The Analytics Engineering Podcast

Hosted by dbt Labs, Inc.

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Latest episode

Mar 2026

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EN-US

About the show

The Analytics Engineering Podcast goes deep with the practitioners and builders leading the shift in how data work gets done. Hosted by Tristan Handy, founder and CEO of dbt Labs, each episode is a conversation with the data engineers, analytics engineers, and technical leaders building in the agentic era. Topics include data transformation, AI in analytics, data architecture, and what it means to work with data at scale. For full show notes and transcript, head to roundup.getdbt.com. To reach our team, drop a note to podcast@dbtlabs.com.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

March 8, 202654 min

The Iceberg ecosystem today (w/ Anders Swanson)

Tristan sits down with Anders Swanson, a developer experience advocate at dbt Labs, to talk about the state of the Apache Iceberg ecosystem. They unpack the "open standards" shift, define the core building blocks (query engines, object stores, catalogs), and dig into why external catalogs have become a fourth namespace tier across platforms. Anders outlines a pragmatic, phased adoption model for Iceberg integrations, explains why metadata performance and resiliency are hard requirements, and clarifies why vended credentials exist and what they solve. 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.

January 25, 202653 min

Apache Iceberg and the catalog layer (w/ Russell Spitzer)

Tristan talks with Russell Spitzer, a PMC member of Apache Iceberg and principal engineer at Snowflake, about the evolution of open table formats and the catalog layer. They dig into identity and access at the catalog layer and why consensus‑driven standards make interoperability possible. 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.

January 11, 202653 min

AI and the data lake (w/ Lauren Anderson)

Tristan talks with Lauren Anderson, Senior Director for Okta's Enterprise Data Platform. Lauren shares how identity sits at the center of two seismic shifts in data—AI agents and the open data lake—and why central governance and a shared semantic layer are critical. Lauren lays out how analytics engineers and data engineers should divide responsibilities as agents begin to write a growing share of analytical queries. 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.

December 14, 202557 min

Inside Snowflake's AI roadmap (w/ Chris Child)

Snowflake VP of Product Management Chris Child joins Tristan Handy to unpack Snowflake's AI roadmap and what it means for data teams. They discuss the evolution from Snowpark to Cortex and Snowflake Intelligence, how to govern agents with row- and column-level controls, and why Snowflake is investing in Apache Iceberg and the Open Semantic Interchange initiative (dbt Labs recently open sourced MetricsFlow, the technology that powers the dbt Semantic Layer, to align with the goals of OSI). Chris also shares a vision for the next five years of data engineering: fewer bespoke pipelines, more standardization and semantics, and a bigger focus on business context and data products. 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.

November 23, 202556 min

Building a multimodal lakehouse for AI (w/ Chang She)

In this episode, Tristan Handy sits down with Chang She — a co-creator of Pandas and now CEO of LanceDB — to explore the convergence of analytics and AI engineering. The team at LanceDB is rebuilding the data lake from the ground up with AI as a first principle, starting with a new AI-native file format called Lance. Tristan traces Chang's journey as one of the original contributors to the pandas library to building a new infrastructure layer for AI-native data. Learn why vector databases alone aren't enough, why agents require new architecture, and how LanceDB is building a AI lakehouse for the future. 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.

September 7, 202544 min

Agentic coding in analytics engineering (w/ Mikkel Dengsøe)

Tristan talks with Mikkel Dengsøe, co-founder at SYNQ, to break down what agentic coding looks like in analytics engineering. Mikkel walks through a hands-on project using Cursor, the dbt MCP server, Omni's AI assistant, and Snowflake. They cover where agents shine (staging, unit tests, lineage-aware checks), where they're risky (BI chat for non-experts), and how observability is shifting from dashboards to root-cause explanations. 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.

August 24, 202555 min

Under the hood of Apache Iceberg (w/ Christian Thiel)

Tristan digs deep into the world of Apache Iceberg. There's a lot happening beneath the surface: multiple catalog interfaces, evolving REST specs, and competing implementations across open source, proprietary, and academic contexts. Christian Thiel, co-founder of Lakekeeper, one of the most widely used Iceberg catalogs, joins to walk through the state of the Iceberg ecosystem. 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.

August 3, 202549 min

The pragmatic guide to AI agents in the enterprise (w/ Sean Falconer)

What does it mean to be agentic? Is there a spectrum of agency? In this episode of The Analytics Engineering Podcast, Tristan Handy talks to Sean Falconer, senior director of AI strategy at Confluent, about AI agents. They discuss what truly makes software "agentic," where agents are successfully being deployed, and how to conceptualize and build agents within enterprise infrastructure. Sean shares practical ideas about the changing trends in AI, the role of basic models, and why agents may be better for businesses than for consumers. This episode will give you a clear, practical idea of how AI agents can change businesses, instead of being a vague marketing buzzword. 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.

July 20, 202550 min

How Amazon S3 works (w/ Andy Warfield)

In this season of the Analytics Engineering podcast, Tristan is deep into the world of developer tools and databases. If you're following us here, you've almost definitely used Amazon S3 it and its Blob Storage siblings. They form the foundation for nearly all data work in the cloud. In many ways, it was the innovations that happened inside of S3 that have unlocked all of the progress in cloud data over the last decade. In this episode, Tristan talks with Andy Warfield, VP and senior principal engineer at AWS, where he focuses primarily on storage. They go deep on S3, how it works, and what it unlocks. They close out italking about Iceberg, S3 table buckets, and what this all suggests about the outlines of the S3 product roadmap moving forward. 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.

June 22, 202548 min

From Docker to Dagger (w/ Solomon Hykes)

In this season of the Analytics Engineering podcast, Tristan is digging deep into the world of developer tools and databases. There are few more widely used developer tools than Docker. From its launch back in 2013, Docker has completely changed how developers ship applications. In this episode, Tristan talks to Solomon Hykes, the founder and creator of Docker. They trace Docker's rise from startup obscurity to becoming foundational infrastructure in modern software development. Solomon explains the technical underpinnings of containerization, the pivotal shift from platform-as-a-service to open-source engine, and why Docker's developer experience was so revolutionary. The conversation also dives into his next venture Dagger, and how it aims to solve the messy, overlooked workflows of software delivery. Bonus: Solomon shares how AI agents are reshaping how CI/CD gets done and why the next revolution in DevOps might already be 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.

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