Isabel Riofrío
At Reelgood, we’re only as good as our people, and we think our people are pretty darn great. To highlight their skills, we’re spotlighting those who make Reelgood “really good.” We recently chatted with Javi Morán, Reelgood’s Data Engineering Manager, to find out what challenges him about his job, what he loves about his team, and what you’ll find him streaming when he’s not wrapped up in the world of data.
Javi, when did you join the Reelgood team?
I joined Reelgood in August of 2020 – right in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
What can you tell us about your role as Data Engineering Manager?
When I first joined Reelgood, I was hired to oversee the overhaul of our robust data collection system. Although overseeing the overhaul remains my primary responsibility, I’m also responsible for the data engineering team. As data engineers, our main task – aside from data collection – is to prepare and expose data both internally for our team and externally for our customers.
What are some challenges that you face as our Data Engineering Manager, and how do you solve them?
Data is always complicated, especially when you have to take so many different sources into consideration. There is an infinite number of problems that we run into on a daily basis, but if I had to pick two main challenges, they would be homogenizing data and dealing with massive amounts of data.
I could write pages on pages about how we solve each of these problems individually, but the specific solutions aren’t as valuable as the process we go through to arrive at them. Although we value independence and the ability to face a problem and roll with it, our best work comes from collaborative sessions.
We typically meet as a team and invite a couple of external eyes to help give a fresh perspective on things. The person with the problem presents the problem along with potential solutions, and everyone chimes in. This is probably pretty standard as far as meetings go, but knowing when to leverage these, and when to let people’s own creativity flow, is really our “secret sauce.”
What inspires you in your personal life? In your professional life?
To be completely honest, I’m very competitive in nature. I’ve learned to channel this into being competitive with myself, and this is what I believe inspires both my personal and my professional life. I strive to always be a little better than I was the day before. In my personal life, this leads me to build better relationships and work on becoming a better me. At work, this leads me to always want to put out the best work possible and improve it every day.
What do you like best about working for Reelgood?
This is going to sound like a cliche, but honestly, I’ve spent some time trying to come up with a better one, but there isn’t a close second – it’s the people. Not only does Reelgood have amazing humans who will feel like friends despite being on completely different teams – and even continents – everyone here is a master of their craft.
While it’s only natural for a company to try and hire the best talent they can, few actually succeed. I think Reelgood’s focus on talent has really helped its success. I’m a firm believer that talent brings talent, but also talent fosters talent. The amazing engineers already working here help bring others of the same skill level into the company. Everyone is selfless with their knowledge, and more than that, eager to teach others. It helps create an environment where even the most talented engineers are still improving and becoming better every day.
At Reelgood, we love to stream and we’re all about lists, so what are your Top 5 favorite movies or series?
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