During the heyday of the underground electronic music scene in the mid-1990s, Dmitry Temkin was in the middle of the action. As a teenager, he attended parties in Manhattan and soon began DJing music events. Pursuing his passion for techno, he operated his own independent record label and established an artist management agency to introduce international DJs to a U.S. audience.
But as anyone working in music in the 2000s would know, the industry was changing. Between Napster, LimeWire, mixtapes, CDs and flash drives, the methods for spreading music were varied and disjointed. For electronic musicians trying to get their music heard, there were overwhelming avenues of distribution, often with no promise of turning a profit.
So Temkin pivoted to a career in tech. Years of working with digital music equipment made the transition to working with digital operations easy. In 2011, he landed a role at Beatport and over the course of eight years, worked his way up to Vice President of Data Services.
How did he hear about the DJ media and music platform company in the first place? By already being a user.
“Working for a company that serves and influences the community that I am part of was a great opportunity for me where I could apply my industry knowledge and expertise to develop products for the niche market that I am passionate about,” Temkin said.
Operating out of the Berlin office, Temkin coordinates with teams in the Colorado HQ office to help other music lovers explore the industry that attracted him as a teenager. Working in an international workplace allows many different voices to impact how the tech will be used by a global consumer base, Temkin said.
The music industry will always be evolving. For DJs, that means a wide range of music from an overwhelming amount of sources. With Beatport, DJs have one place to listen, store and share their beats. Temkin told us about the new tech powering Beatport that he believes will be the standard for the next generation of DJs.
“Beatport doesn’t just serve DJ culture, it defines it,” Temkin said.
In your own words, what is Beatport’s ultimate mission?
We provide the global DJ community access to the best expertly curated digital music catalog from the industry’s leading artists and labels across the industry. Beatport doesn’t just serve DJ culture, it defines it.
What is unique about your team that you don’t see at other tech companies?
The majority of our employees have an affinity for music. This creates a unique environment that I have not experienced anywhere else. Since Berlin is one of the world’s primary music centers and most of our non-technology business units are located here, music is more prevalent in our Berlin office. But you will hear a great variety of music coming out of speakers during work hours at Beatport offices regardless of the location.
Describe the engineering culture at Beatport.
I believe that culture is a reflection of the people you hire. Since we have a relatively small team, every new team member brings a new element, which will have some impact on the culture as a whole moving forward. As we scale out our teams, the challenge is to hire individuals who will bring a positive dynamic to the group.
Our Agile teams have different rules and levels of autonomy based on their designation. For example, on our data services team, we have specialists with well-defined ownership and primary responsibilities. Due to our diverse experience and technical abilities, we trust that the team is able to collectively solve any problem, while relying on each other to get things done. Since this team does a lot of operational work in addition to development, our Agile process is tailored to how this team prefers to operate.
I believe that culture is a reflection of the people you hire.”
What is one major project your team is working on this year?
We are migrating a lot of our technology components into the Google cloud platform. It will allow us to modernize and scale several older parts of the system so that we can continue supporting the development and evolution of Beatport’s products portfolio.
Can you tell us about the exciting technologies you are using to achieve that mission?
One of our latest products is Beatport LINK. One of the core product features gives DJs direct access to Beatport’s music catalog from some of the most popular professional DJ software applications. We believe that as we evolve this product’s capabilities, it will become a new widely adopted standard for the next generation of DJs.
Beatport has offices in Berlin and Denver. How do both offices work together toward a common goal?
Having offices in different time zones can be challenging at times. It makes good communication essential to achieving success. We have a policy of flexible hours, which allows employees to organize their schedules as needed in order to get the work done. We utilize video conferencing tools such as Zoom to get the staff connected for face-to-face meetings. We are lucky to have a lot of dedicated people across the organization who keep the train on the tracks and teams across the pond informed.
What are a couple of specific traits or skills Beatport looks for in new hires?
We are looking for professionals who are not afraid to tackle challenging technology and business problems and take pride in delivering quality solutions. Experience with and knowledge of Google’s cloud technologies is what we will be looking for in candidates applying for engineering positions.
We are currently expanding our technology teams with positions available in software, database and site reliability engineering.
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