Awesome Databricks

The only Databricks-specific resource list on GitHub. Tools, creators, courses, and communities - everything a Databricks data engineer needs in one place.

Contributions welcome! Please read the contribution guidelines first.

Contents

• Getting Started
• Creators

• Learning

• Content

• Communities
• Open Source & Tools
• Contributing

Getting Started

New to Databricks or looking for a structured path? Start here.

• freeCodeCamp Databricks Course - Free 7.5-hour video course for DE Associate certification.
• The Databricks 100 - 100 must-know concepts for data engineers. 10 categories x 10 concepts with difficulty ratings, certification mapping, and a 100-day challenge.
• Databricks DE Associate Certification Lab - Free hands-on lab that runs on Databricks Free Edition. 4-6 hours, covers the full exam scope.
• Databricks Academy - Official free self-paced courses for every certification path.
• DataDojo - Daily Databricks practice exercises. 633+ questions with streaks and progress tracking.

Creators

Databricks-Focused

Creators whose content is primarily about Databricks. Minimum 5K followers, active in the last 6 months.

| Name | Platform | Followers | Focus | | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Derar Alhussein | LinkedIn | 39K LI, 100K+ students | 10x Databricks Certified, Databricks MVP, O'Reilly author | | Ansh Lamba | YouTube | 107K YT | PySpark Full Course (882K views) and Databricks Masterclass (585K views). Highest view counts for Databricks content on YouTube | | Jakub Lasak (DataEngineer.wiki) | LinkedIn, Podcast | 14K LI | Databricks career advancement, interview prep, hands-on labs, production patterns | | Matei Zaharia | LinkedIn | 170K LI | CTO & Cofounder of Databricks, CS Professor at Berkeley. Created Apache Spark, co-created Delta Lake, MLflow | | Reynold Xin | LinkedIn | 35K LI | Cofounder of Databricks. Posts on Lakebase, Lakewatch, platform architecture | | Subham Khandelwal (Ease with Data) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 23K LI, 51K YT | PySpark Zero to Hero, Databricks Zero to Hero. Solutions Architect at Databricks | | Bryan Cafferky | LinkedIn, YouTube | 15K LI, 49K YT | Azure Databricks step-by-step tutorials, dimensional modeling | | Simon Whiteley (Advancing Analytics) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 21K LI, 42K YT | Databricks + Fabric deep dives, Advancing Spark series. Dual Microsoft & Databricks MVP | | Jaco van Gelder | LinkedIn | 26K LI | Unity Catalog governance, SQL Warehouses, enterprise architecture. Databricks MVP, Staff DE at IKEA | | Bartosz Konieczny (waitingforcode) | LinkedIn, Blog | 13K LI | Deep Spark/Databricks posts (DLT, Lakeflow, data quality). Databricks MVP, O'Reilly author | | Mariusz Kujawski | LinkedIn | 10K LI | Cloud Data Architect. Databricks Apps, CI/CD, Delta Lake maintenance, unit testing. Conference speaker | | Emil Kaminski | YouTube | 12K YT | Enterprise Data & AI Architect. Databricks tutorials, certification prep, Warsaw meetups | | Ramesh Retnasamy | LinkedIn, Udemy | 200K+ students | Databricks Certified DE Associate exam prep (bestselling course) | | Hubert Dudek (SunnyData) | LinkedIn, Blog | 34K LI | Databricks MVP, Advisor to Databricks Product Board. Weekly Databricks news, DABS, production best practices | | Bartosz Gajda | LinkedIn | 6K LI | Databricks Champion, Solutions Architect. Unity Catalog, Lakeflow, Delta Sharing, platform migrations at enterprise scale | | Szymon Dybczak | LinkedIn, Community, Medium, Reddit | 2K LI, 412 community solutions | Databricks Community Champion. Unity Catalog, DABs, Lakeflow, Azure Databricks deep-dives | | Raman Gupta | LinkedIn | 2K LI | Databricks Champion. Lead Data Architect, Unity Catalog, SQL Warehouses, Databricks Apps |

