Podcast Overview
<p><span>Data Innovators brings you candid conversations with technical data leaders tackling today’s toughest challenges.</span><br /><span>We'll dive into fresh approaches to data engineering, practical strategies for scaling modern data platforms, and the trends shaping the data ecosystem.</span><br /><span>Hosted by Roy Daniel – CEO of definity – each episode shares hard-won lessons and actionable insights from those building data systems at scale.</span></p>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
9/2/2025
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Recent Episodes
May 12, 2026
EP 7: DJ Patil - How Agentic AI Breaks Data Platforms
<p>The Lakehouse made big data accessible. But it did not come with the management layer needed for what comes next.</p><p>In this episode, DJ Patil – former Chief Data Product & Data Science Linkedin and of the United States, and a GP at GreatPoint Ventures – joins Roy Daniel, definity’s CEO, for a conversation tracing the evolution of modern data infrastructure and the future of agentic data engineering.</p><p>They revisit the early days at LinkedIn, when Kafka was invented because the team could not afford Splunk; through the early days of Spark with Ali, Matei and the Databricks team; to today’s AI-powered data platforms, and the challenges that come with it.</p><p>DJ and Roy explore the structural complexity of the Lakehouse, and how it’s compounding in the world of AI; why the real challenge is no longer just observability – it is context and guardrails; and the dramatic shift toward true actionability in agentic data engineering, in a world where scale is growing 100x.</p><p>DJ shares the harsh realities data teams are facing right now and the strong thesis and momentum that drove GPV to lead the recent investment in definity.</p><p>Chapters: </p><p>00:00 Introduction</p><p>01:44 DJ's journey: from weather data to the White House</p><p>10:54 The data engineering tooling gap</p><p>17:00 Why DJ invested in definity</p><p>23:44 Lakehouse observability: structurally broken by design</p><p>30:31 Context as the prerequisite for agentic pipelines</p><p>39:34 What data leaders must do now</p><p><strong>Our Guest:</strong> DJ Patil is former Chief Data Product & Data Science Linkedin and of the United States, and a GP at GreatPoint Ventures.While at LinkedIn, he co-coined the term "data scientist" and was part of the team that built Kafka and LinkedIn's early recommendation systems. He is the author of Building Data Science Teams and Data Jiu Jitsu.</p><p><strong>Our Host:</strong> Roy Daniel is the Co-Founder & CEO of definity – the optimization & observability platform for the Lakehouse and Spark ecosystem.</p><p>Subscribe for more in-depth conversations with technical data leaders solving complex challenges across the data ecosystem.</p><p>#DataInnovators #DataEngineering #Lakehouse #AgenticAI #DataObservability #DataPlatforms #Podcast #definity</p>
April 7, 2026
Ep 6: Ime Akpan - Data foundation for AI readiness
<p>AI readiness is a common priority. Ime Akpan, Head of Data Engineering and Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Vanguard Europe, is executing on it at scale.</p><p>By leveraging Apache Spark, AWS Glue, and a serverless stack, his team laid a data lakehouse foundation that made the business more AI-ready than they realized, without a major platform overhaul.</p><p>In this episode, we hear more about Vanguard's AI-readiness journey: The foundations they needed, the data quality challenges they faced, and why "Context is King" as teams shift to intent-driven "context engineering" to ensure AI agents understand the why behind the data.</p><p><strong>Chapters: </strong></p><p>00:00 Introduction</p><p>03:10 Vanguard 2026 priorities</p><p>10:00 Why lakehouse architecture</p><p>21:05 Data validation and quality challenges </p><p>30:00 Scaling AI readiness</p><p><strong>Ime Akpan</strong> is Head of Data Engineering and Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Vanguard Europe. He leads the technical execution of Vanguard's data pipelines, managing the complex ingestion, transformation, and rigorous validation of data for downstream analysts, data scientists, and business teams.</p><p><strong>Roy Daniel</strong> is the Co-Founder & CEO of definity, the agentic data engineering platform for the Lakehouse and Spark ecosystem.</p><p>Subscribe to Data Innovators for more conversations with technical data leaders solving complex challenges across the data ecosystem.</p><p>#DataInnovators #DataEngineering #Lakehouse #AIReadiness #DataPlatforms #Podcast #definity</p><p><br></p>
March 4, 2026
Ep 5: Rohit Sivaprasad – Is your data warehouse ready for AI?
<p>Legacy Data warehouses are becoming too heavy to support AI initiatives, Rohit Sivaprasad, Head of Data Science and Engineering at Adobe Stock, explains how his team is systematically decluttering years of accumulated technical debt while building the semantic foundation that AI agents will need to access organizational data.</p><p>The conversation covers the specific challenges and use cases of Adobe Stock's hybrid business model (B2B and B2C, subscription and ecommerce. Rohit shares his approach to agentic data engineering and the changes data platforms need to go through in the AI era.</p><p><strong>Chapters:</strong></p><p>00:48 Introduction: Adobe’s use cases and challenges</p><p>07:32 Decluttering data warehouses</p><p>12:42 Priorities for 2026</p><p>14:15 Challenges of agentic data engineering</p><p>19:30 Data platform changes required to support the scale of AI</p><p>21:55 The value in AI initiatives - envisioning the future</p><p><strong>Rohit Sivaprasad</strong> leads data science and engineering at Adobe Stock, the creative marketplace platform. Rohit has data science and analytics work at Walmart, Meta, and AWS.</p><p><strong>Roy Daniel</strong> is the Co-Founder & CEO of definity, the optimization and observability platform for the Lakehouse and Spark ecosystem.</p><p>Subscribe to Data Innovators for more conversations with technical data leaders solving complex challenges across the data ecosystem.</p><p>#DataInnovators #DataEngineering #DataWarehouseOptimization #AgenticAI #Adobe #Podcast #definity</p>
7 total episodes available
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- What is Data Innovators?
<p><span>Data Innovators brings you candid conversations with technical data leaders tackling today’s toughest challenges.</span><br /><span>We'll dive into fresh approaches to data engineering, practical strategies for scaling modern data platforms, and the trends shaping the data ecosystem.</span><br /><span>Hosted by Roy Daniel – CEO of definity – each episode shares hard-won lessons and actionable insights from those building data systems at scale.</span></p> - How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Information about guest appearances is not available.
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