Summary

Joe Reis shares Zach Wilson's observations from Stockholm about the state of data engineering in 2026, arguing that AI innovation is no longer confined to San Francisco, that dashboard-focused roles are declining, and that data engineers should focus on the 'Three Vs' (volume, velocity, variety) to remain relevant in an AI-augmented world.

Key Insight

Data engineers should future-proof their careers by moving toward high-volume, real-time, and multimodal data work — the dimensions where AI can't yet replace human expertise.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 7

  Building a Tableau viz so an exec can stare at it for ten seconds is not a future-proof career. The work has moved on.

• 6

  If you're a data engineer working only with low-volume, batch, structured data, you are exposed. Pick a V and go deep. Preferably, stack two of them.

• 4

  AI is hard to teach because the best practices haven't been established.

• 8

  The gap between what actually works and what vendors are selling you is wide, and vendors are very happy to live in it.

• 5

  Give it 10% more context, and you get 80% better output. This is not subtle. Under-specified prompts are the single biggest skill gap he sees.

Tone

conversational, pragmatic, advisory