Why Nate came back to StellarAlgo: Growth, tech, and Engineering culture

By: Nate Hyatt

Description: Nate Hyatt, Staff Data Engineer, left StellarAlgo in 2022 and then rejoined earlier this year. He shared what brought him back, the data problems that energize him, and what makes the Engineering team at StellarAlgo unique.

Nate Hyatt first joined StellarAlgo in 2020 as a Senior Data Engineer. As a huge sports fan, he was interested in working on complex data challenges in the sports industry. He left StellarAlgo to work at a larger tech company and two years later returned to the Engineering team.

In this interview, he shared what brought him back, the data projects that energize him, and what makes the StellarAlgo Engineering team culture unique. 

You left StellarAlgo and then came back – what made you return? 

The opportunity to come back was appealing because I could see how much the company had grown in its tech stack and how they were building really cool things in sports data. When my previous company required me to move, I knew I wanted to work somewhere Calgary-based. 

At StellarAlgo, I could be authentically myself, explore new ideas, and work on complex, interesting data problems. I wanted to work in an environment that had a growing startup vibe, without the stuffiness or barriers of a large company. StellarAlgo had the culture and environment I was looking for and I was excited to return to the Engineering team. 

What has changed at StellarAlgo since you worked here in 2022?

When I came back, the tech stack for the data routine was completely revamped, which was incredibly impressive. The team migrated off the legacy stack, moving everything to AWS serverless services. It wasn’t just a data initiative, but something that required everyone including Account Managers, Customer Success, and the Support team to back together and enable this massive technological shift.

When I first worked at StellarAlgo up to 2022, we were focused on keeping up with the growth while managing the existing pipelines, so it was hard to do that technical migration. Now we’re able to handle more issues and scale up the team much faster. 

In your role today, what’s a project that energizes you? 

I’m building a Data Transfer tool that can distribute the datasets we’re ingesting to multiple target databases and cloud storages, enabling our clients to do their in-house analytics in their own environment. It’s really energizing because I’m building something from scratch and learning lots, trying to create a reliable, easily maintainable, and scalable way to transfer data to clients who want more raw data sets. I love doing new build development, and this project allows me to enable new data sharing patterns while working alongside our existing infrastructure.

How is the StellarAlgo Engineering team unique from others you’ve worked on?

The Engineering team at StellarAlgo still has that startup vibe, where everyone is authentically themselves and there’s a really good open dialog with each other. Unlike other companies where there can be a competitive atmosphere, here it feels more like collaboration than competition. 

There’s less worry about titles and more focus on just talking to the right person to get things done. There’s less stuffiness, so a junior engineer could easily link up with a senior engineer on a project without feeling like there are barriers between them.

What growth opportunities are there on the Engineering team? 

For someone earlier in your career, there is so much opportunity to learn, and there are so many good people who can help. It’s a safe place to develop skills and if someone wants to try a new tech stack or explore something, everyone on the team is open to it. They can put in the work and figure out if it’s something useful that the team can use.  

For someone with more experience, there’s a lot of opportunity to build new things. There’s a lot in development now with AI and creating new features which opens up a lot of windows to be super creative in your work.

Learn more about working at StellarAlgo on the careers page. 

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