The Databricks Data Engineer

Jakub Lasak

Helping 18k+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors.

Episodes

  1. The 90/9/1 rule of Databricks performance work - how to triage Spark optimization in 60 seconds

    1 DAY AGO

    The 90/9/1 rule of Databricks performance work - how to triage Spark optimization in 60 seconds

    Your team is three weeks into a Databricks performance push. Broadcast hints in PRs. AQE flags toggled like christmas lights. Partition counts re-tuned for the third time. The manager is asking, gently, when the gains are showing up in the bill. The staff DE on the next team finished theirs in two afternoons. Same workloads, bigger drop. They were running a triage you have never been taught. In this episode: - Why most of what your team calls Spark optimization is cosmetic and will never move the bill, no matter how clean the PR - The two named tests senior Databricks engineers run on every workload before they touch a config - Why the same change (caching, salted joins, skew handling) can be cosmetic on one workload and structural on the one next to it - Where the real leverage in a Spark workload actually lives, and why it is almost always visible from outside the code For Databricks data engineers stuck in a performance push that is not converting effort into runtime or bill drops. Whether you are mid-level drowning in config tweaks, or senior watching the bill refuse to move, you will walk away with a one-minute triage you can run on any Spark workload tomorrow morning. --- Helping 18,000+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors. Follow The Databricks Data Engineer for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jakublasak Newsletter: dataengineer.wiki #DataEngineering #Databricks #DataEngineer #CareerGrowth #ApacheSpark #DeltaLake

    17 min
  2. The Databricks data engineer in 2026 - the four shifts that just changed your job

    27 APR

    The Databricks data engineer in 2026 - the four shifts that just changed your job

    You scroll past the cancelled junior req, the "serverless first" line on your director's planning slide, and the third Lakebase mention from your Databricks rep this quarter. Each one looks like a news item. None of them feel like they're about you. They are. Four structural shifts have already happened in the field, and the words "Databricks data engineer" don't mean what they meant in 2024. Most engineers haven't named them out loud yet, which is why their next promotion packet is going to read a year out of date. In this episode: - Why the junior hiring pipeline didn't pause - it closed, and what that does to mid-level reqs - How serverless quietly turned cost discipline into the new performance tuning, and why your manager wants it in your promo packet - Where Unity Catalog fluency crossed from "nice differentiator" to "you get filtered in the screen without it" - What the data engineering and backend convergence (Lakebase, serving layers, operational reads on the lakehouse) opens up for engineers who move first - The diagnostic question to ask yourself about the skill you're betting your next two years on This episode is for Databricks data engineers planning their 2026, whether you're a senior wondering where your value is moving, a mid-level engineer trying to pick the right thing to learn next, or a junior staring at a hiring market that doesn't look like the one you trained for. You'll walk away with a four-part map of the field and a concrete next move for your career segment. --- Helping 18,000+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors. Follow The Databricks Data Engineer for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jakublasak Newsletter: dataengineer.wiki #DataEngineering #Databricks #DataEngineer #CareerGrowth #ApacheSpark #DeltaLake #UnityCatalog #Lakebase

    19 min
  3. 9 Behaviors Quietly Killing Your Promotion To Senior Databricks Data Engineer

    20 APR

    9 Behaviors Quietly Killing Your Promotion To Senior Databricks Data Engineer

    Mid-level is a down escalator. It looks like flat ground. You feel productive, your tickets close on Friday, your burndown chart is healthy, and your review says "reliable executor of well-defined work" for the third cycle in a row. That sentence is the official label for "not getting promoted this year" - and most Databricks data engineers never decode it. It isn't a skill gap. It's nine habits that each feel like professionalism, compound against you across review cycles, and separate the engineer up for staff next quarter from the engineer still stuck at mid three years from now. In this episode: - Why the ambiguous ticket nobody wants is the senior-engineer starter pack, and the clean ticket is the trap - How silent 2 a.m. pipeline fixes disappear from your promotion packet, and what to post the next morning instead - The difference between how mid-level and senior Databricks engineers spend a Tuesday afternoon - Why mid-level excellence is senior mediocrity at the same quality bar - The one ceiling-breaker behavior that predicts mid-to-senior promotion more reliably than tenure, tech depth, or luck This episode is for Databricks data engineers who ship solid work, get "solid performer" reviews, and can't name why they're still at mid. Whether you're one cycle in and want to avoid the trap, or three cycles in and wondering what went wrong, you'll walk away with a named taxonomy to audit your last six months against and one concrete move to run this Thursday afternoon. --- Helping 18,000+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors. Follow The Databricks Data Engineer for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jakublasak Newsletter: dataengineer.wiki #DataEngineering #Databricks #DataEngineer #CareerGrowth #ApacheSpark #DeltaLake

