Analytics Engineering with dbt: Model Data the Way Software Ships
Signature Course No. 430 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Analytics Engineering with dbt: Model Data the Way Software Ships course, in the Personal Effectiveness & Well-Being category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
A query answers a question once. A project answers it every day, for everyone, and can prove its answer. That is this course's premise. Most analytics work does not fail at the query — the SQL is usually fine. It fails around the query: in the copy of the copy that became the official number, in the upstream column that changed without a sound, in the filter three dashboards apply three different ways. Analytics engineering is the discipline that prevents those failures: transforming warehouse data into governed models the way software teams ship code.
It starts with the seat. You will take the analytics-engineering seat and learn exactly what it owns — everything between the raw data that lands in the warehouse and the models, metrics, and reports the business consumes: the layer structure, the tests, the documentation, the review discipline, the deployment path, and the definitions — and what it refuses, because the refusals are half the definition: not ingestion, not warehouse operation, not chart choices. The discipline is taught through dbt, the project framework in which models are written as select statements, organized into layers, tested, documented, and deployed — the discipline first and the tool second, in that order, on every page.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Build the Project: Layers, Contracts, and Control — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Governed Project; then, Module 2 — Ship It and Own It: Environments, Lineage, and Metrics — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Production Release.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a Governed Project Plan for Torvane Outfitters, a fictional outdoor-gear retailer whose analytics begin as three analysts, a shared folder of saved queries, and a revenue figure computed two ways: sources declared under contract, staging specified source by source, shared logic housed once, marts designed for named consumers at declared grains, and the founding test and documentation sets written; and a Production Release and Ownership Plan that takes the same project live — environments and a single promotion path, an integration gate whose green badge means exactly what it says, jobs and freshness checks that fail loudly, an exposure register with named owners, and the founding metrics — settled revenue, gross margin, active customers — defined once in the semantic layer.
The honesty standard is part of the course. dbt changes — versions ship, features move, adapter behavior differs between warehouses and between releases — so the course teaches the discipline at the durable level: the workflow, the conventions, and the judgments that survive the next release, flagging every tool specific to verify against the current documentation before you rely on it. The discipline is warehouse-agnostic, and nothing in the course is endorsed by, or written on behalf of, dbt Labs.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Analytics Engineering with dbt: Model Data the Way Software Ships is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with the seat. In your current work, who owns the definition of the most argued-about number in the business — name the person or admit the seat is empty, and say what the emptiness costs; list the places your most important query logic currently lives, and say which parts a competent stranger could reconstruct if its author left tomorrow; and say which of the four habits — project, proposed change, stated correctness, governed definitions — is weakest where you work, and what incident that weakness most recently caused. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Governed Project for Module 1 and The Production Release for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Build the project, then ship it and own it. Every skill in this course is the same discipline at a different depth: state what you rely on as a contract, house each business rule in exactly one layer, declare every model's grain, and let tests, reviews, environments, and lineage — not memory and good intentions — carry the project's promises to the people who consume its numbers.
Module 1 builds the project. The Analytics Engineering Seat; Sources and the Contract at the Edge; Staging; Intermediate Models; Marts; Grain, Naming, and Conventions; Tests as Contracts; Documentation a Stranger Can Trust; and Version Control for Data — the seat itself, the contract at the source edge, the three modeling layers, the design conventions that keep a project readable, and the two contracts, tests and documentation, sealed with version control.
Module 2 ships it and owns it. Environments and the Path to Production; Continuous Integration for Data; Deployment, Jobs, and Freshness; Lineage; Exposures and Ownership; Metrics and the Semantic Layer; Refactoring and Technical Debt; Debugging and Incident Response; and The Analytics Engineer's Standard — environments and the promotion path, the integration gate, deployment that fails loudly, the lineage map, the exposure register, one definition per metric, and the standard you sign your name to.
And it holds its boundary throughout. This course owns the transformation layer only. It does not teach pipeline mechanics — data-engineering basics are Signature Course No. 151's ground, and one platform's pipeline skills are No. 217's — and it does not teach warehouse operation, sizing, or administration, which Nos. 350 and 411 own from the operator's seat. Where a worked example needs a warehouse, any modern warehouse will do.
What you will learn
- Hold the analytics-engineering seat: state what the discipline owns, what it refuses, and how its work differs from pipeline engineering and warehouse operation.
- Take raw sources in under a contract: declare them, name what you rely on, and absorb upstream change without silent breakage.
- Build the three modeling layers — staging, intermediate, marts — each with one job, and keep business logic in exactly one layer.
- Design models a team can run: one declared grain per model, conventions for naming and structure, and joins that cannot silently multiply rows.
- Write tests as contracts — uniqueness, referential integrity, accepted values, and custom checks — placed where each failure is cheapest to catch.
- Document a project so a stranger can answer what a model is, who owns it, how fresh it is, and whether to trust it, without asking its author.
- Work in version control the way software ships: branches, reviewed changes, and a history that explains itself.
- Separate development from production with environments, and promote changes along a path that never lets an experiment overwrite the numbers the business runs on.
- Run continuous integration for data: build and test the change and what it touches before it merges, at a cost the team can sustain.
- Deploy on purpose: scheduled jobs, model selection, and freshness checks that fail loudly when data stops arriving.
- Read lineage to answer the only two questions that matter in a crisis — what feeds this, and what breaks if this changes — before you change it.
- Declare exposures and ownership, so every important downstream use is known, named, and has a person answerable for the model behind it.
- Define metrics once, in a semantic layer, so revenue and margin mean the same thing in every report, dashboard, and answer.
- Refactor a growing project safely, respond to data incidents without guessing, and hold the standard when deadline pressure argues for skipping it.
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Analytics Engineering with dbt: Model Data the Way Software Ships, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Governed Project and The Production Release
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people a room calls when a number is questioned
Analytics engineers — in title or in fact — who own a dbt project and need the full discipline, not just the next feature; and data analysts moving toward engineering who write strong SQL and want the project structure, testing, review, and deployment habits that make their work durable and trusted.
Data engineers moving toward the warehouse — who own pipelines upstream and need to understand, and respect, the transformation layer their work feeds. This course assumes your ground; it does not re-teach it.
Analytics and data team leads — who set conventions, review changes, and answer for the numbers, and who need a standard they can hold a whole team to; and BI developers and reporting leads who consume models and metrics and need to know what a governed model promises them, and what to demand when it does not. This course assumes fluent SQL — joins, aggregations, window functions, and common table expressions without help — and working familiarity with what a warehouse is; it assumes no prior dbt project experience and no software-engineering background.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Analytics Engineering Seat
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Analytics Engineering with dbt: Model Data the Way Software Ships is Signature Course No. 430. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.