Projects / Big data platform
A human centered take on data lakehouses
A big data platform focusing on UX, the data catalog and Apache Iceberg.
Keywords
Big Data
Data Lakehouse
Apache Iceberg
Data Catalog
Trino
Introduction
We’ve been exploring what a more human-friendly data lakehouse could look like. We call it Cinter—a platform that puts usability and clarity at the center of the big data experience.
This project was founded as a startup within Backtick.
Background
After years of working with modern data stacks—helping teams build pipelines, navigate analytics layers, and scale infrastructure—we kept running into the same issue: despite massive progress in tooling, the core experience of working with data still felt stuck in the past.
Data platforms have become powerful, but not necessarily approachable. We wanted to test if that could be different. We wanted to build on Apache Iceberg and improve the cataloguing
What we built
Cinter was our take on this challenge. We focused on:
A catalog-first interface to make data more discoverable and usable
Trino + Iceberg under the hood for speed and scalability
Built-in access control
Support for on-prem and cloud deployments to meet EU compliance needs
It was an attempt to rethink what the data lakehouse could be if it was built from a UX-first perspective.
Where we landed
We’ve since paused active development on Cinter. But the learnings—and parts of the architecture—live on in other work we’re doing around data infrastructure and internal tools.
We still believe in the core idea: that powerful data platforms can also be intuitive. Cinter was our way of pushing in that direction. Maybe it will resurface in a new form when the time is right.