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

Sponsors

Estuary

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: BASF, Delta Lake, Databricks

More episodes of Data Engineering Central Podcast

• AI Isn’t Replacing Curious Developers · May 6, 2026 · 1h 4m
• Most Data Teams Are Doing It Wrong · April 22, 2026 · 59 min
• He Quit Apple After 13 Years · April 1, 2026 · 52 min
• Spark, AI, and the Future of Data Engineering with Daniel Aronovich · March 24, 2026 · 47 min
• DuckDB, AI, and the Future of Data Engineering · March 18, 2026 · 1h 0m
• What Decades in Software Engineering Teaches You · March 11, 2026 · 1h 6m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Data Engineering Central Podcast podcast page.