One of the things I enjoy most about working in tech recruitment is how closely we’re connected to the communities we serve. The last tech meetup I attended was a great reminder of that, as I had the chance to be involved in another brilliant Data Engineers London event, this time in collaboration with the Snowflake User Group (LSUG).
A Night of Collaboration and Insight
The joint meetup brought together an incredibly engaged crowd of data professionals, from hands-on engineers to architects and platform specialists. The atmosphere in the room was energetic from the moment people arrived, exactly what you hope for when two strong communities come together.
Events like this don’t happen without a lot of effort behind the scenes, so a huge thank you goes to Piers Batchelor, Anna Aleshko, Tony Burton, Jason Michaelides and Emma MacGregor for making it all possible.
The talks themselves sparked some genuinely insightful conversations.
- Jean D. stepped in at short notice and delivered an excellent talk and demo on using dbt inside the Fusion Engine, which prompted plenty of follow-up discussion.
- Dominik G. shared his experience optimising data warehouses using open-source DBT Macro Polo, offering practical takeaways that attendees could apply straight away.
From my perspective as a consultant, it was great to see people openly sharing real-world challenges, solutions, and lessons learned, that kind of knowledge exchange is what keeps the data engineering space moving forward.
Looking Ahead: Kicking Off 2026 With Real-Time Data
Momentum is already building for our next event on January 22nd, where we’ll be kicking off the new year with a deep dive into real-time data. The event will be hosted at The Information Lab on historic Watling Street, and we’re excited to be collaborating with Confluent to bring together another high-quality evening of learning and discussion.
We’ve lined up an outstanding group of speakers who are working at a serious scale:
- Sam M., Head of Architecture & Engineering at Centrus, will take us behind the scenes of data systems powering some of the world’s biggest live tours and events, including Beyoncé, Coldplay and Glastonbury, processing billions of data points in real time.
- Nicoleta Lazar (Senior Data Engineer) and Anton Borisov (Principal Engineer) from Fresha will deliver a practical session on Apache Flink joins, covering everything from common pitfalls to cutting-edge approaches like delta joins.
As always, the talks will be followed by informal networking and most likely a trip to a nearby pub to keep the conversations going.
Why These Events Matter to Us
Being actively involved in the data engineering community isn’t just something we talk about, it’s something we genuinely value. These meetups give us the opportunity to stay close to the technologies, challenges, and trends shaping the industry, while building meaningful relationships with the people working in it every day.
We’re really looking forward to continuing this momentum throughout the year and supporting more events that bring the community together. If you’re passionate about data engineering, real-time systems, or simply enjoy learning from people solving complex problems at scale, we’d love to see you at a future meetup.
Here’s to another exciting year of collaboration, learning, and innovation.