Data Engineering (Broader)

Creators covering data engineering broadly, with substantial Databricks content alongside other platforms.

| Name | Platform | Followers | Focus | | ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Zach Wilson (DataExpert.io) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 518K LI, 259K YT | DE career content, broad DE education. Founder of DataExpert.io | | Ankit Bansal (NamasteSQL) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 254K LI, 175K YT | SQL deep dives, DE at Amazon. Covers Databricks, Spark, analytics engineering | | Darshil Parmar | LinkedIn, YouTube | 136K LI, 202K YT | DE projects (Azure Databricks, Spark), AWS/GCP pipelines | | Adam Marczak (Azure 4 Everyone) | YouTube | 236K YT | Azure Databricks within broader Azure tutorials. Microsoft Azure MVP | | Andreas Kretz (LearnDataEngineering) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 245K YT | DE fundamentals, Spark, Databricks platform training | | Ben Rogojan (Seattle Data Guy) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 186K LI, 120K YT | DE consulting, Databricks vs Snowflake, Delta Lake, pipeline architecture | | Joseph Machado (Start Data Engineering) | LinkedIn, Blog | 48K LI | DE tutorials, DLT, pipeline patterns. DE at Netflix | | Soumil Shah | LinkedIn, YouTube | 46K YT | Hudi, Iceberg, Spark on AWS, lakehouse architecture. 1,800+ videos | | Alex Merced | LinkedIn, YouTube | 36K LI | Data lakehouse, Iceberg/Delta Lake/Hudi, open table formats | | Daniel Beach (Confessions of a Data Guy) | LinkedIn, Blog | 20K LI | Practical DE, cost analysis, Databricks tool reviews. Prolific writer | | Dipankar Mazumdar | LinkedIn | 17K LI | Iceberg, Delta Lake interoperability (XTable), open table formats. O'Reilly co-author | | John Wernfeldt | LinkedIn, Substack | 50K LI | Data governance, decision rights, analytics. Ex-Gartner. 1.9K Substack subscribers | | Erfan Hesami (Pipeline to Insights) | LinkedIn, Substack | 9.7K Substack | DE tutorials, interview prep, career transitions. Data Architect at Airmaster | | Baraa Khatib Salkini (Data with Baraa) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 41K LI, 343K YT | Databricks bootcamps, Medallion Architecture, PySpark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog | | Deepak Goyal (AzureLib) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 261K LI | Azure Databricks training, Spark, PySpark | | Ajay Kadiyala | LinkedIn | 178K LI | Databricks, Spark, Azure Data Factory, Kafka. LinkedIn Top Voice | | Prashant Kumar Pandey (ScholarNest) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 42K LI, 83K YT | Spark performance tuning on Databricks, PySpark, certification prep | | Mr. K Talks Tech | LinkedIn, YouTube | 9K LI, 36K YT | Azure Databricks end-to-end project tutorials, ETL pipelines | | Youssef Mrini | LinkedIn | 25K LI | Solutions Architect, Developer Advocate. Co-host of NextGenLakehouse Podcast | | Josue Bogran | LinkedIn, YouTube | 28K LI, 1K YT | VP of Data+AI, Databricks MVP. Interviews Databricks PMs, Unity Catalog demos, AI agents | | Chris Gambill (Gambill Data Engineering) | LinkedIn, YouTube | 12K YT | DE strategy, career roadmaps, practical Spark/Databricks tutorials. 496 videos | | Yordan Ivanov (Data Gibberish) | LinkedIn, Substack | 7K LI, 7.5K Substack | Stakeholder management, career growth, leadership for data engineers. Head of Data at Dext |

Learning

Certifications

All exams: $200 USD, multiple choice, proctored online. Databricks does not publish official passing scores (community-reported ~70%). Full catalog.

| Exam | Level | Questions | Time | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------ | --------- | ------- | | Data Engineer Associate | Associate | 45 | 90 min | | Data Engineer Professional | Professional | 59 | 120 min | | Machine Learning Associate | Associate | 48 | 90 min | | Machine Learning Professional | Professional | 59 | 120 min | | Generative AI Engineer Associate | Associate | 45 | 90 min | | Data Analyst Associate | Associate | 45 | 90 min | | Apache Spark Developer Associate | Associate | 45 | 90 min |

Free accreditations (for customers/partners): Databricks Fundamentals, Generative AI Fundamentals, AI Agent Fundamentals, Platform Administrator, Cloud Platform Architect.

