In this season of the Analytics Engineering podcast, Tristan is deep into the world of developer tools and databases. If you're following us here, you've almost definitely used Amazon S3 it and its Blob Storage siblings. They form the foundation for nearly all data work in the cloud. In many ways, it was the innovations that happened inside of S3 that have unlocked all of the progress in cloud data over the last decade. In this episode, Tristan talks with Andy Warfield, VP and senior principal engineer at AWS, where he focuses primarily on storage. They go deep on S3, how it works, and what it unlocks. They close out italking about Iceberg, S3 table buckets, and what this all suggests about the outlines of the S3 product roadmap moving forward. 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.

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.

Yannick Misteli is the head of engineering for the go-to-market domain at Roche, a $250 billion multinational pharmaceutical and diagnostics company.  Roche was an early supporter of dbt Cloud, and Yannick helped move his team of 120+ engineers to a modern data stack. He always finds a way to push the boundaries to make a large company founded in 1896 incredibly modern and innovative. We wanted to know more about the "how" of the work—the people, process, and technology.  Read more about Roche's data journey here: https://docs.getdbt.com/blog/dbt-squared

Daniel Le is the CFO at dbt Labs where he has built multiple teams. He is also the former head of FP&A and operations at Zoom, and he helped scale FP&A as the former finance director at Okta.  In this conversation with Julia, Daniel shares his view as CFO on the challenges SaaS companies face and the importance of finance teams creating a holistic view of their business. Daniel gives advice to data leaders about how they can automate business processes with dbt Cloud and use self-service analytics to automate revenue recognition, generate consistent headcount analytics, and more to impact their organization. Read more about Daniel's story here. 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.

Brad Culberson is a Principal Architect in the Field CTO's office at Snowflake. Niall Woodward is a co-founder of SELECT, a startup providing optimization and spend management software for Snowflake customers. In this conversation with Tristan and Julia, Brad and Niall discuss all things cost optimization: cloud vs on-prem, measuring ROI, and tactical ways to get more out of your budget. 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.

Will the dream of a mythical database to handle all workloads (transactional + analytical) ever become a reality, or does it violate the laws of physics? This question sparked a hearty debate internally at dbt Labs, and Jon "Natty" Natkins joins Julia here to continue the conversation. Natty knows databases, and this episode will take you on a historical romp through the rise and fall of Hadoop, the transition to cloud data warehouses, and what's waiting for us next in database-land. 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.