I am a programmer first, whether that is desktop, server, or simple web apps. Understanding data from all perspectives, and how each users interaction has a role to play in that, I find intriguing. Understanding how things come together has always been a passion; from building my first car to cooking. The atomic pieces coming together to create a complete picture.
Early Interests in Data and Computers
I first learned to write/spell using an old Compaq Portable my family had in the basement with a 5.25″ Floppy drive. I would read the boot text from the floppy and type into the DOS terminal. I remember the instant fascination of writing a command and the computer executing a task, and how it could transform items on the screen to the dot matrix printer. The idea that repeatable tasks could be automated in a fashion that required the least amount of input and work from me the user, grabbed me.
In elementary school I remember using clip art and word for our weekly spelling homework assignments, which normally required writing a word five times and drawing a picture. Computers had still not become very mainstream so I was able to get away with this and I felt like I had cracked the code. Though my handwriting undoubtedly suffered as a result (to this day I primarily write in cursive and it borders on illegible). I continued my passion for understanding how computers worked to my family’s dismay as I might have deleted all the files in the system32 folder once or twice. Then came the internet and writing simple HTML pages. The fact I could open notepad and simply follow some guidelines and save the file as a .html my browser could then recognize and open wowed my family, who always encouraged me. My first programming came from a Toshiba contact manager and planner (precursor to PDAs) which allowed you to write small executables, most were just gags to make friends think they had deleted everything on the device or simple outputs. Shortly after I got my first “real” computer. An HP Jornada Palmtop computer running Windows CE. Full color, touch screen, and with a stylus. I felt I had arrived, and was definitely the coolest kid in class taking notes on my palmtop. Fastforward through Highschool getting involved in AP Computer science, writing macros for Counter Strike and other automated tasks. I also fell into college level accounting courses and high school and decided to follow that with programming more of a hobby.
University
Later in college I had my university crisis and decided I did not in fact want to be an accountant because I kept having that itch in the back of my mind, learned from that old Compaq, repeatable tasks should be programmed. I changed majors to Computer Science and haven’t really looked back. I fell in love with the world of network security, specifically what was a relatively new arena wireless fidelity (WiFi). In an introduction to telecommunications and understanding network architecture and the original design I was hooked. IP packets just working under the assumption they will arrive, TCP Syn/Ack, all of these really grabbed my attention. Then broadcasting that to the world in a secure manner. WEP was the standard at the time and for a project I attempted to crack the protocol. Albeit this was not my research or knowledge I discovered BackTrack (now Kali) linux and the world of Penetration Testing tools. My project was so well received a new course was offered the following semester on WiFi network security with my project being the first assignment.
Career
I struggled with whether or not the corporate world was really the place for me. I always had a fascination with how things worked having restored my first car and rebuilding it piece by piece (the engine rebuild being my favorite part). I dabbled in Classic Car Restoration for my summer jobs, but did not enjoy the repeated tasks that you simply can’t automate in the physical world. Also it is hard manual labor that can be very frustrating when working on cars that parts no longer exist for (it is now akin to working on a legacy code base almost). I landed my first internship for a large defense contractor and was introduced to the world of C# and enterprise level code bases.
From university I was a FOSS advocate utilizing the internal channels at my internship to push for further use and benefit of Open Source technology, however eventually I came to enjoy the stability and backwards compatibility of the Microsoft Stack. Again the write once, run forever mantra ringing in the back of my head. I discovered the thing that brought me the most joy were the small internal applications and systems I created/managed that helped the internal team. I really enjoyed the look on people’s faces when they could see an application saving them a lot of time on repeatable tasks. I became project lead on a mobile application and the giant enterprise bureaucracy really left a bad taste in my mouth. I was a 1.5 person team that had to go to stand-ups, SCRUM meetings, approval, and various other SDLC processes. I preferred the internal development jobs which gave me more latitude so I looked to spread my wings and move elsewhere.
