For October, we are excited to announce that Corey O’Connor, Principal Engineer, from the Data Analytics Engineering Team has been nominated for the Employee Values Spotlight for embodying our shared company values.
Corey stepped into the role of Tech Lead on the Data Analytics team a little more than six months ago. He has gone above and beyond the primary objectives of a tech lead, which are enforcing good code quality and leading technical decision making. In addition he has put significant time into mentoring and teaching the team, setting standards and expectations for the way the team operates, and helping everyone on his team understand the vision of the new data analytics pipeline that they are building.
Through this work he's demonstrated all of the Protenus values, Be Human, Live (Em)powered, Onward Together, but especially Build Trust. We often think about Build Trust as referring to relationships between people, but Corey's technical leadership on the Data Analytics team has also built the team's trust in the code they are writing and the frameworks they are putting in place to develop and maintain the code into the future.
Q&A with Corey
What’s your role at Protenus, and what do you do?
A big part of my role here is building with my team both an understanding and implementation of analytics features that feed into the machine learning models. On a technical level, we develop a pipeline for analytics features in Scala using Spark, which I'm definitely enthusiastic about. Still, writing the code is only the base level of being a Tech Lead. On top of that is building a sustainable platform that scales for future customers and products. Which might sound entirely technical, and there's definitely a lot of tech in being a Tech Lead. Yet being a tech lead is not all tech, a big part is building a team along with the technology. Which could probably be summarized as: Finding a north star and guiding us there.
What do Protenus’ values mean to you?
I look towards "Onward Together" frequently. Delivering technical designs and code is necessary but not sufficient. To achieve Protenus' mission can only be done together. When I'm approaching a technical task I consider not just the code that must be written but how to deliver a system, together, that is understandable and sustainable for all of Protenus.
What's your favorite part of your job?
Definitely designing and building a platform for long term development excellence. I have a very broad view of "a platform" that covers everything from the company mission to customer support. Which, thankfully, Protenus' values support. Plus I get to use some of my favorite technologies: Scala and Spark. So that's nice as well.
How has working at Protenus impacted your career?
Protenus has helped me solidify my career. I've built interesting systems and capable teams before. Protenus, though, has aligned what I contribute to a broader mission. I'm confident that I'm on the right path and can achieve the next step in my career at Protenus.
What has surprised you the most about working at Protenus?
Fortunately, not much! Protenus was transparent from the beginning. Which definitely was a bit surprising. I've also been pleased that Protenus has kept focus on the mission and true to their values. I know this is a challenge; The environment we work in continuously changes regardless of our wants. This would have been surprising to a 5-year-ago me, but after being here for a while I can't say I'm surprised Protenus' succeeds.
