Starburst Company Culture & Values

Describe Starburst’s company culture in one word. What made you pick that word? 

“Bold.” We’re an up-and-coming company in a highly competitive market, so we need to undertake ambitious and often high-risk projects to get ahead. 

For example, we’re currently investigating radical changes to our architecture to drastically reduce delivery cost and improve user experience for our on-prem product. We also just launched our new Streaming Ingest offering that uses state-of-the art cloud architecture and a bottom-up design to cut the costs of ingesting data into a data lake by four to ten times. Both of these required a willingness to take risks and explore the unknown, which is possible here at Starburst due to the high trust and alignment across teams and the culture of boldness.

How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?

I have been with the company for seven months now, but it feels like a decade — in a good way. Things move fast here, and I always have a wide range of exciting problems to work on. That means there is plenty to do  — both inside and outside my comfort zone — but also that I’m learning a lot. 

Personally, the biggest growth has been in my ability to handle ambiguity and to prioritize. On the ambiguity side, I have learned to move forward even if I don’t have all the data I would have liked. I have also learned the importance of ensuring everyone is aligned on what to do next when the path forward is unclear. On the prioritization side, I have learned to say ‘no’ early and directly, rather than being overly polite or playing for time. I might be wrong from time to time, but then the person I’m responding to can escalate and we get together as a team to look at our priorities together.

Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick the word “resilient” to describe your company culture?  

At Starburst, we are gritty, determined and in it for the long haul. Angela Duckworth, an American psychologist and popular science author, defines grit as the combination of passion and perseverance, and she often highlights how resilience is a key trait of gritty individuals. I personally live by this mindset, and I see it reflected in my team every day.

Resilience is at the core of our culture and an essential trait for a great sales development representative. Sales development is both an art and a science, but above all, it demands a strong and resilient mindset. Making calls, sending emails and reaching out to people we’ve never met requires persistence and a long-term outlook. Each small step — each call, email and LinkedIn message — brings us closer to our goals. No matter the challenges, we adapt, push forward and continue striving for success.

How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?

I have been with Starburst for five months, and in that time, I’ve been grateful to see our people and culture team thoughtfully evaluate and revamp our company mission and values. This shift has directly contributed to my growth as a director, helping me develop into an effective leader as quickly as possible. 

It has given me the confidence to be myself, lead authentically, and better motivate and align my team with company goals. The clarity in our values has created a strong foundation for decision-making and team collaboration, making it easier to drive impact and progress.

Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
This is a tough one, but if I had to pick just one word, I’d pick ‘aligned.’ Whether it’s our value of working as “one team,” or keeping our “customer-obsessed” objective in mind — it’s centered around being aligned and keeping everyone moving in the same direction.

Our company is experiencing some awesome momentum right now and our All-Stars are doing an amazing job collaborating and working in sync across teams, goals and values to keep it going!

How long have you been with the company, and what professional growth or development have you seen in that time?
I’ve been with Starburst for almost three years, and one of the most energizing projects I’ve worked on recently was bringing back in-person new hire onboarding, which we call All-Star Liftoff. We designed a two-day immersive experience at our Boston headquarters focused on building cross-functional relationships, grounding new hires in our culture and product and aligning them with our go-to-market strategy. It was an opportunity for me to step back into the shoes of a new hire and reimagine how we set our people up for success from day one.

What made the experience even more meaningful was the timing — we’re in the midst of an exciting hiring surge, especially for engineers across the United States and Poland. There’s a real sense of momentum, and this program helps us channel that by making sure our new All-Stars feel connected and ready to contribute quickly. At the same time, we’re embracing AI in new and thoughtful ways — not just in our product, but in how we work. That shift has challenged our team to think differently about how we scale, stay efficient and build for the future. Being part of a company that’s both growing fast and evolving intentionally has been a huge part of my own development.