It is primarily a tool for analytics engineers (coined by the dbt team I think[]) to write more robust, managed, version controlled, DRY analytics SQL. The tool

It is primarily a tool for analytics engineers (coined by the dbt team I think[]) to write more robust, managed, version controlled, DRY analytics SQL. The tool is designed to be run on an analytics data warehouse (Snowflake/Bigquery/Redshift) and generally used to provide fact & dimension tables to BI/visualisation tools. I get your confusion, I don't think it is designed for a DBA, but it makes a great tool for an ETL engineer, especially in the modern ELT paradigm. > tool to avoid hiring a DBA Yes in a way. With ELT tools like Fivetran/Stitch and highly flexible "zero-tuning" data warehouses like Snowflake/Bigquery, there is very little need for a DBA unless it is a very large organisation, and the role will more likely fall to a "Data Engineer" type role, ultimately much the same as a DBA, just a modernisation. [] https://blog.getdbt.com/what-is-an-analytics-engineer/ https://blog.getdbt.com/what-is-an-analytics-engineer/