Inside the dbt Canvas Ambassador Program

dbt’s training and customer marketing experts teamed up to pilot a hands-on, champion-led program to help teams adopt dbt Canvas, our visual modeling workspace built for governed self-serve. Instead of a traditional one-to-many session, ambassadors participated in hands-on, one-on-one practice, with opportunities to network and exchange best practices. Ambassadors praised the program for accelerating their onboarding and providing them with a direct feedback loop for continuous improvement. Our customers shared that dbt Canvas makes complex models easier to read, safer to change, easier to both document and explain, and have an overall positive product experience.

Why did we launch an Ambassador Program?

When you introduce a new product line, adoption starts with a single internal champion. That single person rallies their colleagues, proves value on one problem, thus driving both adoption and growth

As a lead technical instructor, I have known this intimately from leading data teams around the world through their dbt Platform onboarding.

I designed the dbt Canvas Ambassador Program in partnership with our customer marketing lead to deliver customer participants a personalized one-on-one experience and a space to both build and ship, not just watch.

Participants completed an asynchronous course on dbt Canvas, then met live with peers from other companies to share best practices, discuss how dbt Canvas fit into their workflows, network, and complete guided practice together.

These customer participants left as Canvas Ambassadors with a repeatable playbook to unblock their teams and a direct feedback loop to our product team.

The problem dbt Canvas is tackling across engineering and analytics

Modern data teams move fast, but two issues potentially slow them down:

• Understanding and safely evolving complex SQL. New joiners or partner teams struggle to parse someone else’s logic. Refactoring is risky; small changes feel costly.
• Scaling self-serve without sacrificing governance. Analysts teams need to iterate without waiting in line, without creating the shadow pipelines and parallel logic that often happen in external visual ETL tools, like Alteryx. Meanwhile, leaders need consistency, tests, and reviews.

dbt Canvas was launched in May 2025 to address both problems by adding a governed, visual modeling workspace that sits on top of your governed dbt project. It maps in a left-to-right flow, so teams can see the logic of a model at a glance. They can make targeted changes using drag-and-drop tooling, and open their visual models seamlessly in dbt Studio to make edits directly to the model’s underlying SQL. dbt Canvas supports code commenting on each individual operator to enhance code clarity, and will soon support standard dbt documentation. And unlike legacy visual tools, dbt Canvas compiles to warehouse-native SQL and runs where your data lives.

Models stay version-controlled in Git, validated with dbt tests, reviewed via your CI process, and preserved in dbt lineage and docs, so speed never comes at the cost of trust.

What ambassadors said about their dbt Canvas experience

How dbt Canvas helps data engineers

dbt Canvas accelerates code comprehension with a clear left-to-right visual flow, so unfamiliar models become approachable. Engineers can spot joins, filters, and aggregations faster and spend less time parsing dense SQL. It also surfaces step-by-step logic, which makes refactoring easier to reason about and validate before opening a PR. The visuals double as living documentation, reducing handoff friction and improving reviews and onboarding.

How dbt Canvas helps analyst teams

dbt Canvas lowers the barrier to making safe changes. The drag-and-drop interface lets teams tweak logic, test hypotheses, and ship quick wins, without memorizing every SQL nuance. Because all the work happens inside their governed dbt project, analysts move faster without spawning shadow pipelines. The visual steps make stakeholder walkthroughs straightforward, so results are trusted and easier to explain.

What ambassadors said about the program experience:

• Telecom analytics engineer (Enterprise) — 10/10: “Incredible instruction with clear structure that set everyone up for success, while allowing discussions to flow naturally. Discussion and breakouts were especially valuable.”
• Fifth Third Bank — 10/10: “Hands‑on training was super helpful, with clear walkthroughs of Canvas and end‑of‑chapter problems to apply concepts in session.”
• Sports analytics practitioner — 9/10: “Engaging, helpful course with in‑class walkthroughs that made concepts easy to follow.”
• Manufacturing data engineer — 10/10: “Clear explanations, valuable across sections, and directly applicable to active projects.”

What’s next

We’ll continue to run small, hands-on cohorts so champions can co-build with us and bring back repeatable practices. If you’d like to nominate a champion for a future cohort, or you are that champion, please reach out to your dbt representative or connect with us in the dbt Community.

Want to see dbt Canvas in action? dbt Canvas is available for Enterprise or Enterprise+ users on the dbt platform. Request demo tailored to your use case or check out our docs page to get started.

Thank you to our first ambassadors and to Ron, Tony, and Marcelo for sharing how dbt Canvas is helping their teams move faster with more clarity. If you’re exploring ways to scale self-serve while keeping governance intact, dbt Canvas gives your engineers and analysts a shared, visual language for building and evolving trusted data.