Why I Left Facebook to Work for Myself

More from Data Engineering Central Podcast All episodes →

1. 

   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…

2. 

   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 *…

3. 

   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…

4. 

   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…

5. 

   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.…

6. 

   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…

7. 

   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…

8. 

   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…

9. 

   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…

10. 

    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…