Software engineering for big data systems is complex and faces challenges including pervasive distribution, write-heavy workloads, variable request loads, computation-intensive analytics, and high availability. The articles in this theme issue examine several facets of this complicated puzzle. The Web extra at https://youtu.be/YKBGf9EOBUo is an audio recording of Davide Falessi speaking with Ayse Basar Bener and Audris Mockus about the authors, articles, and discussions that went into the IEEE Software March/April 2016 theme issue on software engineering for big data systems.
