Friday, January 24, 2020
Meet David, Vice President of Engineering at STORD.
What did you do before STORD?
My first job was at McDonald’s (employee of the month, August 1992!), and I also worked across the street at the Exxon station before I went to school for Civil Engineering with a focus in concrete and steel design. I spent a couple years at a company in that field, where all engineers were required to take a coding class and A LOT of math and statistics classes, which prepared me well to make the jump to software engineering during the dot-com boom.
I worked my way up from engineering to team lead and then to application architect, working for a variety of different industries. In 2010 I started working with cloud-focused companies and was able to learn and grow with the emerging cloud architecture space. I was an early employee at BetterCloud where the technology team went from six people to 100 during my adventure there, providing me with a unique opportunity to grow as a technology leader.
What do you do at STORD?
I lead the engineering teams and manage EDI integrations with our platform. Setting up the engineering practices that allow us to deliver high-quality software to our customers at a rapid pace is also a key part of my job. The more customers we bring on in different types of industries, the more we learn about what would be valuable to them, and we need to move quickly to capture that opportunity.
I’m also constantly hiring for the engineering team – we’re building something from the ground up!
What do you like most about your job?
It’s wonderfully challenging; there’s never a dull moment because we keep iterating in order to get better and deliver more value to our customers. The environment we work in has to be very innovative because we are setting our sights on big goals, so we’re empowered to try new ideas and processes in different ways. And the people are wonderful, constantly encouraging and challenging you to achieve what some might think impossible. If you enjoy learning quickly and contributing to success, this is the place for you!
What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
I enjoy improv – taking classes and performing – and teaching wrestling, which is a sport that has given me wonderful experiences in leadership and self-confidence. I attribute a lot of my open mindset to my experiences from wrestling, because it taught me that one can accomplish amazing things when you dedicate yourself to something, practice-practice-practice and when you believe in yourself. And, even though it’s a one-on-one sport, it also taught me that you can’t do it alone; you need a team of dedicated people.
STORD is hiring for several roles on the engineering team, including Full-Stack Software Engineers, Front-End Software Engineer, Application Architect, Integrations Lead, Product Manager and Product Designer. Visit our careers page to learn more!