Andrew is the Director of Engineering for RV’s Data Platform team. Impressive, right? Well once we sat down with him, we found out that we had more in common than we thought. I mean, I’m guessing most of us love pizza and taking pictures of dogs — even though we may not know how to code. The thing is, Andrew was able to learn software development right here at RV through one of our training programs. Sound interested? Keep reading and find out how you can boost your career with Red Ventures!
Where’s your office located?
I’m normally in the South Charlotte office, but currently I work remotely.
What is your typical morning like?
I like to wake up early and start the day with a bucket of coffee (a bucket is definitely an exaggeration, but admittedly too much). After downing my first cup, I head out to the garage-turned-gym for a quick workout followed by a walk with my dog, Olive. While I love working remotely, I do miss RV’s workout facilities!
I am at my desk by 8 a.m. catching up on emails and preparing for the day’s meetings.
Can you describe your role for us?
A typical day consists of morning meetings with the team to discuss current initiatives, plan future priorities, and take individual one-on-one calls. Outside of the “everyday” meetings, I spend a lot of my time communicating with stakeholders to identify business needs and align our tech strategy with those needs.
How did you end up in your role?
I started at Red Ventures as a Sales Associate in 2015 — an entirely different career than I’m in now. As I was finishing my undergrad in finance, I began to realize my passion was not in finance or sales, but in tech. Eventually, I discovered a Red Ventures program called the Internal Tech Academy (ITA). This program is offered to a few employees each year and teaches the skills necessary to transition to software development (this is exactly what I was looking for, RV for the win!). In 2017, I joined the program and began learning the basics of software development.
In 2018, I graduated from the program and started my first role as a Junior Web Developer. As I continued to grow in the career trajectory to Senior Engineer, I started looking for ways to get involved with the strategic direction of the tech I was responsible for, which led me to my current role, Director of Engineering.
What’s your favorite part about the job?
I am constantly learning new things, solving problems, and exploring with the latest technologies. Over the course of my career, one of my teams built an ad management tool for our businesses to create personalized digital display ads and project them to users across our domains. I helped create a data pipeline in a hackathon that was eventually adopted as the de facto data pipeline for RV, which has since scaled to handle one billion events per day. It’s been great to finish projects like that.
Do you have any fun moments you’d like to share?
One of the most exciting things was when we launched Ampersand, a digital ad management application, for MYMOVE. Seeing months of hard work finally used to generate millions in annual revenue was a very rewarding feeling.
How have you been spending your time during the pandemic? Have you picked up any new hobbies?
I love to play golf. For a while at the beginning of the pandemic it was about the only thing you could do outside while socially distancing, which I did not mind one bit. Beyond that, I found several things worth redoing in the house. So far I have turned our home into a fully-automated smart home. Up next is renovating the main bathroom– we’ll see when that gets started!
The end is not “neer” for our engineering content! Read more about life as an RV engineer here.
