Starburst appoints Jitender Aswani to lead engineering for AI push

Starburst has appointed Jitender Aswani as Senior Vice President of Engineering to lead its global engineering organisation and advance developments in its data platform for applications and artificial intelligence.

Aswani's role will include driving innovation across Starburst's data platform, with direct reporting responsibilities to Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Justin Borgman. The company views Aswani's two decades of experience in machine learning, data infrastructure, and cloud technologies as instrumental to its expansion in the AI and data platform market.

Prior to joining Starburst, Aswani served as Vice President of Engineering at StarTree. There, he led engineering strategy and execution for distributed, multi-cloud real-time analytics platforms and acted as Chief Information Security Officer, focusing on the company's security strategy and operations.

Previously, Aswani was Head of Engineering at Moveworks, leading teams that built AI-powered enterprise solutions. His career also includes leadership positions at Netflix and Meta, where he specialised in data science, security, and infrastructure. During his tenure at Meta, he was among the first users of Trino (formerly known as Presto) at Facebook, gaining experience relevant to Starburst's technology stack.

Reflecting on his new appointment, Jitender Aswani stated, "Starburst is at the forefront of a massive shift in how companies build and scale AI, and I'm incredibly excited to join a team that's enabling that transformation. As a data platform for apps and AI built on a data lakehouse architecture, Starburst is uniquely positioned to accelerate AI from development to deployment and I'm thrilled to contribute to that mission."

Aswani's professional background covers both early-stage startups and global enterprises. He holds several patents in machine learning, data management, and graph optimization, and attained an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Commenting on the appointment, Justin Borgman said, "Jitender is a phenomenal addition to Starburst. His deep technical background, passion for AI, and leadership experience across organizations of all sizes make him the ideal person to guide our engineering team through this next phase of growth. He also brings a strong strategic mindset and values that align perfectly with our culture."

Starburst provides a data platform that supports analytics, applications, and AI, aiming to unify data across cloud-based and on-premises environments. The company's technology is used by startups and large enterprises in more than 60 countries worldwide, supporting data access, collaboration, and governance on an open data lakehouse architecture.

Aswani's experience leading teams involved in both security and distributed analytics platforms is expected to influence Starburst's continued development of its platform and its strategy to accelerate artificial intelligence deployment for its customers.