I asked Nick Ursa, our lead data engineer (and MotherDuck co-founder), how AI had changed his job. His answer: "This is the first time in my career with no backlog."
You'd think that would leave him with plenty of time on his hands, but he's busier than ever. While the backlog is gone, the answers still have to be right, and a human still has to decide how much quality control to do. Whereas once upon a time his job was to make sure the numbers he was computing were right, now his job is to make sure that the numbers that an LLM or agent comes up with are right.
That's a different job from working a ticket queue. At Data Outpost on November 4, I proposed a name for this new role: the Data Intelligence Engineer. I think it's now the emergent role on an AI-enabled data team, and I’d like to share why.
