The skills needed for a systems engineer to be successful vary depending on the company, but for the following Colorado-based tech companies, the ability — and willingness — to continuously learn and improve is the most important skill for engineers to have.
VIZIO Senior Data Engineer Hunter Hobbs said that being teachable and asking a lot of questions are crucial for success; GoSpotCheck Cloud Engineer Zan Thorn agreed, adding that persistence is also key. By persistently digging, researching and learning, no problem will go unsolved, Thorn said.
In order to dig deeper into the skills they believe make a systems engineer successful, Built In Colorado caught up with Hobbs and Thorn. They shared what a typical day looks like in each of their roles as well as an interesting project they’ve recently worked on (think: interactive TV features and machine-learning training pipelines).
What they do: VIZIO is a hardware and software company that designs and sells televisions and soundbars.
What’s your typical day like as a systems engineer?
A typical day for me as a data engineer involves working with my team to design and build data pipelines that interface with various parts of the business, as well as external partners, that drive analysis, business intelligence and data science. Our team’s essential goal is to unify data across the entire organization.
Some days I’m primarily focused on understanding the domain of the data or the data itself, while other days I'm writing code and using tools such as Apache Spark and Kubernetes. My role as a data engineer provides me the opportunity to work with nearly every spoke of the business from the perspective of the data produced, which is a very unique vantage point.
What’s an interesting project you’ve recently worked on?
We are currently building out many exciting interactive features that will completely change or extend the way that people use their TVs. Data produced by these features is handled by my team and the interesting part is seeing what future products we have planned that will leverage this data and essentially push the limit of what we think of as a “TV.”
One of the most important skills as a data engineer is to remain teachable.”
What are some important skills a systems engineer needs to be successful?
In my experience, one of the most important skills as a data engineer is to remain teachable. Not only are new tools and better processes constantly being developed that require a passion for learning, but what has helped the most in my career is asking a lot of questions and relying on the knowledge of everyone I’ve been working with, past and present.
What they do: GoSpotCheck is a software company that helps customers with merchandising, sales, labor and expenses, and safety and quality in the field.
What’s your typical day like as a systems engineer?
I usually start the day with a coffee while I check Slack messages and emails for any overnight fires that need attention. Assuming everything is good, I will pull a story from our Jira board and get started. This can be anything from fixing a broken CI build to migrating legacy apps or coding via Kubernetes. A few times a week, I’ll pair with another engineer to work on a difficult problem or simply just share knowledge. The most predictable part of being a CloudOps engineer is the unpredictability of the work!
I believe that persistence is an extremely important skill for engineers.”
What’s an interesting project you’ve recently worked on?
I was tasked with building a POC for a new machine-learning training pipeline. We went from a cloud service with very little control to an open source app running on Kubernetes backed by persistent volumes for the training data. This gave us much more control of the resources and some bonus cost savings.
What are some important skills a systems engineer needs to be successful?
I believe that persistence is an extremely important skill for engineers. I have worked on many problems that seem unsolvable at first. Sometimes you have no idea what to do next. But if you keep digging, researching and learning, you will find a path forward.
