One of Pythian’s Most Seasoned Solution Architects, Chats With Me About Notable Projects + the Future of Technology: An Interview With Scott McCormick
Pythian’s Scott McCormick (Principal Solutions Architect), Chats About Notable Projects and the Future of the his position - Cloud Solutions Architect.
Scott, what’s your first memory of using databases and programming?
Scott: My first memory is when I was about 9 years old. We had an Apple IIe and I made my mom buy a “programming” book. It was actually a C compiler on a floppy, and the book was just a set of programs which you could type in, save and then run.
The big sell was that you could make iron chains scroll across your screen, and I absolutely never got a single program to work.?
How did you migrate into the DB space / first memories?
I started as a .net programmer for a healthcare company. I was assigned a project to create a simple front end for an internal IT database, and the DBA group manager convinced me to use an Oracle tool called Apex.?
Apex and my UI skills are absolutely terrible, but that was my introduction to using stored procedures and other PL/SQL code to manipulate hundreds and thousands of rows at a time. I fell in love with the power.?
A few years later, after threatening to leave that company for a database developer job, they moved me over to the DBA group. That allowed me to really dig into the internals of the database engines we supported. For whatever reason, it just clicked with me.
What prompted you to join Pythian, what's your key role here at Pythian?
I joined Pythian because I was commuting 45-60 minutes a day to a job I had grown to dislike immensely. The ability to work from home seemed like it would be great to try for a few months, and here we are 111 months later.?
My role as a Solutions Architect covers a very broad set of duties. In many ways, the SA is the face of Pythian when dealing with our clients.?
Generally, the SA provides data-focused presales support, technical leadership for internal projects and for customer teams, and support for the business development team. If I’m being candid, I’d say my main role is to be a go-to resource for any issue that might come up, whether that’s solving the problem myself or finding the right person to help.?
How do you see the future of the Solutions Architect position evolving in the future?
I think the Solutions Architect will evolve into one of the most challenging roles in a company.?
Companies will always need help filtering through their options and choosing a way forward that satisfies their current and future business goals as well as technical requirements. This will mean many more conversations with the C-Suite and leadership of a company, while at the same time communicating this information to the implementation teams.?
The Solutions Architect already needs to be able to speak to all of these teams’ concerns while maintaining a consistent vision for the solutions.?
However, Agile development has sped up project timeframes, and the need for constant communication across multiple development teams has grown. So the speed at which a Solutions Architect operates will be consistently growing.
Thanks Scott, I look forward to working with you over the coming Years.
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Thanks for reading, Oliver