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techUK's 'Big Data Hero' campaign continues to champion Big Data leaders in the UK that are working hard to ensure the UK can fully realise the benefits of Big Data and Data Analytics.

techUK's campaign highlights the people that are making a difference and asking them what made them choose this career, how they got there, what their typical day involves and what they most enjoy about their work. We will also be enquiring about the future of the industry and what advice they would give to people considering a career in Big Data and Data Analytics, in light of the current Big Data skills gap in the UK.

This campaign will feed into the work of techUK's Big Data Skills Working Group, which will be looking at ways to reduce the Big Data skills gap.

A new techUK 'Big Data Hero' will be chosen every month, so if you would like to nominate a friend or colleague to be the next 'Big Data Hero' please drop Jeremy Lilley a line with a bit of information about them!

October's Big Data Hero - Richard Freeman, PhD Lead Data Engineer, Solution Architect and Data Scientist, JustGiving

Congratulations to October's techUK 'Big Data Hero' - Richard Freeman, PhD Lead Data Engineer, Solution Architect and Data Scientist, JustGiving

Read on for a little taster and find the full interview below.

What is your current role and what are your responsibilities?

I currently work for JustGiving, a tech-for-good company and the number one platform for online giving in the world that’s helped 28.5 million users in 196 countries raise $4.2 billion for over 27,000 good causes.

What do you think the future holds for Big Data?

I see more people using machine learning, real-time analytics, graph analytics and natural language processing in their products and applications. For real-time analytics, there is a growing demand from consumers that are much more data aware and impatient. For example they want to know what is happening right now, see the results of their action, and use more intelligent applications and websites that adapt as they are interacting with them.

What needs to be done to inspire people to pursue careers in big data?

I think it’s a lot easier to get people interested in big data and data science than it used to be, thanks to the likes of Google and Facebook that make it fashionable to be smart and work within technology. In addition, the growing number of young and flexible startup companies with
infrastructures in the public cloud, are successfully competing and winning market shares from large established companies.

Richard gave more detailed answers to these and other questions which you can read by clicking below.

RICHARD FREEMAN, PHD LEAD DATA ENGINEER, SOLUTION ARCHITECT... (PDF)

For more information and to nominate our next 'Big Data Hero' please contact: Jeremy Lilley, Programme Manager Cloud, Big Data & Intellectual Property