Data Engineering Podcast

• Bringing AI Into The Inner Loop of Data Engineering With Ascend

  SummaryIn this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Sean Knapp, CEO of Ascend.io, explores the intersection of AI and data engineering. He discusses the evolution of data engineering and the role of AI in automating processes, alleviating burdens on data engineers, and enabling them to focus on complex tasks and innovation. The conversation covers the challenges and opportunities presented by AI, including the need for intelligent tooling and its potential to streamline data engineering processes. Sean and Tobias also delve into the impact of generative AI on data engineering, highlighting its ability to accelerate development, improve governance, and enhance productivity, while also noting the current limitations and future potential of AI in the field.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Sean Knapp about how Ascend is incorporating AI into their platform to help you keep up with the rapid rate of changeInterviewIntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what Ascend is and the story behind it?The last time we spoke was August of 2022. What are the most notable or interesting evolutions in your platform since then?In that same time "AI" has taken up all of the oxygen in the data ecosystem. How has that impacted the ways that you and your customers think about their priorities?The introduction of AI as an API has caused many organizations to try and leap-frog their data maturity journey and jump straight to building with advanced capabilities. How is that impacting the pressures and priorities felt by data teams?At the same time that AI-focused product goals are straining data teams capacities, AI also has the potential to act as an accelerator to their work. What are the roadblocks/speedbumps that are in the way of that capability?Many data teams are incorporating AI tools into parts of their workflow, but it can be clunky and cumbersome. How are you thinking about the fundamental changes in how your platform works with AI at its center?Can you describe the technical architecture that you have evolved toward that allows for AI to drive the experience rather than being a bolt-on?What are the concrete impacts that these new capabilities have on teams who are using Ascend?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Ascend + AI used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on incorporating AI into the core of Ascend?When is Ascend the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of AI in Ascend?Contact InfoLinkedInParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.LinksAscendCursor AI Code EditorDevinGitHub CopilotOpenAI DeepResearchS3 TablesAWS GlueAWS BedrockSnowparkCo-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick (affiliate link)OpenAI o3The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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• Astronomer's Role in the Airflow Ecosystem: A Deep Dive with Pete DeJoy

  SummaryIn this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Pete DeJoy, co-founder and product lead at Astronomer, talks about building and managing Airflow pipelines on Astronomer and the upcoming improvements in Airflow 3. Pete shares his journey into data engineering, discusses Astronomer's contributions to the Airflow project, and highlights the critical role of Airflow in powering operational data products. He covers the evolution of Airflow, its position in the data ecosystem, and the challenges faced by data engineers, including infrastructure management and observability. The conversation also touches on the upcoming Airflow 3 release, which introduces data awareness, architectural improvements, and multi-language support, and Astronomer's observability suite, Astro Observe, which provides insights and proactive recommendations for Airflow users.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Pete DeJoy about building and managing Airflow pipelines on Astronomer and the upcoming improvements in Airflow 3InterviewIntroductionCan you describe what Astronomer is and the story behind it?How would you characterize the relationship between Airflow and Astronomer?Astronomer just released your State of Airflow 2025 Report yesterday and it is the largest data engineering survey ever with over 5,000 respondents. Can you talk a bit about top level findings in the report?What about the overall growth of the Airflow project over time?How have the focus and features of Astronomer changed since it was last featured on the show in 2017?Astro Observe GA’d in early February, what does the addition of pipeline observability mean for your customers? What are other capabilities similar in scope to observability that Astronomer is looking at adding to the platform?Why is Airflow so critical in providing an elevated Observability–or cataloging, or something simlar - experience in a DataOps platform? What are the notable evolutions in the Airflow project and ecosystem in that time?What are the core improvements that are planned for Airflow 3.0?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Astro used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Airflow and Astro?What do you have planned for the future of Astro/Astronomer/Airflow?Contact InfoLinkedInParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.LinksAstronomerAirflowMaxime BeaucheminMongoDBDatabricksConfluentSparkKafkaDagsterPodcast EpisodePrefectAirflow 3The Rise of the Data Engineer blog postdbtJupyter NotebookZapiercosmos library for dbt in AirflowRuffAirflow Custom OperatorSnowflakeThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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• Accelerated Computing in Modern Data Centers With Datapelago

  SummaryIn this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Rajan Goyal, CEO and co-founder of Datapelago, talks about improving efficiencies in data processing by reimagining system architecture. Rajan explains the shift from hyperconverged to disaggregated and composable infrastructure, highlighting the importance of accelerated computing in modern data centers. He discusses the evolution from proprietary to open, composable stacks, emphasizing the role of open table formats and the need for a universal data processing engine, and outlines Datapelago's strategy to leverage existing frameworks like Spark and Trino while providing accelerated computing benefits.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details.Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Rajan Goyal about how to drastically improve efficiencies in data processing by re-imagining the system architectureInterviewIntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by outlining the main factors that contribute to performance challenges in data lake environments?The different components of open data processing systems have evolved from different starting points with different objectives. In your experience, how has that un-planned and un-synchronized evolution of the ecosystem hindered the capabilities and adoption of open technologies?The introduction of a new cross-cutting capability (e.g. Iceberg) has typically taken a substantial amount of time to gain support across different engines and ecosystems. What do you see as the point of highest leverage to improve the capabilities of the entire stack with the least amount of co-ordination?What was the motivating insight that led you to invest in the technology that powers Datapelago?Can you describe the system design of Datapelago and how it integrates with existing data engines?The growth in the generation and application of unstructured data is a notable shift in the work being done by data teams. What are the areas of overlap in the fundamental nature of data (whether structured, semi-structured, or unstructured) that you are able to exploit to bridge the processing gap?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Datapelago used?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Datapelago?When is Datapelago the wrong choice?What do you have planned for the future of Datapelago?Contact InfoLinkedInParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?LinksDatapelagoMIPS ArchitectureARM ArchitectureAWS NitroMellanoxNvidiaVon Neumann ArchitectureTPU == Tensor Processing UnitFPGA == Field-Programmable Gate ArraySparkTrinoIcebergPodcast EpisodeDelta LakePodcast EpisodeHudiPodcast EpisodeApache GlutenIntermediate RepresentationTuring CompletenessLLVMAmdahl's LawLSTM == Long Short-Term MemoryThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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• The Future of Data Engineering: AI, LLMs, and Automation

  SummaryIn this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Gleb Mezhanskiy, CEO and co-founder of DataFold, talks about the intersection of AI and data engineering. He discusses the challenges and opportunities of integrating AI into data engineering, particularly using large language models (LLMs) to enhance productivity and reduce manual toil. The conversation covers the potential of AI to transform data engineering tasks, such as text-to-SQL interfaces and creating semantic graphs to improve data accessibility, and explores practical applications of LLMs in automating code reviews, testing, and understanding data lineage.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Gleb Mezhanskiy about InterviewIntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?modern data stack is deadwhere is AI in the data stack?"buy our tool to ship AI"opportunities for LLM in DE workflowContact InfoLinkedInParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.LinksDatafoldCopilotCursor IDEAI AgentsDataChatAI Engineering Podcast EpisodeMetrics LayerEmacsLangChainLangGraphCrewAIThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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• Evolving Responsibilities in AI Data Management

  SummaryIn this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Bartosz Mikulski talks about preparing data for AI applications. Bartosz shares his journey from data engineering to MLOps and emphasizes the importance of data testing over software development in AI contexts. He discusses the types of data assets required for AI applications, including extensive test datasets, especially in generative AI, and explains the differences in data requirements for various AI application styles. The conversation also explores the skills data engineers need to transition into AI, such as familiarity with vector databases and new data modeling strategies, and highlights the challenges of evolving AI applications, including frequent reprocessing of data when changing chunking strategies or embedding models.AnnouncementsHello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementData migrations are brutal. They drag on for months—sometimes years—burning through resources and crushing team morale. Datafold's AI-powered Migration Agent changes all that. Their unique combination of AI code translation and automated data validation has helped companies complete migrations up to 10 times faster than manual approaches. And they're so confident in their solution, they'll actually guarantee your timeline in writing. Ready to turn your year-long migration into weeks? Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/datafold today for the details. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Bartosz Mikulski about how to prepare data for use in AI applicationsInterviewIntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you start by outlining some of the main categories of data assets that are needed for AI applications?How does the nature of the application change those requirements? (e.g. RAG app vs. agent, etc.)How do the different assets map to the stages of the application lifecycle?What are some of the common roles and divisions of responsibility that you see in the construction and operation of a "typical" AI application?For data engineers who are used to data warehousing/BI, what are the skills that map to AI apps?What are some of the data modeling patterns that are needed to support AI apps?chunking strategies metadata managementWhat are the new categories of data that data engineers need to manage in the context of AI applications?agent memory generation/evolution conversation history managementdata collection for fine tuningWhat are some of the notable evolutions in the space of AI applications and their patterns that have happened in the past ~1-2 years that relate to the responsibilities of data engineers?What are some of the skills gaps that teams should be aware of and identify training opportunities for?What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen data teams address the needs of AI applications?What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on AI applications and their reliance on data?What are some of the emerging trends that you are paying particular attention to?Contact InfoWebsiteLinkedInParting QuestionFrom your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?Closing AnnouncementsThank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected] with your story.LinksSparkRayChunking StrategiesHypothetical document embeddingsModel Fine TuningPrompt CompressionThe intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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