Episodes
93
Latest episode
Aug 2026
Language
EN-US
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.
Jeremiah Lowin built FastMCP as a side project days after Anthropic announced the Model Context Protocol. It's now downloaded millions of times a day. He joins Tristan Handy on why a skill file is a polite note rather than a workflow engine, why enterprises are choosing MCP over CLIs, and why the buyers he meets aren't ready to talk about the context layer at all—they want the security plumbing first.
Something new. Tristan Handy is joined by Jason Ganz for the first Roundup, a recurring conversation about the stories moving the ecosystem right now. This time: the OpenAI model that escaped its sandbox and hacked Hugging Face, Moonshot's Kimi K3 and what a restrictive license on open weights really means, and Katie Bauer's read on what changes for data teams as agents arrive. The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs. Reach us at podcast@dbtlabs.com with comments and guest suggestions.
Shridhar Iyer spent more than 13 years inside Meta's data organization, most recently leading AI and the data stack. He joins Tristan Handy to talk about how deleting a single column can save millions at Meta scale, the abstraction stack that quietly powers the company, and the two steps every company needs to become AI-native. Plus a detour through the hard problem of consciousness. For full show notes and to read the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
The last time Ramp's Ian Macomber joined the show, the episode was titled, "Ramp's $8 billion data strategy." Ramp is now valued at $44 billion, and the data team's job has completely changed. Ian Macomber returns to talk with Tristan Handy about self-serve analytics at 50x scale, routing agents through the data lake, and why consensus is the scarce resource in a post-AI world. For full show notes and to read the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
nao co-founder and CEO Claire Gouze shares a practical playbook for building a context layer your agents can actually rely on. For full show notes and to read the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
Jordan Tigani helped build BigQuery, then left to bet that most data isn't big. Three years on, agents are proving him right. The MotherDuck CEO joins Tristan Handy on why local-first databases fit the agent era, and what an "agent swarm for data management" looks like. For full show notes and to read the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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