Alla Piltser, Bank of America's former Managing Director of Tech Infra, shares insights from her 35 year career in financial services technology and the critical shifts happening today in big banks’ data platforms.

Alla and Roy dive into how financial institutions are navigating data platform priorities for 2026. They discuss proven techniques for avoiding costly migration failures, the foundational capabilities to unlock proactive finops and cost optimizations, the essential role of quality data in GenAI success, and why "shifting left" on data governance is becoming non-negotiable for banks.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

Alla Piltser is a former Managing Director of Global Tech Infra at Bank of America. She has a 35 year career in financial services technology and data, and is currently a senior advisor to FInServ technology leaders around cloud migrations, stack optimization and transformation, and cybersecurity.

Roy Daniel is the Co-Founder & CEO of definity – the optimization and observability platform for the Lakehouse and Spark ecosystem.

Subscribe to Data Innovators for more conversations with technical data leaders solving complex challenges across the data ecosystem.

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Renu Tewari, former LinkedIn data platform leader, shares about her experience scaling the platform from 1 trillion to 35 trillion messages per day, and how Agentic AI is now reshaping the future of data engineering – and every infrastructure assumption we have.

Renu and Roy explore how hyperscaling teams address increasing platform bottlenecks, constant failures, and ongoing need for deep root-cause analysis; the explosion of open formats and Lakehouse architecture; and how active metadata is the foundation for AI agents to make autonomous in-flight decisions.

Chapters:

01:09 - Introduction and Renu's journey

Renu Tewari is former Senior Director of Data Platform at LinkedIn and currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Bain Capital. At Linkedin, her team scaled infrastructure to 35 trillion daily messages and pioneered a lakehouse architecture combining streaming and batch analytics and robust governance.

Roy Daniel is the Co-Founder & CEO of definity – the optimization and observability platform for the Lakehouse and Spark ecosystem.

Subscribe to Data Innovators for more conversations with technical data leaders solving complex challenges across the data ecosystem.

#DataInnovators #Podcast #DataPlatforms #AI #DataGovernance #CostOptimization #definity #Linkedin

Disney’s Head of Data Platform Product shares how his team built platform-level guardrails, cost attribution, and lineage systems to scale data democratization without losing control. This episode explores enterprise data platforms, AI use cases, and governance strategies that keep efficiency high and costs in check.

Romit Mehta and Roy Daniel dive into Disney’s enterprise data platform team’s approach to navigating its top priorities – from supporting new AI use cases, to standardizing semantics, simplifying complexity, and driving efficiency. They also discuss the robust techniques the team is using – such as automated watermarking, data-agnostic attribution, and endpoint lineage tagging – to increase developer velocity and avoid the quarterly "executive blame game."

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

02:09 - Disney's foundational data products and infrastructure platforms

06:47 - Enterprise data complexity: when teams measure differently

10:16 - Biggest challenges data product teams are facing in 2025

18:11 - Data democratization creating cost explosions and inconsistency

21:15 - Platform-level guardrails and cost optimization

27:09 - AI's role in data platforms and productivity gains

32:35 - Final thoughts on platform strategy

Romit Mehta is Head of Data Platform Product at The Walt Disney Company and formerly a Data Product leader at PayPal. His team builds foundational data products, core infrastructure, and clickstream analytics that support Disney’s global operations.

Roy Daniel is the Co-Founder & CEO of definity – the optimization and observability platform for the Lakehouse and Spark ecosystem.

Subscribe to Data Innovators for more conversations with technical data leaders solving complex challenges across the data ecosystem.

#DataInnovators #DataPlatforms #AI #DataGovernance #CostOptimization #Podcast #definity #Disney