tigani is an expert in large-scale data processing, having spent a decade+ in the development and growth of BigQuery, and later SingleStore. Today, Jordan and his team at MotherDuck are in the early days of working on commercial applications for the open source DuckDB OLAP database. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Jordan dives into the origin story of BigQuery, why he thinks we should do away with the concept of working in files, and how truly performant “data apps” will require bringing data to an end user's machine (rather than requiring them to query a warehouse directly).

    Making Sense of the Last 2 Years in Data

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 17, 2022 47:13


    Matt Bornstein and Jennifer Li (and their co-author Martin Casado) of a16z have compiled arguably the most nuanced diagram of the data ecosystem ever made.  They recently refreshed their classic 2020 post, "Emerging Architectures for Modern Data Infrastructure" and in this conversation, Tristan attempts to pin down: what does all of this innovation in tooling mean for data people + the work we're capable of doing? When will the glorious future come to our laptops? For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Building an Open Source Company (w/ Aaron Katz of ClickHouse)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2022 38:44


    ClickHouse, the lightning-fast open source OLAP database, was initially released in 2016 as an open source project out of Yandex, the Russian search giant. In 2021, Aaron Katz helped form a group to spin it out of Yandex as an independent company, dedicated to the development + commercialization of the open source project. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Aaron gets into why he believes open source, independent software companies are the future. And of course, this conversation wouldn't be complete without a riff on the classic "one database to rule all workloads" thread. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    "To Move, or Not to Move" (Data). That is the Question.

    Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2022 40:21


    Justin Borgman is the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Starburst, and has almost a decade spent in senior executive roles building new businesses in the data warehousing and analytics space.  In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Justin dives into the nuts and bolts of Trino, the open source distributed query engine, and explores how teams are adopting a data mesh architecture without making a mess.  For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    What's The Role Of AI in BI?

    Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2022 44:43


    Amit Prakash is Co-founder and CTO at ThoughtSpot. He has a deep background in search, having previously led the AdSense engineering team at Google and served on the early Bing team at Microsoft. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Amit gets real about the promise of AI in data: which applications are being widely used today, and which are still a few years out? For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

    Automating Away Your Work w/ Configuration-as-Code (w/ Sarah Krasnik)

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2022 43:52


    Most recently leading a data engineering team at Perpay, Sarah has built and managed data platforms end to end by working closely with internal engineering, product, and operational teams. She recently left her role to pursue a wide variety of endeavors, including writing on her Substack (https://sarahsnewsletter.substack.com/). In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Sarah dives into how configuration-as-code can automate away data work, why you might want to consider adding a data lake to your architecture, and how those looking to build a self-serve data culture can look to self-serve frozen yogurt shops for inspiration. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

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