Altenar now employs more than 500 staff members 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 as well.
In the first of a series of interviews with our workforce, we learn 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 up on six years in November—what a rollercoaster! I joined Altenar because I was excited to catch a promising tech company at the start of its growth, and having worked with Stas, our CEO, in previous roles, I imagined it could be 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 organization, 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 helping them form and grow.
Some teams have grown into separate departments, and Technology Operations has a broad remit. If I had to describe my responsibilities, I would summarize them as listening to the many talented engineers who have joined us and guiding their efforts in a direction that keeps the company and the products we build as adaptable to change as possible.
I ask a lot of "ignorant" questions, and sometimes that sparks ideas that go on to improve our architecture and operations. Other times, they're just ignorant questions.
What do you think makes you good at your job/what you do?
I can only speak 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 visualize 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 feel constrained to solving a technical problem with the tools and knowledge they have. I constantly try to remind our specialists about the context, where they should interact with other specialists, and that we only ever achieve results when the value of what we're doing is delivered (rather than just completing individual tasks).
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 cannot deliver value without the work of other departments, so it really comes down to how we work together as a technology organization to reach our targets and goals.
What are the key skills you need to be successful in your team/department?
Technical domain knowledge, system architecture, product understanding, and the willingness to listen, learn, and share with others in the organization.
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, grasping the technical building blocks of current technology, evaluating risk, cause-and-effect, correlation vs. causality, and a basic respect for the people you work with regardless of rank or role (not to be confused with appeasement)—will never change.
So while I understand that I'm (metaphorically) in the business of steering partially-built ships with an ever-growing cluster of eager travelers waiting at each port of call, and the goal is to gradually and seamlessly transform that moving ship into a plane without offboarding anyone, my role and that of my team is always about avoiding icebergs and repairing the hull while the travelers sleep.
Tell us about your career prior to joining Altenar?
I am an electrical engineer by profession and became passionate about communication networks very early in my career. I have worked on several interesting projects—the first fiber service-provider network in Malta, data center fit-outs for the largest betting exchange in Ireland, bringing the first brick-and-mortar casinos online in New Jersey and Mississippi after PASPA was repealed, and other transformation projects.
What’s the one thing you’d love to change about your role/industry?
I'm really keen to focus on platform architecture—we're barely scratching the surface of the scalability we can 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 have to kill you ;) (if marine biology were classified…)
Away from work, do you have any hidden talents?
I can bake a credible Neapolitan pizza from scratch, and I'm disproportionately skilled at basketball for my overall level of fitness.
I'm also a bit of a film buff (just slightly), though I'm not sure that qualifies as a talent unless you need to settle an argument about whether “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie.
What is your biggest achievement outside of your work career?
Being part of the creation and raising of our three wonderful children. They are absolutely hilarious and a much better iteration of me.
