Podcast · Tech & Science

Data Engineering Central Podcast

by Data Engineering in Real Life · English · Tech & Science

Long Live the Data Engineer. No holds barred. Talking about Data Engineering news, topics, and general mayhem. dataengineeringcentral.substack.com

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 52 min
Latest: 30 Sep 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

30 Sep 2026 · 50 min

AI Is a Mirror: MLOps, LLMOps & the Future of AI Engineering | Maria Vechtomova

What does it actually take to build AI systems that work in production? In this episode of Data Engineering Central, I sit down with Maria Vechtomova , AI Engineering Lead, co-founder of CAUCHY, Databricks MVP, and author of MLOps with Databricks . Maria has spent more than 12 years working across data, machine learning, MLOps, and AI engineering. We talk about how production ML has evolved from the early days of homegrown model platforms to today’s world of LLMs, agents, Databricks, MLflow, and AI-assisted coding. We dig into why LLM applications can be significantly harder to evaluate and…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

16 Sep 2026 · 47 min
The Future of Data Engineering in the Age of AI | Erfan Hesami
I sat down with Erfan Hesami , founder of Pipeline to Insights , to talk about where data engineering is headed as AI and agents become part of everyday engineering work. We dig into the changing role of the data engineer, the growing overlap between data and AI engineering, and why strong fundamentals may actually become more important as AI makes writing code cheaper and easier. We also talk about AI agents inside modern data platforms, governance and security, AI-generated code and technical debt, controlling AI costs, the importance of human judgment, and why communication and business…
9 Sep 2026 · 49 min
Big Tech Laid Him Off. He Realized He Didn’t Need a Job. — Asian Dad Energy
What happens when you spend decades building a successful career in tech, finally reach Big Tech, and then suddenly get laid off? In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast , I sit down with AsianDadEnergy to talk about his journey from writing BASIC on an IBM 386 and working with COBOL mainframes to consulting, becoming a chief architect in Big Tech, and eventually losing his job after seven years. But the layoff wasn’t the end of the story. Years earlier, the 2008 financial crisis convinced him and his wife to live below their means, eliminate debt, save aggressively, and…
2 Sep 2026 · 57 min
Spark Isn't Going Anywhere. So They Rebuilt It in Rust. — Shehab Amin, CEO of LakeSail
In this episode, I sit down with Shehab Amin , co-founder and CEO of LakeSail , to talk about what happens when you decide to rebuild one of data engineering’s most important technologies, Apache Spark, in Rust … sorta. We dig into Shehab’s journey from writing C++ as a kid to studying computer science at Berkeley, becoming a founder, and eventually building Sail. We talk about why Spark has remained so sticky, what Rust, Apache Arrow, and DataFusion are changing about data infrastructure, and why rebuilding Spark compatibility turned out to be much harder—and more interesting—than expected.…
22 Jul 2026 · 34 min
Agentic Data Engineering Is Here — But Can It Close the Loop?
AI can now write SQL, generate Python, review pull requests, and build entire applications with a few well-crafted prompts. Yet despite all of that progress, data engineering still feels oddly resistant to the full AI revolution. Pipelines break. Data models drift. Production data needs validation. Someone still has to close the loop. In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sat down with Hugo Lu , founder and CEO of Orchestra, to talk about what “agentic data engineering” actually means beyond the buzzwords. Rather than another conversation about AI replacing engineers, we…
15 Jul 2026 · 48 min
What Happens When a Software Engineer Builds a Company Alone?
When people think about starting a software company, they usually imagine raising venture capital, hiring engineers, and growing a team as quickly as possible. Michael Drogalis chose a different path. After helping build technology in the Kafka ecosystem, founding a startup that was ultimately acquired by Confluent, and leading product for stream processing, he walked away from big tech to see if one person could build a serious B2B software company. * The result became ShadowTraffic , a product that helps engineering teams generate realistic production traffic for testing, demos, and…
8 Jul 2026 · 1 hr
The Creator of Pandas on AI, Apache Arrow, and the Future of Software Engineering
The creator of Pandas and co-creator of Apache Arrow , Wes McKinney , joins the Data Engineering Central Podcast for an in-depth conversation about how modern data engineering came to exist, where AI is taking software development, and why good engineering still matters more than ever. We start with Wes’ journey from building GoldenEye fan websites as a teenager to creating Pandas while working at a quantitative hedge fund, and eventually launching Apache Arrow, one of the foundational technologies behind today’s modern data ecosystem. Along the way, we discuss Cloudera, Parquet, DuckDB,…
1 Jul 2026 · 57 min
From COBOL to Copilot: 30 Years of Data, BI, and AI with David Langer
