Alex Merced is 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 co-authored Apache Iceberg: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly, 2024) and Apache Polaris: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly, 2025), and wrote Architecting an Apache Iceberg Lakehouse (Manning, 2026) as sole author, part of a catalog of more than 35 titles across data engineering and AI. His LinkedIn Learning course Hands-On with Apache Iceberg launched in October 2024, and he reaches practitioners through his data engineering YouTube channel, a technical blog, a podcast, and a data lakehouse newsletter. A frequent conference speaker, he has presented at Iceberg Summit, Data Day Texas, Dremio Subsurface, SQLBits, OSA Con, and other data and open source events worldwide. He received the 2025 Dremio CEO Award for his contributions to the company and the broader ecosystem.