Data Rebel Awards 2024

Data Rebel of the Year

This award celebrates the individual who has the spirit of innovation and is constantly looking to challenge the status quo. This individual has emerged as a true rebel within the data and analytics space with out-of-the box thinking, industry-leading innovation, trend-setting practices, and a refusal to settle for mediocrity.

*This award is open to anyone and is not limited to Starburst customers.

EMEA Data Rebel of the Year

This award celebrates the individual who has the spirit of innovation and is constantly looking to challenge the status quo. This individual has emerged as a true rebel within the data and analytics space with out-of-the box thinking, industry-leading innovation, trend-setting practices, and a refusal to settle for mediocrity.

*This award is open to anyone located in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and is not limited to Starburst customers.

Change Maker of the Year

This award goes to the customer that is using data to make a positive impact in the world. This organization turns data into valuable and actionable insights to advance social impact (health, COVID-19, economic, environmental, D&I, etc.). Alternatively, this organization creates high-impact digital tools that solve problems for the public.

Data Virtualization Solution of the Year

This award is bestowed upon the engineer who has successfully designed, developed and implemented a cutting-edge data virtualization platform within their organization. This platform allows for seamless integration and access to previously siloed data sources, resulting in improved efficiency, cost-savings, and decision-making capabilities for the company.

Global Analytics Strategy of the Year

Data sovereignty is the principle that data is subject to the legal protections and regulations of the country in which it is physically stored. This award goes to the customer that has addressed serious data protection challenges and has gone above and beyond to meet data sovereignty and GDPR requirements, while providing greater access to data across borders.

Data Lakehouse of the Year

A data lakehouse combines the best of both worlds, the data lake, and the modern data warehouse, housing both structured and unstructured data. This award celebrates the customer that has implemented a next-generation data lakehouse and as a result, is able to extract rich insights that generate business value.

Data Mesh of the Year

With data being created at an alarming pace, data mesh is gaining popularity as a new, decentralized approach to data that distributes the responsibility of managing it to the people who are closest to the data. This award honors the individual or team that has embraced the paradigm shift in analytics data management and has made great strides towards building a data mesh architecture at their organization.

Data Product of the Year

Many companies are unaware of the value of their data or how to go about monetizing it. By treating data as a product, data is cleansed and sliced in a way that directly solves a business problem or can be monetized. This award celebrates the individual or team that has found new revenue streams by converting their data into products. 

Chief Data Officer of the Year

This award honors the individual who has played a revolutionary role in setting a modern vision for data strategy within their organization. This person was called on to rethink data access, governance, and ensure their organization can realize its vision of becoming data-driven. The CDO of the Year is the data rebel role model within their organization, managing the continuous transition from old to new, empowering their business partners with data, and enabling the next era of data strategy.

Analytics Leader of the Year

This award honors an outstanding executive in an analytics-related role that demonstrates data leadership through advanced analytics practices and business results. The winner of this award not only drives business decision-making based on data, but also transforms the organizational culture by encouraging teams to approach challenges with intellectual curiosity.

Data Analyst of the Year

The ‘last mile’ of analytics is often the most crucial for uncovering and providing actionable insights to drive business results. This individual has demonstrated the analytical aptitude to create ad hoc queries that deliver new insights, on new data sets, that improve decisions. This award celebrates data curiosity (and technical skills) that have led to substantial business impact through data applications and dashboards, and the partnerships to support business leaders in new and innovative ways.

Data Architect of the Year

Data architecture is the framework that helps organizations build a modern architecture that meets their data and analytics needs. Enterprises rely on data architects to build a modern data architecture that will stand the test of time. This award recognizes a Data Architect who has built a Lakehouse, Data Mesh or other “Modern Data Architecture” that has been realized. This Rebel Architect has built a new (and better) way to deliver fast analytics without compromising data security & governance.

Data Engineer of the Year

While the data architect builds the blueprint for the data management framework, the data engineer is responsible for the build. The Data Engineer of the Year Award goes to the ‘data rebel’ that demonstrates a valuable impact to their organization through data engineering excellence – setting up a modern way for Data Analytics & Data Engineers to get fast access to data with self-service solutions, and finding new more efficient ways to store and manage data.

Data Scientist of the Year

Artificial Intelligence has the ability to change the world we live in. This award goes to the Data Scientist who found ways to quickly incorporate new data sources into their machine learning models throughout the pandemic, preventing model drift and driving their business to make the right decisions on the freshest and most relevant data.