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.

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