Courses

Official

• Databricks Academy - Free self-paced courses for all certification paths. Instructor-led available (~$1,000-$1,500).
• Free Certification Overview Courses - Free overview course for each certification exam.

• Data Analytics Solution with Azure Databricks - Data ingestion, Azure Data Lake, Azure SQL.
• Data Engineering Solution Using Azure Databricks - Data orchestration and security.
• Build ML Solutions Using Azure Databricks - ML at scale.

Student counts and ratings as of April 2026.

• Azure Databricks & Spark For Data Engineers - By Ramesh Retnasamy. 4.6 stars (26.5K ratings), 159,914 students. 20h, updated 3/2026.
• Databricks Certified DE Associate - Preparation - By Derar Alhussein. 4.5 stars (16.2K ratings), 107,029 students. 5h, updated 3/2026.
• PySpark - Apache Spark Programming for Beginners - By Prashant Kumar Pandey. 4.6 stars (16.2K ratings), 96,795 students. 28h, updated 1/2026.
• Databricks Certified DE Professional - Preparation - By Derar Alhussein. 4.6 stars (4.3K ratings), 32,107 students. 5h, updated 3/2026.
• Azure Databricks and Spark SQL (Python) - By Malvik Vaghadia. 4.7 stars (3.4K ratings), 29,210 students. 17h, updated 1/2026.
• Azure Databricks E2E: Unity Catalog, DABs, CI/CD - By Shanmukh Sattiraju. 4.6 stars (2.2K ratings), 16,284 students. 21h, updated 3/2026.
• Databricks Certified DE Associate - Bootcamp - By Ansh Lamba. 4.6 stars (1.5K ratings), 10,019 students. 19h, updated 3/2026.

• Enterprise AI and Data Engineering with Databricks - 5-course specialization by Pragmatic AI Labs.
• Mastering Azure Databricks for Data Engineers - By Packt.

• Databricks DE Associate Certification Course - 7.5h free course on freeCodeCamp (Andrew Brown).

Hands-On Labs

• Databricks Academy Free Labs - Official free hands-on labs for all certification paths. By Databricks.
• Databricks DE Associate Certification Lab - 4-6 hour hands-on prep for the DE Associate exam. Free Edition compatible. 42 stars.
• DLT Apparel Streaming Pipeline - Build a real-time streaming pipeline with DLT. 3-4 hours. 40 stars.
• Delta Lake Optimization Techniques - Hands-on guide to Z-ORDER, OPTIMIZE, VACUUM, and more. 3-4 hours.
• PySpark Certification Prep - PySpark certification practice lab. 4-6 hours.
• Real-Time Fintech Monitoring - Streaming pipeline for financial monitoring. 3-4 hours.
• Data Engineering Zoomcamp - Spark Module - Free Spark exercises within a 10-week DE course. 39.5K stars. By DataTalks.Club.

Practice

• The Databricks 100 - 100 must-know Databricks concepts for data engineers. 10 categories x 10 concepts with difficulty ratings, certification mapping, and a 100-day challenge.
• DataDojo - Daily Databricks practice exercises. 633+ questions across 7 categories with streaks.
• Senior Databricks Data Engineer Interview Cheat sheet - 86-entry interview cheat sheet for Databricks DE interviews.
• Databricks Academy Practice Exams - Official practice questions for certification prep. Free for Databricks customers.

Books

Databricks-Specific

• Delta Lake: The Definitive Guide - Denny Lee et al. (2024, O'Reilly)
• Delta Lake: Up and Running - Bennie Haelen, Dan Davis (2023, O'Reilly)
• Databricks Certified DE Associate Study Guide - Derar Alhussein (2025, O'Reilly)
• Data Engineering with Databricks Cookbook - Pulkit Chadha (2024, Packt)

• Learning Spark, 2nd Ed. - Damji, Wenig, Das, Lee (2020, O'Reilly)
• High Performance Spark, 2nd Ed. - Karau, Polak, Warren (2026, O'Reilly)
• Spark: The Definitive Guide - Chambers, Zaharia (2018, O'Reilly)

• Fundamentals of Data Engineering - Reis, Housley (2022, O'Reilly)
• Data Engineering Design Patterns - Simon Spati (Ongoing)

• The DE Guide to Spark and Delta Lake - Free PDF from Databricks.
• Delta Lake: The Definitive Guide (PDF) - Free PDF from Delta.io.

Content

Official Blogs

• Databricks Blog - Product updates, engineering deep dives, best practices. Filter by Data Engineering for DE-specific posts.
• Delta Lake Blog - Releases, features, community updates.
• Databricks Community Technical Blog - Community-contributed technical articles.

Newsletters

• Data Engineering Weekly - 42K+ subscribers. Broad DE: tools, trends, architecture. Covers Databricks regularly. By Ananth Packkildurai.
• Data Engineering Central - 23K+ subscribers. Honest DE takes, practical advice. By Daniel Beach.
• DataEngineer.wiki Newsletter - Weekly Databricks career tips and technical deep-dives for data engineers at every level.
• NextGenLakehouse - Databricks-focused: DE, DS, AI/ML, Unity Catalog.
• Data Engineer Things - DE deep dives including Databricks UDTFs, Unity Catalog. By Vu Trinh.
• Pipeline to Insights - 9.7K+ subscribers. DE tutorials, career transitions, interview prep. By Erfan Hesami.
• Data Governance Field Library - 1.9K+ subscribers. Data governance, decision rights, analytics strategy. By John Wernfeldt.
• Gradient Flow - AI/ML infrastructure, data engineering trends. By Ben Lorica.

Blogs

• Confessions of a Data Guy - Practical DE, cost analysis, tool reviews. By Daniel Beach.
• Spark By Examples - PySpark, Spark SQL, Delta Lake code examples. Comprehensive reference.
• waitingforcode - Deep Spark/Databricks technical posts. By Bartosz Konieczny.
• Advancing Analytics Blog - Databricks deep dives, Azure analytics. By Simon Whiteley.
• Databrickster (SunnyData) - Weekly Databricks news, DABS, production anti-patterns, deduplication strategies. By Hubert Dudek.
• Start Data Engineering - DE tutorials, pipeline patterns. By Joseph Machado.
• Simon Spati's Blog - DE patterns, tools, curated resources.
• Data Engineering Vault - Curated knowledge base of DE concepts and tools. By Simon Spati.
• Subham Khandelwal on Medium - Databricks tutorials, PySpark, end-to-end guides.
• DataExpert.io Blog - DE career, tools, resources. By Zach Wilson et al.

Podcasts

• Data Brew by Databricks - Official Databricks podcast. Lakehouses, ML, AI interviews. By Denny Lee & Brooke Wenig.
• Data Engineering Podcast - Broad DE: tools, architectures, best practices. Regular Databricks coverage. By Tobias Macey.
• Data Engineering Central Podcast - Practical DE: news, opinions, career advice. By Daniel Beach.
• The Data Engineering Show - Interviews with data leaders on real-world challenges.
• Data Engineering Weekly (Audio) - Newsletter companion audio. By Ananth Packkildurai.
• DataEngineer.wiki Podcast - Databricks career advancement, technical deep-dives, interview prep.
• Plumbers of Data Science - DE trends, tools, community interviews. By Simon Spati.

YouTube Channels

Sorted by Databricks content popularity. View counts as of April 2026.

