Current Position:

Data Engineer at Charter Communications

Degree (s):

• Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics, minors in Statistics and Music, NC State, May 2016

Questions below were answered by Ben, while he was in his previous position as a Business Analyst at Valassis Digital (formerly MaxPoint Interactive).

Was the degree you earned required for the work you do? How did you find yourself in your current position?

Not specifically. Valassis Digital, who acquired MaxPoint in October of 2017, is a digital advertising company. There is a person on my team with a Psychology degree and another with an English degree. A lot of my day to day was taught on the job since we use internal systems. My coding background has helped me in some aspects of my job. I learned about MaxPoint when they came to campus for a recruitment presentation one evening. I was an intern for a year then I moved into a full-time position after I graduated.

What skills or abilities do you find are most important in the work you do?

About half of my team (including me) does a lot of coding work, so my experience with Python, R, and Matlab during college helped me transition into that more specialized role within the team. Communication, specifically email, is vital to my day to day as most of the work I do involves at least 1 other team within the company. A large part of my job is prioritization and time management since the work that I do involves real time data and high budget advertising campaigns.

What preparation would you recommend for someone interested in entering your field? Are there any courses at State you would recommend?

MA116 introduced me to Matlab which I used in lots of other courses. My general statistics courses (ST371-2) helped solidify some fundamentals that help with understanding data and charts. A Python course in the Physics department helped me get ramped up with Python which was slowly being incorporated at work, so I became a resource for my coworkers who were learning to code. In general, no specific courses were related to my field, but bits and pieces of my courses were relevant to my general understanding of data and mathematics.

What other career paths would you suggest a student explore before making a final decision?

I think doing at least one internship (two would be better) during college can make a huge impact when it comes to deciding what to do after college. I only did one and I ended up staying at that company. I’ve been here a total of 2.5 years now and I was lucky to find such a good fit. Internships can help you decide not only if you are ready to work or stay in school and get another degree, but also to help you get an idea of what different fields will hold on a day to day basis in a company setting which is really difficult to understand while you’re a student.

If you had to do everything over again, would you do anything differently? Why or why not?

I would’ve done an internship between my sophomore and junior year in addition to the one I did between my junior and senior year. It would have been nice just to see what else was out there and to make some more connections. I also would’ve joined an acapella group and played more basketball at the gym (don’t take the gym for granted, it’s nicer than any other gym you will ever be a member of), so don’t brush off those extracurricular activities! Try everything!