Wes McKinney
Cofounder, Kenn Software
Wes McKinney is the creator of Pandas and a co-creator of Apache Arrow, a foundational standard for modern data infrastructure. He is a software engineer, author of Python for Data Analysis, investor, and Principal Architect at Posit.
Skills
Agentic Engineering
How teams build software when AI coding agents write the code: directing agents, what code review and validation become when code is nearly free, durable systems with disposable code, orchestrating many agents, keeping them safe inside an organization, and how roles change. Drawn from practitioners at HumanLayer, Sentry, Honeycomb, Google DeepMind, and others.
- +15
Data Team Leadership
Building and scaling data teams that drive business decisions. Covers analytics org structure, north star metrics, experimentation culture, and moving teams from service requests to strategic partnership. Drawn from practitioners at dbt Labs, Amplify Partners, and others.
- +16
Content from the Library
The Mythical Agent-Month
Wes McKinney, cofounder of Kenn Software, creator of pandas, and co-creator of Apache Arrow, revisits The Mythical Man-Month for the age of agent factories: why coordination is part of the work, and why judgment and taste matter more as agents take on more of the building.
Data Renegades Ep. #9, Radical Accountability in Software with Wes McKinney
On episode 9 of Data Renegades, CL Kao and Dori Wilson sit down with Wes McKinney, creator of Pandas and co-creator of Apache Arrow. They explore how AI coding agents are reshaping software development, why data infrastructure remains surprisingly resistant to automation, and what semantic layers mean for the future of analytics. Wes also shares bold predictions about “radical accountability” in software and the changing bar for startups.
