Why is digital sovereignty important today?
Welcome back to the Wolkskrant!
Turns out running a consultancy while also building your own SaaS product is a bit like building a plane while also flying it. Both need your full attention, right now and at the same time.
While we are juggling that, we brought you something to read.
This month we cover:
Building the Insights Data Platform in collaboration with Intus
Why is Digital Sovereignty important today?
The features you get with Databaas, the sovereign data and AI platform
Open vacancy: we are hiring a Data & AI Engineer
Other news from the data and AI world
Lets dive in!
Anna
Hundreds of healthcare institutions, each their own data platform to analyze their roster and planning data. All on European servers. This was the challenge we set out to solve at Intus.
Intus Workforce Solutions builds roster planning software for hospitals and other (semi) government organizations. Every customer collects workforce planning data, but letting them build their own dashboards comes with constraints: every environment needs to remain separate and on European infrastructure.
Together with their team, we built the Insights Data Platform: open-source (ClickHouse, SQLMesh, Superset), running on a European cloud, with a fully separate stack per customer.
Nathan wrote down some learnings for anyone who is building a open-source data platform here.
All your medical data. Not hacked. Not deleted. Just... gone.
It might sound extreme, but its a real risk companies are starting to take seriously.
Most European organisations run their data on Databricks, Snowflake, or Microsoft Fabric built in the US, hosted on US clouds, governed by US law. Subjected to the CLOUD Act, these companies can be forced to hand over data to foreign authorities, no matter where that’s stored or who it belongs to.
The alternative? Build your own platform (expensive, slow, and requires a team most companies don’t have), or switch to a European one. Except that didn’t really exist until now.
Databaas is the sovereign data & AI platform that puts you back in control. Runs on any European cloud, or your own servers without lock-in.
Jelle explains more in the video below.
For too long, the data platform market has been dominated by American big tech. Databaas changes that.
Use our sovereign data & AI platform to:
Gain insights from your data to make business decisions based on information rather than gut feeling.
Get access to the best tools in one system. Lakehouse, pipelines, dashboards, notebooks and agents all pre-integrated in a unified system.
Maintain total control of your data. The platform runs wherever you choose without vendor lock-in.
Talk to the people who built it. 24/7 support from the engineers behind the platform.
Our new website is now live, check it out here!
We’ve got more fun problems to solve than hands available, so we’re looking for a Data & AI Engineer to join our team.
You’ll split your time between building custom data & AI infrastructure for clients and helping develop Databaas.
What that actually looks like:
Designing and shaping data and AI solutions that help solve societal problems
Working on a diverse set of projects, from data platforms to custom software
Helping clients understand how data and AI can scale their business
Contributing to Databaas: building features, improving the platform and making it production-ready
This role is for you if you have 5+ years in the data and AI space, work comfortably in Python or SQL, and have experience with tools like dbt, Spark, or Trino, plus AI stack components like PydanticAI or LangGraph. Comfortable with cloud infrastructure, Docker, and Kubernetes? Even better.
In return we offer 35 vacation days, a hybrid setup, a competitive package and a great work environment at our office in Utrecht.
Apply here or share this with your network!
This month’s team picks: