Product Data Engineering and Our Engineering Tenets

Jakub joined the firm in 2020 and is an engineer within our Product Data unit. In this blog, Jakub describes how our engineering tenets help guide our global engineering teams from project conception to delivery including the unique challenges faced by data engineers.

Goldman Sachs’ engineering team is part of a technology community, meaning we are guided by our nine tenets. All of them inspire us and help to set us on the right path, forcing us to strive for operational excellence. From a Product Data perspective, the following are most relevant:

1.      Look Around Corners - when there are elements of uncertainty, we embrace it, try to predict it, and develop design to sustain failures

2.      Innovate Incrementally - innovation happens gradually, through constant end-user feedback facilitated by frequent releases. To achieve this, we strive for a streamlined deployment process of manageable deliverables

3.      Inspire Trust – mistakes happen, it’s inevitable. What I really like about our people is their willingness to solve issues together, learn from them, and treat mistakes as catalysts for growth. Most importantly, we feel comfortable to be open about failures thanks to the culture of trust and cooperation.

Whilst acting as guiding principles, these tenets provide real-world anchors across projects.

As Data Engineers, we’re in a unique position within our broader Core Engineering team. On the one hand, you focus on applying good software principles, working with different technologies and frameworks and emphasizing the development of robust systems. On the other hand, you are heavily involved with consumers of your data, working together to support diverse functional requirements to enable new businesses as well retaining a strong focus on remaining compliant with regulatory obligations. Given that setup, what you do is very purposeful and puts you in a position where you can have a direct impact on the business, keeping you very engaged and fulfilled. To operate efficiently in this context-switching environment, you need to embrace the unexpected.

Managing a complex critical reference data system wouldn’t be possible without constant, gradual modernization. Addressing technical debt, upgrading our databases to the latest versions, moving business processes out of no longer supported operating systems and software libraries, as well as paying particular attention to security of our data, are just a few of constant companions to our work. On top of that, we are on a constant journey to adopt new platforms, consolidating our frameworks, processing, and data-processing solutions.

Despite best efforts and paying particular attention to making sure our solutions work properly in production environments, mistakes are inevitable. Goldman Sachs has a great culture of inspiring trust by addressing issues as a team. The number of lessons we learned from looking back at how we could have improved our systems and prevent errors from occurring again, is truly invaluable.

All the above make me truly believe that Goldman Sachs engineering is a great and unique place to grow and build your career. If you are willing to learn, want to thrive in a rapidly changing environment, communicate well, and bring your technical acumen, the future is yours!

 

Read this blog post in Polish.