Alex Merced

Alex Merced is an American technology executive, author, educator, and former political candidate based in New York. He currently serves as Head of Developer Relations at Dremio, the open lakehouse platform company, where he leads community education and technical evangelism around Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, and modern data lakehouse architecture. He received the 2025 Dremio CEO Award for his contributions to the company and ecosystem.

Merced is an established technical author with a particular focus on open-source data infrastructure. He is a co-author of Apache Iceberg: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly Media, 2024) — translated into Japanese in 2025 — and co-author of Apache Polaris: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly Media, 2025). He is also the sole author of Architecting an Apache Iceberg Lakehouse (Manning/Simon & Schuster, 2026), as well as Alex Merced's Field Guide to Developer Relations and more than 35 additional books spanning data engineering, artificial intelligence, economics, philosophy, and fiction published independently. His LinkedIn Learning course, Hands-On with Apache Iceberg, launched in October 2024.

Before joining Dremio, Merced built an extensive background as a self-taught software developer and educator. He is a graduate of General Assembly's Software Engineering Immersive bootcamp — a career pivot from finance that was featured in a Course Report profile in 2024 — and later became an instructor there. He subsequently built a wide-reaching educational presence: his coding-education YouTube channel (@alexmercedcoder) has approximately 5,000 subscribers and over 1,500 videos covering JavaScript, Python, Rust, and web frameworks. His second channel (@alexmerceddata) focuses on data engineering, Apache Iceberg, and the data lakehouse ecosystem. He is also a multi-topic instructor on Udemy, with courses spanning JavaScript, Python, C++, Flutter, React Native, AI/LLMs, and data engineering.

Merced attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he worked as a DJ and promotions director at WBGU campus radio and briefly co-owned a local retail business. After moving to New York, he pursued financial training and worked in the finance sector before transitioning into software development and developer advocacy.

Merced has been active in Libertarian politics since the mid-2010s. He was the New York Libertarian Party's 2016 U.S. Senate nominee (a statewide race against incumbent Chuck Schumer), ran in the 2013 New York City public advocate race, and appeared on the ballot for New York City Comptroller in 2017. In July 2018 he was elected Vice Chair of the Libertarian National Committee at the party's national convention — a result covered by Reason magazine and LP.org as part of reporting on the party's ideological direction — and served in that role through 2022. He has been a podcast guest on The Tom Woods Show, Bad Crypto Podcast, Pantsuit Politics, and other programs discussing Libertarian policy and political strategy.

Merced is a prolific content creator and conference speaker. He has appeared at Data Day Texas, Dremio Subsurface, SQLBits, OSA Con (2023 & 2024), DataEngBytes, ODSC AI East, Nerdearla (Argentina), Øredev (Sweden), and Confluent's Currents, among others. His speaker profile is maintained on Sessionize.com. He maintains an active technical blog at alexmerced.blog, a data lakehouse Substack newsletter, and produces creative and philosophical writing through The Lovatarian Substack. He hosts a technology podcast available on Spotify at alexmercedpodcast.com.

A multi-faceted creator, Merced also composes and releases original music. He is known professionally for a public philosophy of empowerment through education, technology, and optimism.