Our story
Great Expectations was created in 2017 as a side project between two longtime friends, Abe Gong (CEO) and James Campbell (CTO). Encountering many of the same pain points around data quality, they independently arrived at the same conclusion: data practitioners needed a better way to test and document their data.
At the time, Abe was leading Superconductive Health, a healthcare data consultancy, and James was a data scientist and researcher for the US federal government. They jumped at the chance to work together and started collaborating on Great Expectations as an open source project.
The platform was launched at the Strata Data & AI Conference in 2018, which kicked off a groundswell of support, buzz, and contributions. Data engineers, scientists, and analysts loved the flexibility, extensibility, and expressiveness of the platform. Nontechnical data stakeholders loved the way the data documentation enabled visibility and collaboration.
Within a few months, it was clear that momentum was building around data quality and that Great Expectations was at the forefront of the movement. In 2019, Abe and James pivoted to focus entirely on building Great Expectations as a product and a company.
We raised a first round of venture capital and began actively building the open source community around Great Expectations—which became one of the fastest-growing data communities in the world.
Today, the Great Expectations team is growing rapidly, backed by some of the best open source and data infrastructure investors in the industry. We’re pursuing a product-led path to commercialization with our SaaS product, GX Cloud, which augments the GX Core framework with everything you need for an end-to-end data quality process. GX Cloud entered its public preview phase in February 2024.
We’re a people-first team, prioritizing individual professional development and providing unique career opportunities as the company scales.
Does this seem like a fit for you? Join the team!
$21 Million
Series A
May 2021
Index Ventures with CRV & Root Ventures
$40 million
Series B
February 2022
Tiger Global with Index Ventures,
CRV & Root Ventures
Our team philosophy
We strive to live our company values every day. We believe that action, intention, and curiosity are key to excellence. We take ownership of our work, prioritize transparency, and welcome collaboration both planned and serendipitous. And we connect with each other as full human beings, defaulting to kindness and compassion while recognizing that each of us has more to offer than just our hard skills.
Engage the full human being
Connection underlies our commitment to community, development, and support. We invest consciously in individual growth and
continuous improvement.
Dedicated team for People Operations
30/60/90 day framework and formal performance reviews include
360° feedbackRegular team offsites (virtual + IRL opportunities), including our beloved company book swap
Work out loud
Transparency is key for our people and our product. We work in the open, collaborate regularly, seek feedback early and often, and embrace problem-solving together.
Shared calendars enable spontaneous collaboration
Shared individual availability and communication preferences support personal boundaries
Open team Slack channels promote transparency across the company
Progress over perfection
Curiosity drives our default to action. We aim to solve for the root cause, even when that means embracing ambiguity.
Adaptive 6-week agile cycles and 6-month roadmaps
Internal and external hackathon challenges
Weekly Show & Tell to share wins and knowledge across teams