What happens when someone who started programming on a Commodore 64 watches AI reshape the entire data industry? In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with Dave Langer to explore nearly three decades of experience across software engineering, business intelligence, analytics, data science, and AI. Dave’s career spans COBOL programming on IBM mainframes, enterprise architecture, Microsoft’s Xbox division, machine learning, startup leadership, authorship, and building one of the largest personal brands in the data space. We discuss why many of the biggest problems…
24 Jun 2026 · 45 min
Semantic Layers, Agents, and the Future of Analytics
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with David Jaitillake to explore the future of data engineering, analytics, and AI. David has spent nearly two decades working across data teams, from analyst roles in the early SQL Server days to leading teams, founding startups, serving as VP of AI at Cube, and now co-founding Quarry . We discuss why semantic layers have suddenly become one of the most important concepts in modern data platforms, how tools like Claude Code are transforming engineering workflows, and why the core problems in data haven’t really changed…
17 Jun 2026 · 56 min
The Future of the Lakehouse: Delta Lake, Rust, and Data Platforms at Scale
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with Ethan , a maintainer of delta-rs and an expert in modern lakehouse architecture working in the pharmaceutical industry. We discuss Ethan’s journey into tech and data engineering, the evolution of open table formats like Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg, and what it actually takes to build scalable enterprise data platforms in highly regulated environments like big pharma. We also dive into: * delta-rs and the future of Delta Lake outside Spark * Lakehouse architecture and open catalogs * Rust in the modern data ecosystem *…
10 Jun 2026 · 52 min
From Failure to AWS: What Actually Makes a Great Engineer
Victor Moreno went from failing out of a top CS program to becoming a senior engineer at AWS, and his story says a lot about what actually matters in software engineering today. In this conversation, we go deep into the reality behind the AI hype, what makes engineers valuable ( it’s not writing more code ), and why the future of the field looks very different from what most people think. We talk about the shift from coding to system thinking, why fundamentals matter more in the age of AI, and how junior engineers will need to evolve as tools like Claude and ChatGPT take over the “grunt…
3 Jun 2026 · 49 min
How Real Data Engineers Think (Beyond Tools and Hype)
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with Yordan Ivanov , Head of Data Engineering at a growing fintech company, to talk through what it actually looks like to build and run real data platforms in production. Yordan’s story starts like many of mine, early programming, gaming, PHP, Linux servers—but what makes this conversation interesting is how he evolved from a generalist software engineer into a data engineering leader without even realizing it at first. We spend a lot of time digging into what actually matters in modern data engineering, and it’s not the…
27 May 2026 · 50 min
Data, AI, and DuckDB
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with Jacob Matson , Developer Advocate at MotherDuck , to unpack one of the most interesting shifts happening in data engineering right now. Jacob didn’t start in tech the way most people expect. He began in accounting, working with Excel and financial systems, before slowly realizing that the real problem he loved solving wasn’t finance, it was data pipelines. That path eventually led him deep into SQL Server, data warehousing, and ultimately to DuckDB, a tool that fundamentally changed how he thought about processing data.…
20 May 2026 · 53 min
Why I Left Facebook to Work for Myself
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with Ben Rogojan to talk about the real story behind data engineering careers, Big Tech, and what’s changing right now. Ben shares how he went from working in kitchens… to data engineering… to Facebook… and eventually walking away from it all to build his own consulting business. And yeah, it wasn’t all glamorous. “I was making the same money as Facebook… and I hated my life.” We get into the stuff most people don’t talk about: * What it’s actually like working in Big Tech * Why high-paying jobs can still burn you out * How…
13 May 2026 · 56 min
Academic → CTO: What Actually Matters in Data (Matthew Housley)
Most companies don’t have a tooling problem. They have a foundation problem. In this episode, I sit down with Matthew Housley , a famed co-author of Data Engineering Fundamentals and former CTO of Ternary Data, to talk about what actually makes data teams successful and why so many organizations get it wrong despite having modern stacks, cloud platforms, and expensive dashboards. * Matthew’s path is a little different than most. He started in academia as a mathematics instructor before moving into industry as a data scientist at Overstock.com, and eventually leading data strategy and…
6 May 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
AI Isn’t Replacing Curious Developers
