How Does Deel Get Data Without Waiting for a Meeting?
Aaron Goldsmid looks after Deel's data organization, where semantic layers and small AI analysts answer a data question without a ping. Deel is globally remote, so the person who has the information is often asleep. The old loop waited until a meeting could be scheduled, which turned wildly inefficient, or until that person was on Slack. Asking the semantic layer short-circuits the wait, and people only need to be awake for the information to flow freely.
Deel has grown very quickly, and engineering entropy is inevitable. A core promise is an all-in-one platform with a better-together effect, like G Suite, where the pieces naturally work together. One end of the spectrum is everyone writing their own thing and moving wildly quickly, which creates a ton of endpoints. The other end is a shared service that always adds a dependency. He tried to uncouple the two so teams keep the upside of both. Fast local work stays at one layer, then tools like dbt aggregate it into an L2 where the systems can talk to each other. Customers can reach their own data there, and Deel can use the same layer inside the company as it moves toward being one of the largest employers on the planet.
