Holly Smith

Holly Smith has over a decade of experience working with Data & AI teams in a variety of capacities from individual contributors all the way up to leadership. She has spent the last five years at Databricks working with many multi national companies as they embark on their journey to develop their data maturity. She also works with the non profits Datakind UK and Tech Talent Charter to advise on data strategy and operations.

Holly Smith's Training Days

Data Engineering with Databricks SQLBits 2025

So you’ve heard of Databricks, but after setting up a notebook and writing some code you’re still not sure what the fuss is all about. Yes you’ve heard it’s Spark, but then there’s this Delta thing that’s both a data lake and a data warehouse (isn’t that what Iceberg is?). And then Unity Catalog, which does more than just catalog data, it does access management but even surprising things like optimise your data and programmatic access to lineage and billing? But then serverless came out and now you don’t even have to learn Spark? And of course there’s a bunch of AI stuff to use or create yourself. So why not spend a single day learning the details of what Databricks does, and how it could make you look like a rockstar Data Engineer.

Holly Smith's Sessions

Data Engineering with Databricks SQLBits 2025

So you’ve heard of Databricks, but after setting up a notebook and writing some code you’re still not sure what the fuss is all about. Yes you’ve heard it’s Spark, but then there’s this Delta thing that’s both a data lake and a data warehouse (isn’t that what Iceberg is?). And then Unity Catalog, which does more than just catalog data, it does access management but even surprising things like optimise your data and programmatic access to lineage and billing? But then serverless came out and now you don’t even have to learn Spark? And of course there’s a bunch of AI stuff to use or create yourself. So why not spend a single day learning the details of what Databricks does, and how it could make you look like a rockstar Data Engineer.

Data Engineering with Databricks SQLBits 2025

So you’ve heard of Databricks, but after setting up a notebook and writing some code you’re still not sure what the fuss is all about. Yes you’ve heard it’s Spark, but then there’s this Delta thing that’s both a data lake and a data warehouse (isn’t that what Iceberg is?). And then Unity Catalog, which does more than just catalog data, it does access management but even surprising things like optimise your data and programmatic access to lineage and billing? But then serverless came out and now you don’t even have to learn Spark? And of course there’s a bunch of AI stuff to use or create yourself. So why not spend a single day learning the details of what Databricks does, and how it could make you look like a rockstar Data Engineer.