--- title: "Head of design for eBay’s technology team: chapter 3 of Kyle Ledbetter’s story" description: "In 2011 Kyle Ledbetter joined eBay as head of design for its entire internal technology division, pioneering BI and big data. He was based in Austin, traveled to San Jose, and designed DataHub, which opened up 52 petabytes of data." canonical_url: "https://kyleledbetter.com/agent#ebay" last_updated: "2026-10-11" llms_txt: "https://kyleledbetter.com/llms.txt" --- > Markdown version of https://kyleledbetter.com/agent#ebay. Index of every agent-readable file on this site: https://kyleledbetter.com/llms.txt # 3. Head of design for eBay’s technology team Chapter 3 of 6 in the story of Kyle Ledbetter, co-founder and CTO of Dreambase. - **Chapter:** 3 of 6, eBay - **Years:** From 2011 - **Place:** Austin, Texas (traveling to San Jose, California) - **Roles:** Head of design, internal technology division at eBay - **Organizations:** [eBay](https://www.ebay.com/) - **Robot part on the 3D site:** left arm - **Read on the web:** https://kyleledbetter.com/agent#ebay In 2011 Kyle Ledbetter joined eBay as head of design for its entire internal technology division, pioneering BI and big data. He was based in Austin, traveled to San Jose, and designed DataHub, which opened up 52 petabytes of data. In Kyle’s words: In 2011 I joined eBay as head of design for its entire internal technology division. I was based in Austin and traveled to San Jose, and we were pioneering business intelligence (BI) and big data while both were still new. My Joomla work is what brought me to eBay, which ran a large internal Joomla site for its data analytics. There I designed the UI platform for eBay’s technology organization, plus DataHub, an analytics community and reporting hub for executives. The brief was to design an intersection of dashboards, reports, forums, access control, blogs and news for the whole technology organization, on top of petabytes of data. DataHub plugged into Teradata, Tableau, MicroStrategy, Oracle and SQL. It opened up 52 petabytes of data, from eBay.com user behavior to online transactions, so analysts, data scientists and business users could find their own answers. The work got press from [InfoWorld](https://www.infoworld.com/article/2284469/big-data-visualization-a-big-deal-for-ebay.html), [CRN](https://web.archive.org/web/20210118110534/https://www.crn.com.au/news/inside-ebays-massive-data-warehouse-342800) and Ventana Research’s [David Menninger](https://davidmenningervr.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/the-consumerization-of-collaborative-bi-has-arrived/), and it laid a foundation for features that were still in development ten years later. After eBay I worked at Sears Holdings in 2013, on a small team tasked with saving Sears with analytics and data. In 2014, at MicroStrategy, I helped redesign the world’s most popular BI product with natural language and search as the interface. **Highlights** - Head of design for eBay’s entire internal technology division, from 2011 - Designed DataHub, an analytics community and reporting hub - Opened up 52 petabytes of data for analysts, data scientists and business users - Integrated Teradata, Tableau, MicroStrategy, Oracle and SQL - Covered by InfoWorld, CRN and Ventana Research **Numbers** - **52 PB** of data opened up through DataHub **Related** - Press: [Big data visualization: A big deal for eBay (InfoWorld)](https://kyleledbetter.com/agent#press-infoworld-ebay-big-data-visualization) - Press: [The Consumerization of Collaborative BI Has Arrived (David Menninger, Ventana Research)](https://kyleledbetter.com/agent#press-menninger-collaborative-bi) - Press: [Inside eBay’s massive data warehouse (CRN Australia)](https://kyleledbetter.com/agent#press-crn-inside-ebays-data-warehouse) On the 3D site this chapter is the robot’s left arm. Its popover reads: “Head of design for eBay’s entire internal technology division, when BI and big data were new.” Its panel reads: “In 2011 I joined eBay, based in Austin and traveling to San Jose, when BI and big data were new. I designed DataHub, an analytics hub that opened up 52 petabytes of data to analysts, data scientists and business users.” The full story: **Joining eBay** In 2011 I joined eBay as head of design for its entire internal technology division. I was based in Austin and traveled to San Jose, and we were pioneering business intelligence (BI) and big data while both were still new. My Joomla work is what brought me there: eBay ran a large internal Joomla site for its data analytics. I designed the UI platform for eBay’s technology organization. **DataHub** I also designed DataHub, an analytics community and reporting hub for executives. The brief was to design an intersection of dashboards, reports, forums, access control, blogs and news for the whole technology organization, on top of petabytes of data. DataHub plugged into Teradata, Tableau, MicroStrategy, Oracle and SQL. It opened up 52 petabytes of data, from eBay.com user behavior to online transactions, so analysts, data scientists and business users could find their own answers. It laid a foundation for features that were still in development ten years later. DataHub got press from InfoWorld and CRN Australia, and David Menninger of Ventana Research featured it in a 2011 post on collaborative BI. **Sears Holdings and MicroStrategy** After eBay, in 2013, I joined Sears Holdings as a principal UX designer, on a small team tasked with saving Sears with analytics and data. Our job was to revamp the analytics experience of a company founded in 1893. We built an enterprise analytics social network across all the Sears Holdings companies and ran R&D on streaming ingestion and segmentation with Docker, Kafka, Cassandra and MongoDB. In 2014 I joined MicroStrategy as a senior UX designer and helped redesign the world’s most popular BI product, with natural language and search as the interface. I introduced a voice-driven, natural language vision for analytics, with concepts that have since become standards and best practices. In 2015 I joined Teradata in San Diego. - Previous chapter: [2\. Early open-source champion & entrepreneur in Austin](https://kyleledbetter.com/story/austin.md) - Next chapter: [4\. Global Head of UX transforming Teradata’s product & design culture](https://kyleledbetter.com/story/teradata.md) - All chapters and facts: https://kyleledbetter.com/agent.md