AI and the data lake (w/ Lauren Anderson)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
Release Date: 01/11/2026
The context engineering playbook (Claire Gouze)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
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 . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
info_outline
DuckDB's agent moment (Jordan Tigani)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
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 . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by
info_outline
The Iceberg ecosystem today (w/ Anders Swanson)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
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+...
info_outline
Apache Iceberg and the catalog layer (w/ Russell Spitzer)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
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 . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
info_outline
AI and the data lake (w/ Lauren Anderson)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
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 . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
info_outline
Inside Snowflake’s AI roadmap (w/ Chris Child)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
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 , how to govern agents with row- and column-level controls, and why Snowflake is investing in Apache Iceberg and the (, 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...
info_outline
Building a multimodal lakehouse for AI (w/ Chang She)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
In this episode, Tristan Handy sits down with Chang She — a co-creator of Pandas and now CEO of LanceDB — to explore the convergence of analytics and AI engineering. The team at LanceDB is rebuilding the data lake from the ground up with AI as a first principle, starting with a new AI-native file format called Lance. Tristan traces Chang’s journey as one of the original contributors to the pandas library to building a new infrastructure layer for AI-native data. Learn why vector databases alone aren’t enough, why agents require new architecture, and how LanceDB is building a AI...
info_outline
Agentic coding in analytics engineering (w/ Mikkel Dengsøe)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
Tristan talks with Mikkel Dengsøe, co-founder at SYNQ, to break down what agentic coding looks like in analytics engineering. Mikkel walks through a hands-on project using Cursor, the dbt MCP server, Omni’s AI assistant, and Snowflake. They cover where agents shine (staging, unit tests, lineage-aware checks), where they’re risky (BI chat for non-experts), and how observability is shifting from dashboards to root-cause explanations. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt...
info_outline
Under the hood of Apache Iceberg (w/ Christian Thiel)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
Tristan digs deep into the world of Apache Iceberg. There’s a lot happening beneath the surface: multiple catalog interfaces, evolving REST specs, and competing implementations across open source, proprietary, and academic contexts. Christian Thiel, co-founder of Lakekeeper, one of the most widely used Iceberg catalogs, joins to walk through the state of the Iceberg ecosystem. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to . The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.
info_outline
The pragmatic guide to AI agents in the enterprise (w/ Sean Falconer)
The Analytics Engineering Podcast
What does it mean to be agentic? Is there a spectrum of agency? In this episode of The Analytics Engineering Podcast, Tristan Handy talks to Sean Falconer, senior director of AI strategy at Confluent, about AI agents. They discuss what truly makes software "agentic," where agents are successfully being deployed, and how to conceptualize and build agents within enterprise infrastructure. Sean shares practical ideas about the changing trends in AI, the role of basic models, and why agents may be better for businesses than for consumers. This episode will give you a clear, practical...
info_outlineTristan 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.