AI isn’t just changing how we write code. It’s changing what it even means to build software. In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with Neil Roberts — a developer who’s been through every major wave of the web, from BASIC on an Atari to modern TypeScript, and now deep into LLMs and agentic workflows. This is not another surface-level “AI will change everything” conversation. We get into what is actually happening right now, where it works, where it completely breaks, and what developers are getting wrong. * We talk about why front-end and UX matter more than…
29 Apr 2026 · 57 min
AI Is Changing Data Engineering Fast
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast, I sit down with Andreas Kretz to break down what is really happening in the industry right now. We go far beyond surface-level AI hype and talk about how data engineering actually works in the real world, what skills still matter, and where most engineers are wasting time. Andreas shares his full journey from industrial IoT and working at Bosch to building one of the largest data engineering education platforms in the world, training over 2,000 students and reaching more than 100,000 engineers globally. We get into what production data…
22 Apr 2026 · 59 min
Most Data Teams Are Doing It Wrong
Most data teams think they’re building value. In reality, they’ve become ticket queues. In this episode, Chris Gambill explains his storied career in tech and data through the years, dealing with data at Fortune 500 company scale, and breaking out on his own. We cover career growth, what separates senior engineers from true strategic operators, and the biggest mistakes people make early on. We discuss the classic problems that have plagued data teams for decades and why it’s all still a struggle. Today’s podcast is sponsored by Estuary . Without them, content like this isn’t possible. The…
15 Apr 2026 · 48 min
From Industrial Data at BASF to Delta Lake Committer
In this episode, Robert Pack walks through his journey from engineering and simulation work to building large-scale data systems across 900+ plants at BASF. We break down what those systems actually looked like, including ingestion, modeling, and the realities of batch vs real-time in industrial environments. We also dive into: * AI Workflows for Developers * His work as a committer on Delta Lake * Where lakehouse architecture works and where it falls short * The transition into Developer Relations at Databricks This is a grounded, practical conversation about what actually matters when…
1 Apr 2026 · 52 min
He Quit Apple After 13 Years
In this episode of Data Engineering Central, I sit down with Kevin , who spent 13 years working at Apple before walking away at the end of 2025. * Not to jump to another job. * Not to start a company. * But to take a step back from everything. Kevin shares his full journey—from growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta to building a career at Apple, and ultimately reaching the point where he could walk away financially and mentally. You can follow along with Kevin below. We dive deep into what it’s really like working in tech: the high salaries , the lifestyle creep , the pressure , and the…
24 Mar 2026 · 47 min
Spark, AI, and the Future of Data Engineering with Daniel Aronovich
In this episode of Data Engineering Central , I sit down with the founder of DataFlint , Daniel Aronovich , to talk about the realities of working with Apache Spark, distributed data systems, and the future of data engineering . We start with his early journey into tech—how he first discovered large-scale data systems and the lessons he learned from working with real-world Spark workloads. * The conversation then turns toward the future of data engineering , particularly the growing role of AI in software development and data infrastructure . We discuss why generic AI coding assistants often…
18 Mar 2026 · 1 hr
DuckDB, AI, and the Future of Data Engineering
In this episode, I sit down with Matt Martin , Staff Engineer, data architect, ETL practitioner, and author of a new book on DuckDB coming soon, to talk about the past, present, and future of data engineering . Matt has spent decades building and architecting data platforms across technologies such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Hadoop, Redshift, and BigQuery , and now focuses on modern tools such as DuckDB and single-node analytics . We discuss how the data industry has evolved, what actually makes data platforms succeed, and where tools like DuckDB, Polars, Databricks, and Snowflake fit into…
11 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
What Decades in Software Engineering Teaches You
In this episode of Data Engineering Central, I sit down with a veteran Software Engineer John Crickett ; with decades of experience in the industry to unpack what really matters in building a long and successful engineering career. We talk about how he first got into software, the early jobs and tools that shaped his thinking, and the massive technology shifts he’s witnessed across decades of engineering—from early stacks and tools to today’s AI-assisted workflows. * We also dive into the difference between coding and real-world software engineering, what separates junior, senior, and…
3 Mar 2026 · 47 min