Landing my next career path in finance as a technology associate, which the title is about as vague and broad as the responsibilities it encompassed. I had a lot of great mentors along the way and really fell in love with the design of data driven applications. Dynamic software reacting to the underlying data or given input. It expanded my knowledge on SQL, Server Side applications, Windows services, RESTful applications, and the like. Ultimately to system customizations and integration with in-house custom solutions. My clients were people who sat in the cubicle across from me, which created a fast paced world of development and feedback. So ultimately that is where I found my passion for data and data driven applications. In the ever changing world around us data is the key component, the ability to analyze and create informed decisions based upon that saving people time and stress brings me joy.
As the company was quickly growing and scaling to other countries and many more employees, the data and development team began to grow. I leaned into the area of development more-so as a way to oversee the entire data flow from ingress to egress. Building a centralized UI for everyone to access and manage the flows and data itself. Leading the meetings with the various business units and designing the flow end to end as the Director of application development. Collaborating and being the bridge between our database engineer and the clients. It really allowed me to dive deep into the data structure one the development and data side as well as the non-technical users. As that role continue to evolve the title became more fitting, Managing Director, Data Architecture. Now I was given control and authority to keep pace with the fast moving world of investing, as new strategies were onboarded constantly bringing new and exciting challenges. New data points with varying degrees of periodicity and mutability. The need to ever expand the views/lens with which people wanted to visualize the data, and requirements from regulatory bodies. Being such a heavily regulated industry does lead itself to a little easier taxonomy as the “gold standard” is provided, and the MVP meets those. Allowing the data and systems to be flexible beyond that is all where the “fun” is. Changes in team members and platforms/vendors while keeping the data as agnostic as possible was always the challenge faced.
I would like to take a step back from the core functionality and focus on the areas of interest I started to explore. Beginning an internship program for aspiring data enthusiasts. My greatest experience was my original internship and trust. Getting to work with real data on large scale enterprise solutions. Allowing someone to find the passion like I have was an alluring concept to me. So I started to treat it as a conversation around the interns personal goals and growth, and really would try to gear a project over the summer that aligned with that. It also allowed me to experiment and broaden my own horizons. One project that comes to mind was utilizing Python and Linux (two things we don’t utilize much within our enterprise). Creating an application that would pull in stock information utilize ML libraries, grab news articles on said outliers, then send notifications with a breakdown. Running it on a RaspberryPI with a small touch screen and Bluetooth keyboard. Really brought me back to the early days of working through a problem in a new infrastructure. COVID unfortunately did not allow the space for an intern, so I am excited to bring that back in the coming years.
Coming back to the enterprises data, I need to draw a change as the world and the way users were interacting was changing. Migrating our on-premise and desktop solutions, to cloud hosted storage and applications became my goal. At this junction I was given the title of Chief Data Officer (as CIO has a different meaning in the world of finance), this allowed me to spearhead the change that would be necessary. Gone were the days of static/stagnated reports. I wanted a cloud hosted solution for data storage, access, analysis, visualization and reporting on as live of data as possible. I am a firm believer in tried-and-true methodologies. Creating a rock-solid auditable data flow is paramount in the industry. First I focused on auditing and identifying all existing datasets and created the pipelines that were easily monitored and scalable. So taking a modified approach based it on an ELT model. Extract and Load all of our external data sources, with some quality assurance checks. Then Transform that data, augmenting it with other sources creating our Master Data resource. Then layering on Analysis services in Azure that again allows itself to be easily extensible. From there building reporting and analytical dashboard and reports just became the consumption of data. Well (self-documenting) data dictionaries and workflows, centralized analytics and measurements so any authorized user can easily drag and drop metrics from one report to another or their own. Creating a data service platform to lower the technical burden on the developers. This has allowed us to focus on the core tasks, and now have a platform accessible utilizing MFA and easy navigation and enhancement of the data. I believe data/information literacy as one of the core functions of my role. I want the customers to be able to access and understand all the data points they might need. Creating a data mart for them to explore knowing what is driving each point. I heard it once and believe it to be true, true data literacy is understanding the asterisk or “yeah, but..” when it comes to analytics. Excited to see where this journey continues…