Getting to know you: Konrad Pizzuto

Altenar now employs more than 500 members of staff with a wide variety of skills and expertise.

As a global company, the Altenar team is made up of many different nationalities, backgrounds and languages. Each individual contributes to our success in different ways and their paths to get here vary too.

In the first of a series of interviews with our workforce, we find out more about Director of Technology Operations Konrad Pizutto.

How long have you been a member of the Altenar team and what made you want to join the company?

It's coming on six years in November - what a rollercoaster! I joined Altenar because I was excited to catch a promising tech company at the foothill of its growth, and having worked with Stas, our CEO, in previous roles I imagined it could have been interesting. I wasn't wrong.

What are your main roles and responsibilities here at Altenar?

My role has been pretty dynamic. I joined Altenar to bring some infrastructure expertise to the organisation, but you need to understand that none of the teams that make up my department existed at that point, and a big part of my role has been to help them form and grow.

Some teams have graduated to separate departments and Technology Operations has a large and wide remit. If I had to describe my responsibilities I would summarise them as listening to the many talented engineers that have joined us and nudging their efforts in a direction that keeps the company and the products we build as flexible to change as possible.??

I ask a lot of 'ignorant' questions, and sometimes that stimulates ideas that go on to improve our architecture and operation. Other times they're just ignorant questions.

??

What do you think makes you good at your job/what you do?

I can only talk about what I bring to the table - and that is usually a very clear understanding of what needs to be achieved and the ability to visualise the technical solution and map out (or help others map out) the steps to achieve it.?

Specialists are really great at what they do, but they can sometimes believe they are constrained to solving a technical problem with the tools and knowledge that they have. I am constantly trying to remind our specialists what the context is, where they should interact with other specialists and how we only ever achieve anything when the value of what we're doing is delivered (as opposed to the individual task).

How does your department help the company reach its overall targets and goals?

We build technical infrastructure, deliver code and configuration changes to our platforms and manage the data that the platforms handle. We can deliver no value without the work of other departments, so it really is all about how we work together as a technology organisation that lets us reach our targets and goals.

What are the key skills you need to be a success in your team/department?

Technical domain knowledge, system architecture and product appreciation, and the willingness to listen, learn and share with others in the organisation.

?

How do you expect your role in this industry to change and develop in the future?

I think the fundamentals such as understanding the context of your business in the market space, understanding the technical primitives of the technology 'du jour', understanding the evaluation of risk, cause-and-effect, correlation vs causality and a basic respect for the people you work with regardless of rank or role (and not to be confused with appeasement) will never change.??

So whilst I understand that I'm (metaphorically) in the business of steering partially-built ships with an ever-growing cluster of eager travellers waiting at each port of call and the desire to gradually and seamlessly transform that moving ship into a plane without ever having to offboard a traveller, my role and that of my team is always going to be all about avoiding the icebergs and rebuilding the hull whilst the travellers sleep.

Tell us about your career prior to joining Altenar?

I am an electrical engineer by profession and I became passionate about communication networks very early in my career. I have worked on a number of very interesting projects - the first fibre service-provider network in Malta, data centre fit-outs for the biggest betting exchange in Ireland, taking the first bricks-and-mortar casinos online in New Jersey and Mississippi after PASPA was repealed, and a number of other transformation projects.

What’s the one thing you’d love to change about your role/industry?

I'm really keen to focus on the platform architecture - we're barely scraping the surface of the scalability we're able to achieve.??

?

What did you want to do as a job/career when you were a child?

I could tell you that but then I'd need to kill you ;)? (if marine biology was a classified topic..)

?

Away from work do you have any hidden talents?

I can bake a credible Neapolitan pizza from scratch and I'm disproportionately competent in basketball for my overall level of fitness.

I'm also a bit of a film buff (just marginally so) although I'm not sure that qualifies as a talent unless you need to settle an argument about whether ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie or not.

What is your biggest achievement away from your work career?

Partaking in the creation and parenting of our three wonderful children. They are absolutely hilarious and such a better iteration of me.