Databricks-Focused

• Data with Baraa - 343K subscribers. Visual explanations, Databricks bootcamps, career content. "What is Databricks?" hit 106K views in 3 weeks.
• Ansh Lamba - 107K subscribers. PySpark Full Course (882K views), Databricks Masterclass (585K views). Top view counts for any Databricks content on YouTube.
• Ease With Data - 54-lesson "Databricks Zero to Hero" playlist. DABs, CI/CD, Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines. By Subham Khandelwal (Databricks).
• Advancing Analytics - Cutting-edge Databricks features: Metric Views, Lakebase, Genie Code, MCP. By Simon Whiteley.
• Afaque Ahmad - 26K subscribers. "Spark 30 Concepts" (91K views), Delta Lake Masterclass (56K views), E2E project (40K views).
• Pathfinder Analytics - 72K subscribers. Cert prep (56K views), streaming ETL with DLT (40K views), AI Dev Kit (52K views).
• Databricks For Professionals - 12K subscribers. Unity Catalog tutorial (27K views). By Emil Kaminski.
• Bryan Cafferky - 49K subscribers. Azure Databricks step-by-step tutorials. 43-lesson series.
• Databricks - Official channel. 155K subscribers. Product demos, Data+AI Summit talks, Genie Code demos.

• codebasics - 1.49M subscribers. Databricks Free Edition E2E project (202K views), FMCG project (83K views).
• Alex The Analyst - 1.31M subscribers. "Learn Databricks in Under 2 Hours" (112K views). Dedicated Free Edition series.
• freeCodeCamp - 11.6M subscribers. 7.5-hour Databricks DE Associate certification course (145K views).
• Darshil Parmar - 202K subscribers. "Learn Databricks in 10 Minutes" (137K views).
• Andreas Kretz - 245K subscribers. DE fundamentals, Spark, Databricks platform training.
• Seattle Data Guy - 120K subscribers. Broad DE with periodic Databricks content.

Communities

• Databricks Community Forum - Official forum. Data Engineering, ML, SQL, certifications.
• r/databricks - ~20K members. General discussion, troubleshooting, news.
• DataTalks.Club Slack - 80K+ members. DE, ML, MLOps courses, career advice.
• Databricks Discord - Real-time troubleshooting, innovations, networking.
• Databricks User Groups - Regional and interest-based chapters worldwide.
• Data+AI Summit 2026 - June 15-18, Moscone Center, SF. 800+ sessions.
• [Stack Overflow [databricks]](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/databricks) - Technical Q&A: PySpark, Delta Lake, cluster config, SQL.
• Delta Lake Community - Slack + Google Group for open-source Delta Lake discussion.
• Data Engineer Handbook - 40K+ stars. Curated DE resources. By DataExpert.io.

Open Source & Tools

The open-source projects that power the Databricks platform.

Open Source

• delta - Open-source storage framework enabling Lakehouse architecture. The storage layer under every Databricks table. 8.7K stars.
• Apache Spark - Unified analytics engine powering Databricks. 43.1K stars.
• MLflow - Experiment tracking, model registry, and deployment. Built into Databricks. 25.1K stars.
• unitycatalog - Open-source Unity Catalog. Multi-modal data & AI catalog supporting Delta, Iceberg, Hudi. 3.3K stars.
• delta-rs - Read/write Delta tables from Python without Spark. Useful for lightweight scripts and CI/CD. 3.2K stars.

Data Quality

• great_expectations - Data quality framework with 50+ built-in checks. Supports Spark/Databricks. 11.3K stars.
• soda-core - Define data quality checks in YAML, run against your tables. 2.3K stars.
• dbt-databricks - Official dbt adapter. SQL and Python models on Databricks. 341 stars.

Examples & Demos

• dbdemos - One-line installer for end-to-end Lakehouse demos (DLT, CDC, MLOps, GenAI). Try before you build. 410 stars. By Databricks.
• ai-dev-kit - Toolkit for AI coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code) to write Spark pipelines and jobs. 1.1K stars. By Databricks.
• bundle-examples - Official Asset Bundle examples for jobs, pipelines, and ML projects. 308 stars. By Databricks.

License

To the extent possible under law, the author has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

Independent educational resource. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Databricks, Inc.