Data Engineering, AI, and Career Growth
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast , I sit down with Yuki ( Yuki Kakegawa ) to talk about his journey into tech, the tools and platforms he’s worked with, and where he thinks data engineering and AI are headed next. We cover: • How Yuki got into tech • Early career lessons and pivots • Tools and technologies he’s worked with over the years • How data engineering has evolved • The impact of AI on software development • What engineers should focus on right now • Advice for those building their careers in data Yuki shares practical insights on navigating the industry,…
25 Feb 2026 · 45 min
Spark, Lakehouse & AI: A Deep Conversation with Bart Konieczny
In this episode of Data Engineering Central, I sit down with Bart Konieczny — data engineer, distributed systems expert, and well-known author in the Data and Spark ecosystem — for a deep technical conversation about modern data engineering. We cover: * How Bart got into tech and distributed systems * His journey through different engineering roles * Spark internals and why they still matter * The realities of lakehouse architecture * Streaming vs batch systems * AI’s impact on data engineering * What engineers should focus on in 2026 In a world obsessed with abstractions and AI tooling, we…
18 Feb 2026 · 41 min
DevOps vs ClickOps with Maxine Meurer
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast , I sit down with Maxine Meurer , DevOps engineer, author, and educator behind I Love DevOps , for a wide-ranging conversation about careers, infrastructure, automation, and what it actually means to build systems that last. This isn’t a buzzword-heavy DevOps chat. It’s a grounded, honest discussion between two engineers about how people really get into tech , how careers evolve over time, and why modern infrastructure is as much about systems thinking and human judgment as it is about tools. We talk through Maxine’s journey from early…
9 Feb 2026 · 50 min
The Evolution of Software, Streaming, and Data Engineering with Robin Moffatt
In this episode, I sit down with industry veteran Robin Moffatt — Sr. Principal Advisor in Streaming Data Technologies (Kafka, etc.) and a longtime voice in the data engineering community, to unpack the journey from old-school data architectures to today’s real-time streaming ecosystems . From early mainframe data processing and COBOL through the rise of Apache Kafka, streaming ETL, and event-driven systems , Robin shares lived experience from across decades of building, scaling, and evolving data platforms. We dive into: * 🧠 How the role of software engineering has shifted with the rise of…
3 Feb 2026 · 59 min
The Lakehouse Architecture: Multimodal Data, Delta Lake, and the Future of Data Engineering (with R. Tyler Croy)
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast , I sit down with R. Tyler Croy for a wide-ranging conversation on the present—and future—of modern data platforms. Tyler is a long-time open-source contributor to projects such as delta-rs. You can watch him on YouTube , read his blog , or work directly with him through his consultancy, Buoyant Data . Tyler has spent years deep in the open-source data ecosystem, contributing to projects such as Delta Lake and thinking critically about how real-world data systems are built and maintained. This isn’t a hype-driven conversation—it’s a…
28 Jan 2026 · 46 min
Building the Full Data Stack and the Audience That Comes With It
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast , I sit down with Hoyt Emerson , founder of The Full Data Stack and Early Signal , for a wide-ranging conversation on data, analytics, and creating content in the tech world. We talk candidly about: * What actually matters in modern data and analytics * Why so much “data content” misses the mark * The difference between noise and real signal * What works (and doesn’t) when building a technical audience * Writing, consistency, and credibility in the data space * Why opinions + experience beat trends and buzzwords If you’re a data…
20 Jan 2026 · 2 hr 10 min
From Wiring Circuits to Data Pipelines
In this episode of the Data Engineering Central Podcast , I sit down with Andy Leonard — someone who’s been building systems long before “data engineering” was even a job title. Andy’s career didn’t start in software at all. It started with physical circuits, literally wiring systems as an electrician, before moving into programming, databases, and eventually decades of hands-on data engineering work. This conversation isn’t about trends or hype cycles. It’s about how the fundamentals of data work have evolved, what hasn’t changed, and what you only learn after years of building, breaking,…

About Data Engineering Central Podcast

Long Live the Data Engineer. No holds barred. Talking about Data Engineering news, topics, and general mayhem. dataengineeringcentral.substack.com

Data Engineering Central Podcast is a English tech & science podcast from Data Engineering in Real Life. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Data Engineering in Real Life
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 52 min
Latest episode: 30 Sep 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1778516563
Rights: dataengineeringdude

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