Databricks Beacons Program
The Databricks Beacons program is our way to thank and recognize the community members, data scientists, data engineers, developers and open source enthusiasts who go above and beyond to uplift the data and AI community.
Whether they are speaking at conferences, leading workshops, teaching, mentoring, blogging, writing books, creating tutorials, offering support in forums or organizing meetups, they inspire others and encourage knowledge sharing – all while helping to solve tough data problems.
Meet the Databricks Beacons
Beacons share their passion and technical expertise with audiences around the world. They are contributors to a variety of open source projects including Apache Spark™, Delta Lake, MLflow and others. Don’t hesitate to reach out to them on social to see what they’re working on.
ISRAEL
Adi Polak
Adi is a Senior Software Engineer and Developer Advocate in the Azure Engineering organization at Microsoft.
FRANCE
Bartosz Konieczny
Bartosz is a Data Engineering Consultant and an instructor.
UNITED STATES
R. Tyler Croy
Tyler, the Director of Platform Engineering at Scribd, has been an open source developer for over 14 years.
CHINA
Kent Yao
Kent is an Apache Spark™ committer and a staff software engineer at NetEase.
IRELAND
Kyle Hamilton
Kyle is the Chief Innovation and Data Officer at iQ4, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
POLAND
Jacek Laskowski
Jacek is an IT freelancer who specializes in Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and Apache Kafka.
UNITED STATES
Scott Haines
Scott is a Distinguished Software Engineer at Nike where he helps drive Apache Spark™ adoption.
UNITED KINGDOM
Simon Whiteley
Simon is the Director of Engineering at Advancing Analytics, is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and Data + AI Summit speaker.
UNITED STATES
Geeta Chauhan
Geeta leads AI/PyTorch Partnership Engineering at Facebook AI and focuses on strategic initiatives.
SWITZERLAND
Lorenz Walthert
Lorenz Walthert is a data scientist, MLflow contributor, climate activist and a GSoC participant.
CANADA
Yitao Li
Yitao is a software engineer at SafeGraph and the current maintainer of sparklyr, an R interface for Apache Spark™.
POLAND
Maciej Szymkiewicz
Maciej is an Apache Spark™ committer. He is available for mentoring and consulting.
JAPAN
Takeshi Yamamuro
Takeshi is a software engineer, Apache Spark™ committer and PMC member at NTT, Inc., who mainly works on Spark SQL.
Membership Criteria
Beacons are first and foremost practitioners in the data and AI community whose technology focus includes MLflow, Delta Lake, Apache Spark™, Databricks and related ecosystem technologies. Beacons actively build others up throughout the year by teaching, blogging, speaking, mentoring, organizing meetups, creating content, answering questions on forums and more.
Program Benefits
Peer networking and sharing through a private Slack channel
Access to Databricks and OSS subject matter experts
Recognition on the Databricks website and social channels
Custom swag
In the future, sponsored travel and lodging to attend select
Databricks eventsSponsorship and swag for meetups
Nominate a peer
We’d love to hear from you! Tell us who made continued outstanding contributions to the data and AI community. Candidates must be nominated by someone in the community, and everyone — including customers, partners, Databricks employees or even a current Beacon — is welcome to submit a nomination. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and membership is valid for one year.