AI Isn’t Replacing Curious Developers

More from Data Engineering Central Podcast All episodes →

1. 

   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…

2. 

   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…

3. 

   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.…

4. 

   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…

5. 

   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. 

   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…

7. 

   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…

8. 

   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…

9. 

   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…

10. 

    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…