
From Industrial Data at BASF to Delta Lake Committer
From Data Engineering Central Podcast by Data Engineering in Real Life
April 15, 2026 · 48 min
About this episode
Robert Pack discusses his journey in building large-scale data systems at BASF and his role as a Delta Lake committer.
In this episode, Robert Pack walks through his journey from engineering and simulation work to building large-scale data systems across 900+ plants at BASF. We break down what those systems actually looked like, including ingestion, modeling, and the realities of batch vs real-time in industrial environments. We also dive into: * AI Workflows for Developers * His work as a committer on Delta Lake * Where lakehouse architecture works and where it falls short * The transition into Developer Relations at Databricks This is a grounded, practical conversation about what actually matters when building data platforms. Today’s podcast is sponsored by Estuary . Without them, content like this isn’t possible. The best way to support this Newsletter is to check out what Estuary has to offer and click the links below. Build millisecond-latency, scalable, future-proof data pipelines in minutes. Estuary is the Right-Time Data Platform that integrates all of the systems you use to produce, process, and consume data. Also, providing best-in-class CDC ( Change Data Capture ). Estuary unifies today’s batch and streaming paradigms so that your systems, current and future, are synchronized around…
People in this episode
Guest: Robert Pack
Topics covered
- industrial data systems
- Delta Lake
- lakehouse architecture
- AI workflows
- developer relations
- data pipelines
Keywords
- industrial data
- data engineering
- batch processing
- real-time data
- data platforms
- Change Data Capture
- lakehouse architecture
Sponsors
Estuary
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: BASF, Delta Lake, Databricks
More episodes of Data Engineering Central Podcast
- From Failure to AWS: What Actually Makes a Great Engineer · June 10, 2026 · 52 min
- How Real Data Engineers Think (Beyond Tools and Hype) · June 3, 2026 · 49 min
- Data, AI, and DuckDB · May 27, 2026 · 50 min
- Why I Left Facebook to Work for Myself · May 20, 2026 · 53 min
- Academic → CTO: What Actually Matters in Data (Matthew Housley) · May 13, 2026 · 56 min
- AI Isn’t Replacing Curious Developers · May 6, 2026 · 1h 4m
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Data Engineering Central Podcast podcast page.