The Analytics Engineering Podcast

In this decades-spanning episode, Tristan Handy sits down with Lonne Jaffe, Managing Director at Insight Partners and former CEO of Syncsort (now Precisely), to trace the history of the data ecosystem—from its mainframe origins to its AI-infused future.

Lonne reflects on the evolution of ETL, the unexpected staying power of legacy tech, and why AI may finally erode the switching costs that have long protected incumbents.

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.

In this episode, Tristan talks to Zach Lloyd, founder of Warp—a terminal built for the modern era, including for AI agents. They explore the history of terminals, differences between terminals and shells, and what the future might look like. In a world driven by generative AI, the terminal could once again be the control center of computer usage.

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.

In this episode, Tristan Handy and Lukas Schulte, co-founder of SDF Labs and now part of dbt Labs, dive deep into the world of compilers—what they are, how they work, and what they mean for the data ecosystem. SDF, recently acquired by dbt Labs, builds a world-class SQL compiler aimed at abstracting away the complexity of warehouse-specific SQL.

Join Tristan and members of the SDF team at the dbt Launch showcase to learn more about the brand new dbt engine. Register at https://www.getdbt.com/resources/webinars/2025-dbt-cloud-launch-showcase

For full show notes and to read 8+ 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.

In the first episode of our new season on developer experience, the cofounder and CTO of SDF Labs, now a part of dbt Labs, discusses databases, compilers, and dev tools. Wolfram spent close to two decades in Microsoft Research and several years at Meta building their data platform.

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.

Daniel Avancini is the chief data officer and co-founder of Indicium—a fast-growing data consultancy started in Brazil.

There are a lot of data consultancies around the world, and a lot of them do great work. What has been so fascinating about Indicium's journey is their HR model. Rather than primarily hiring experienced professionals, they decided to go hard on training. They built a talent pipeline with courses and an internal onboarding process that takes new employees from zero to 60 over a few months.

The result has been phenomenal and Indicium delivers great client outcomes, but most importantly, they're building skills for hundreds of brand new data professionals.

Data is a hard field to break into because fundamentally you can't do the real thing unless you have access to data. So any company that is investing in building scalable hiring and training processes for analytical talent is one to be excited about.

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.

A look inside at the data work happening at a company making some of the most advanced technologies in the industry. Rahul Jain, data engineering manager at Snowflake, joins Tristan to discuss Iceberg, streaming, and all things Snowflake.

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.

Hamilton Ulmer is working at the intersection of UI, Exploratory Data Analysis, and SQL at MotherDuck, and he's built a long career in EDA. Hamilton and Tristan dive deep into the history of exploratory data analysis. Even if you spend most of your time below the frontend layer of the stack, it is important to understand the trends in both the practice of data visualization and the technologies that underlie that practice.

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.

Fivetran recently passed $300 million ARR and has over 7,000 customers globally. Taylor Brown, the cofounder and COO of Fivetran, joins the show to talk about Fivetran's moat, the impact of AI on the data ingestion space, and open table formats and catalogs.

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.

Cedric Chin runs Commoncog—a publication about accelerating business expertise. He joins Tristan to talk about the analytics development lifecycle, how organizations value (or misvalue) data, and why "data teams are not some IT helpdesk to be ignored."

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.

Erik Bernhardsson, the CEO and co-founder of Modal Labs, joins Tristan to talk about Gen AI, the lack of GPUs, the future of cloud computing, and egress fees. They also discuss whether the job title of data engineer is something we should want more or less of in the future. Erik's not afraid of a spicy take, so this is a fun one.

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.