Austin dbt Meetup: The 2025 State of the AE Report

The 2025 State of Analytics Engineering, crafted by dbt Labs, examines how data teams are navigating this new AI era. This report isn’t just a snapshot of where we are today. It’s a blueprint for where analytics engineering is headed next. Let’s dive in.

🤝Organizer: dbt Labs Community Team
🏠Venue Host: dbt Labs' Austin Office: 522 Congress Avenue, Suite 700, Austin TX 78701 — Scarbrough Building

To attend, please read the Health and Safety Policy and Terms of Participation: https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy

📝Agenda

• 5:30 - 6:00pm | Check-in, nametags and mingling
• 6:00 - 6:50pm | Discussion of the State of the Analytics Engineering Report results with Amada Echeverria (Community @ dbt Labs), Sunny Pachunuri (Director of Data @ Outpost), and Erica Louie (Senior Analytics Manager: Engineering, Product, Design @ dbt Labs), and Nikita Pestrov (Senior Analytics Engineer @ Zello)
• 6:50 - 7:05 | Q & A
• 7:05 - 8:30pm | Networking, bites and drinks

Our venue has capacity limits. Please RSVP if you intend to come and change your RSVP status on the Meetup to "Not Going" or message Amada Echeverria in Meetup if you have an issue.

PANELISTS
Nikita Pestrov is a Senior Analytics Engineer at Zello, a leading push-to-talk communications platform for frontline teams. Data Leader with over 8 years of experience specializing in developing scalable and impactful data products for clients like Mastercard, the World Bank, and PWC. Skilled in building distributed cloud-native data pipelines, with deep foundation in AI/ML and SaaS product development.

Erica "ric" Louie joined dbt Labs as the second employee in 2017 and became the Head of Data for three years where she built the foundational data team. Currently, she’s in her dream role: managing the data org that supports dbt Labs’s Engineering, Product, and Design vertical (i.e. doing data for the product we all know and love).

Sunny Pachunuri is the Director of Data at Outpost, where he’s building the foundation for data to power every decision—and help predict the future of logistics. With a track record across Fortune 100 companies and early-stage startups, he led the data function at Endpoint from the ground up and now focuses on designing platforms that make insights accessible, actionable, and genuinely transformative. Grounded in believing that great work comes from doing what you love, Sunny brings a high-expectation, high-ownership mindset to everything he builds—driven by a deep curiosity and a passion for solving the problems that matter most. His philosophy is simple: if something’s a problem, it matters—so don’t complain, just solve it.

EVENT DETAILS:

• 🚗 Parking info: Littlefield Garage is nearby. Address: 508 Brazos Street Austin Tx, 78701.
• The doors open at 5:30pm. If you arrive before, we may not be ready to welcome you yet!

➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: https://www.getdbt.com/community/ and join the #local-texas channel.