Entity Resolution at Scale: Graphs, LLMs, and Real-World Data Messiness

Summary In this episode, I spoke with Steven Renwick, CEO and co-founder of Tilores, about the realities of entity-oriented data processing and the practical role of LLMs in entity resolution. We covered the confusing terminology around entity resolution, identity resolution, record linkage, named entity recognition, and disambiguation, and why these problems show up almost everywhere once organizations reach a certain scale. Steven explained why entity resolution is especially critical in domains like financial services, public sector systems, logistics, and any environment where messy, duplicated, or inconsistent records can create compliance, operational, or analytical risk. We also dug into the question of whether LLMs can replace traditional entity resolution systems. Steven shared why the answer is only partly yes: LLMs can be very useful for discovery, entity extraction, weak-match review, onboarding, and configuration, but they struggle as the core production matching engine because of cost, scale, consistency, explainability, and state management requirements. We explored why graph structures are so useful for representing entities, how TeloRes approaches scale without relying on graph databases directly, and why teams should think carefully about build-versus-buy when tackling entity resolution. The conversation closed with lessons from real-world data quality, the growing importance of trustworthy identity layers for AI and analytics, and how clean entity data can strengthen everything from knowledge graphs to AI applications. Announcements - Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management - Today’s episode is sponsored by Parallel - where agents find answers. Most engineers today closely follow new model releases, but don’t pay attention to their agent’s most important tool: web search. Parallel develops enterprise-grade infrastructure for agents to retrieve high-quality context from the web. Their core products are a suite of APIs for retrieving high quality information from the web with Pareto-optimal quality, cost, and speed. Whether you work on voice agents that need 200 millisecond latency, chat bots that balance speed, depth, and quality, or long-horizon agents to do thorough, overnight research for you, Parallel is a single platform for all your agentic research. Get started for free at dataengineeringpodcast.com/parallel - Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Steven Renwick about whether and where to use LLMs in entity-oriented data processing Interview - Introduction - How did you get involved in the area of data management? - Can you start by giving your definition of what constitutes an "entity"? - What are some examples of the types of data work that rely heavily on entity resolution/disambiguation? - How do LLMs alter or augment the functional capabilities of entity-oriented data processing? - As with many areas of knowledge work, LLMs can easily create a compelling demo, but quickly degrade when trying to go from demo to production. What are the traps and pitfalls that become evident when trying to do entity resolution in production? - What are your heuristics for what constitutes the threshold beyond which naive approaches become untenable? - Can you describe what a production grade pipeline for entity resolution looks like? - What role can/should LLMs play in that process? - As LLMs become more powerful and faster, how/does that change the equation of their role in entity-oriented data processing? (particularly with diffusion-based models) - What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen LLMs used in entity extraction/resolution/disambiguation? - What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on entity resolution at scale? - When is entity resolution overkill or unwarranted? - What are some predictions or wishes that you have for the future directions/applications of entity resolution? Extra - have we looked at the new "System One" AI decision models,like Jev? Contact Info - LinkedIn Parting Question - From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today? Closing Announcements - Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.\\init\\ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems. - Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes. - If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@dataengineeringpodcast.com with your story. Links - Tilores - Named Entity Recognition (NER) - Entity Resolution - Neo4J - AWS Neptune - Apache Spark - Graph Traversal Algorithms - Entity Resolution Blocking - GraphQL - Clique-Based Graph Compression - Splink - Levenshtein Distance - Cosine Similarity - GraphRAG - Entity-Resolved Knowledge Graph - JEV Decision Model - Laya The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA