Systems and methods for auto-scaling a big data system

Systems and methods for automatically scaling a big data system. Methods include determining, at a first time, a first number of nodes for a cluster to process a request; assigning an amount of nodes equal to the first number of nodes to the cluster; determining a rate of progress of the request; determining, at a second time based on the rate of progress a second number of nodes; and modifying the amount of nodes to equal the second number of nodes. Systems include a cluster manager, to add and/or remove any nodes; the big data system, to process requests that utilize the cluster and nodes, and an automatic scaling cluster manager including a big data interface for communicating with the big data system; a cluster manager interface for communicating with the cluster manager; and a cluster state machine.