    14 min
  4. The Dashboard Theater: What Databricks Engineers Build That Nobody Opens

    13 APR

    The Dashboard Theater: What Databricks Engineers Build That Nobody Opens

    You check the usage logs on a dashboard you spent two weeks building. Zero views. Not low views. Zero. The stakeholder who requested it hasn't logged in once. Three months later they ask the exact question the dashboard answers, in a meeting, out loud, as if the dashboard doesn't exist. Because for them, it doesn't. In this episode: - Why the most technically impressive Databricks dashboards are often the least used - The single question senior engineers ask that changes every BI request from ticket to strategic decision - How to spot the three tells of dashboard theater before you commit a single hour - Why a thirty-table automated data quality report got replaced by one Slack message - The taxonomy senior engineers use to price their time: decision instrument, political prop, or habit that doesn't exist yet This episode is for Databricks data engineers who build what stakeholders ask for and wonder why some of it vanishes. Whether you're mid-level trying to understand why your best work goes unnoticed, or senior wanting a named framework for intake conversations, you'll walk away with a diagnostic that saves weeks of invisible work. --- Helping 18,000+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors. Follow The Databricks Data Engineer for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jakublasak Newsletter: dataengineer.wiki #DataEngineering #Databricks #DataEngineer #CareerGrowth #ApacheSpark #DeltaLake

    16 min
  5. The Preparation Gap: What Interviewers Actually Evaluate in Databricks Data Engineers

    6 APR

    The Preparation Gap: What Interviewers Actually Evaluate in Databricks Data Engineers

    She could explain shuffle hash join versus sort merge join. She knew when Adaptive Query Execution kicks in. She had six weeks of notes on Delta Lake, Spark memory, and cluster configs. She walked into the Databricks senior interview feeling genuinely confident. Then the interviewer asked her to walk through a diagnosis, not recite a definition, and everything she studied was aimed at the wrong target. In this episode: - Why senior Databricks interviews test judgment, not knowledge, and what that means for your prep - The exact moment an interviewer recategorizes you from senior candidate to mid-level - How a debugging scenario exposes the preparation gap in under sixty seconds - Three examples of flipping memorization into scenario-based practice with the same material - The self-assessment that tells you whether your study ratio is working against you This episode is for Databricks data engineers who've been studying hard for a senior interview but aren't confident it's the right kind of preparation. Whether you're building your first study plan or revising one that didn't work last time, you'll walk away knowing exactly how to shift your prep toward what interviewers are actually scoring. --- Helping 18,000+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors. Follow The Databricks Data Engineer for new episodes. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jakublasak Newsletter: dataengineer.wiki #DataEngineering #Databricks #DataEngineer #CareerGrowth #ApacheSpark #DeltaLake

    16 min
  6. The Invisible Engineer: Why Your Best Work Gets the Least Recognition

    30 MAR

    The Invisible Engineer: Why Your Best Work Gets the Least Recognition

    She kept a terabyte-scale pipeline running for six months without a single incident. Not one page, not one late dashboard. Then review season came and the engineer who spent two weekends fixing an outage he partly caused got the promotion instead. Her name wasn't in a single incident report, because when you prevent problems, there's no report to put your name on. In this episode: - Why the skills Databricks data engineers are hired for produce structurally invisible output - The pattern behind how promotion rubrics reward firefighters and ignore fire preventers - How to keep an incidents-prevented log that turns "nothing broke" into a track record - The communication shift that makes your manager appreciate flawless execution instead of dismissing it as easy - How to frame infrastructure wins in business-outcome language that shows up in reviews This episode is for Databricks data engineers who consistently deliver solid work but feel overlooked at review time. Whether you're mid-level wondering why flashier peers get promoted faster, or senior and tired of your best infrastructure work going unnoticed, you'll walk away with a concrete visibility system you can start this week. --- Helping 18,000+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors. Follow The Databricks Data Engineer for new episodes every week. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jakublasak Newsletter: dataengineer.wiki Independent educational resource. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Databricks, Inc.

    15 min
  • 6 Episodes

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Helping 18k+ Databricks data engineers become seniors: interview like seniors, execute like seniors, think like seniors.

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