Drill to Detail
Drill to Detail Ep.115 ‘Airbnb, DataOps and SQLMesh’s Data Engineering Innovation’ with Special Guest Toby Mao
Nov 1, 2024
Toby Mao, co-founder and CTO of Tobiko Data, shares insights from his rich experience at Netflix and Airbnb in this engaging discussion. He dives into the transformative journey of building SQLMesh, highlighting its innovative features for data operations. The conversation contrasts SQLMesh with DBT, showcasing SQLMesh's strengths in state management and error checking. Toby also emphasizes the importance of the semantic layer in data quality and shares the collaborative spirit behind SQLMesh's community, making it a vital tool for modern data engineering.
34:28
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Quick takeaways
- Toby Mao's experiences at Netflix and Airbnb informed the development of SQL Glot and SQL Mesh, addressing data engineering challenges related to SQL dialects.
- SQL Mesh enhances data transformation efficiency by managing dependencies and optimizing state management, allowing engineers to focus on business logic rather than operational tasks.
Deep dives
Toby Mao's Journey into Data Engineering
Toby Mao began his career as a pharmaceutical consultant and transitioned to software engineering, developing an interest in data engineering while working at Scribd and Netflix. At Netflix, he led the experimentation team, where he recognized the challenges data scientists faced due to varying SQL dialects across platforms like Spark and Presto. This experience motivated him to create SQL Glot, an open-source SQL parser and transpiler, which eventually influenced his decision to co-found Tobiko Data and develop SQL Mesh. His journey reflects a deep understanding of how data tools can better facilitate the work of data engineers and scientists, especially in complex environments.
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